2018 Goals

I'm a little late to the goal setting party in 2018. I've also written posts like this years ago and have come nowhere close to those goals. I'm putting that behind me now. I'm a 1:16 half marathoner and 2:44 marathoner, having run both of those times after having a blood clot in my lung. In 2017, I grabbed a PR at every distance from 1500m up to the marathon. I want to have a similar 2018. A lot of those PR races gave me hope that there was more time left out there. After a really solid fall mileage base training for NYC & CIM, I am refreshed and entering back into some serious training. I'm ready to roll and have some big races ahead of me: Lisbon Half Marathon, Boston Marathon. Those are the goal races but I'm also going to be hitting a track 5k & 10k over the next couple of months. Time to fly!

PRs: 16:36, 35:18, 1:16:40, 2:44:01

2018 Goals: sub-16:00 5k, 33:30 or better 10k, (sub) 1:15 half marathon, sub-2:40 marathon

Those are the big goals but I have mini goals built into those goals. I'll be happy with PRs. My 10k goal is 1:30 faster than I've ever gone at that distance. I would be plenty happy running 34:xx. I, however, haven't really taken a real crack at a 10k. I usually just run 1 or 2 of them a year. Last year I ran a track 10k where I went out way too fast and the crawled home in the second half of the race. My other 10k was a summer race where it was warm at the start and a week before a half marathon so I was not quite tapering. My 10k best actually comes from a fartlek workout that included some easy jogging rests. In 2018, I'm going to be more cognizant about tapering for races. I'm sick of training hard, training through races, and then running mediocre races. Races, not workouts, are where I need to see all of my hard work pay off. Workouts I've done over the last couple years have indicated the time goals I have laid out are within reach. I have shown the fitness to come close to those times but I have wasted a lot of race efforts in workouts. 2018 is about showing up on race day fresh and ready to go.

That's all I really have on this. I'm okay being open about my goals. I want to keep improving and make big fitness gains. 2017 was a great year but I want to be able to cite good race results instead of good workouts. That's going to be the theme in 2018.