2011 Goals - Results

2012 is a couple of days old now so it is a good time to revisit my goals for 2011 and see how I did!

1. Run a Marathon. Check!

2. Run a sub 1 hour 40 minute Half Marathon. Check!

3. Not gain any weight in 2011: Starting weight 153lb (10st 13lb). I hovered around 153lb in the first half of 2011 and then around 149lb during Marathon Training. Taking 6 weeks to recover from the Marathon pushed my weight to around 155lb, so not quite a check mark for this goal.

I also had some sub-goals for the "Run a Marathon" goal:
1a. Listen to my body and rest whenever I need to, regardless of my training schedule. Check! I think I did pretty well on this one. I used my training schedule as more of a guide than a schedule once I started to hit problems and cut out sessions when I needed to.


1b. Run the easy miles slowly. I have a tendency to run the easy miles faster than 90 seconds slower than Marathon pace that I should be running them at. Check! This might be my biggest achievement in 2011. For whatever reason, once I switched to Marathon training I didn't really look at my pace anymore and was able to run slowly and it really helped on the endurance side and helped me mentally prepare for 4 hours of running. Of course, picking a marathon goal that was well within my capabilities from a pace perspective might have helped here too!

1c. Avoid running too many races. I ran too many hard miles in race conditions in 2010 which I believe contributed to my injuries. Check! I ran a very small number of races in 2011 (4 in total) and kept my injuries down.