I am fascinated with time. I love time machine stories and movies, and I love to speculate about time. The fact that time and light speed are directly related is considered the greatest equation to this day. But most of time is arbitrary. One second, minute, hour, day, week, month, and finally, for this post, year. Happy New Year. But only one second separates one year from the next. And if we lived in the country, without any media and paying no attention to our watch, we would not know the difference.
Ok, what does that have to do with past and future goals? Nothing. It's just that if we didn't have all these artificial milestones, we'd never know time existed.
My goals for 2010 were:
1. Qualify for Boston at Boston (3:45:59 or faster)
2. Run 100 miles again.
3. Run a sub 20 minute 5k.
4. P R in the Marathon.
Goals 1 and 4 were accomplished at the same time at the Boston Marathon.
Goal 2 was accomplished by finishing the Mother Road 100.
Goal 3 was not accomplished, nor did I train to do so. With my training for the Marathon and then the 100 miler, I never spent time trying to improve my 5k times.
I will carry the sub 20 goal over again, but I will call it a secondary goal. One thing that wasn't a stated goal, but that I had in my mind for the future was also accomplished in 2010, and that was to win a race outright and not just my age group. I did that at the 12 hour run at 24 the Hard Way.
My race calendar is already pretty full for 2011. I'm entered in the Boston Marathon again. I've agreed to crew and pace a runner at the Leadville 100 miler, and the picture above represents my major goal race of 2011, the Comrades Marathon (Distance: 89km – 56 miles) in South Africa. Comrades is the oldest, largest, and most famous Ultra Marathon in the world. The races reverses direction each year, and 2011 is an "up year." Meaning I will be running from right to left on the profile map.
My goals for 2011 are as follows:
1. Finish the Boston Marathon in under 3:40
2. Finish the Comrades Marathon in under 11 hours (Race has a 12 hour cut-off)
3. Help my friend to finish the Leadville 100
Soft Goal of running a sub 20 5k.
