2012 Races & Goals, Part 2

I didn’t intend to wait until June to write the second part of my 2012 Races & Goals post that I posted back in January. Back then, I had a few goals in mind, but I hadn’t fully fleshed them out yet. When I finally did establish some specific goals, it didn’t take long before I had to revise them due to unforeseen circumstances. Now, near the half way point of 2012, I’ll share my progress on my revised goals.

My plan this year was to have a goal for the number of “major” races I was going to participate in, as well as some performance goals for specific race distances. For me, a major race is a half marathon or higher, or a race that I need to travel to and stay overnight. By the end of February, my plan was to run 10 half marathons through the remainder of 2012, one each month from March to December. I had races selected for 6 of the 10 months, including March, April and May. The March race took place, the ORRRC Half Marathon in Xenia, Ohio, and with a goal that was just a range of times, I was satisfied with my performance, since it was my first half of the year. Training continued to go well into April, until I sprained my ankle the week before my planned half marathon for the month. Time for Plan B. The Team G(race) spring race was the Capital City Half Marathon in Columbus in early May, and without running for 2 1/2 weeks leading up to that race, I just wanted to be able to run/walk the race and finish. (You can read my race recap here.) I knew I still wasn’t 100% healed during Cap City, so I didn’t try to push my recovery and get back to 30 miles per week right away. The long recovery time also reinforced that it wasn’t going to be feasible to run 10 half marathons this year. Sometimes goals need to be revised out of necessity, and although I would have liked to celebrate my 10th year of running with 10 half marathons, I am happy with my revised list of 2012 goals:

• 5 Half Marathons: ORRRC (March), Cap City (May), North Country Run (August), Air Force (September) and Columbus (October)
• My First Trail Half Marathon – the North Country Run in Michigan in August
• Run another sub-2 hour half (my PR was set in Columbus in 2010, 1:56:26, so if my training goes well, I may try for a PR)
• Run a Relay (the 2012 Bourbon Chase was the original goal, but the race closed very quickly but I did recently commit to be on a Ragnar Florida Keys team in early January 2013)
• Try for a 5k PR, likely in the fall
• Non-running, general fitness goals – saving for a later post

The Air Force Marathon is the next Team G(race) race, and I’m really excited about it because we have 8 members running the full, some of them running their first, and many others running the half. I plan on doing some of the long training runs with the full group this summer, which will be a nice change from last summer, when Ihadto do a longer run than the rest of the group since I was training for the Chicago Marathon.  Now I don’t have the pressure of having to do those longer runs, I can just do them for fun. I’m also excited about Columbus because it’s a race where I’ve performed well in the past, some Team Gracers are likely to run it, and I have several friends who are coming from out of town to run the race.

There have been some bumps in the road this year, but this is shaping up to be an excellent summer and year overall. Team G(race) is working on several fun and exciting initiatives, and many of our team members have accomplished some cool things, with more to come. Our 2012 fundraising campaign continues, and we are currently over half way towards our goal of $5,000. This is the most important goal of 2012. We, as individuals, run because of the friendship, the fellowship, the fun, support and accountability, and because it makes us happy and healthy. The reason, the purpose, the mission of Team G(race) is running to help others.

What are some of your goals? Have you had to revise your goals mid-year? Why do you run?