Tuesday 31 March 2009

Falling behind on New Year Resolutions

I remember proudly proclaiming just over three months ago that 2009 was the year I was really going to push to get my fitness up. And the way I was going to do this was to focus on the 'input' rather than the 'output'. In other words, I was going to say "I will run x times per week" rather than "I will lose x pounds" or "I will get my 5k time down to 25 minutes" or whatever.

Well, we're now a quarter of the way through the year - the results are in, and they're not good.

My 2009 resolutions were as follows:

Gym 100 times
Run 300 miles
Cycle 1000 miles

Well as of today, we're 24.7% through the year, so if I was on target, I should have completed the following:

Gym 24 times
Run 74 miles
Cycle 246 miles

Instead, however, this is what I've done:

Gym 1 time (hangs head in shame)
Run 39 miles
Cycle 63 miles

So I'm a long way behind on all of my goals...

I can come up with some very good excuses for why this is the case.

A very cold spell in January meant that I was neither running or cycling much.

At the start of March, a critical component on my bike broke, and despite trips to 4 bike shops and a couple of 'under the arches' repair shops, noone could fix it (but I managed to with a £3 purchase off ebay - I'll write more about that later - but it only got fixed last weekend).

For the last six weeks, I've had some appointments on Saturday mornings (my normal 5k time for the Wimbledon Common Time Trial) which I simply haven't been able to shift.

So, lots of excuses, but nothing which is stopping me NOW! Hopefully I'll at least be able to start eating into the deficit...

Also, I'm taking a week off over Easter, and I'm hoping to be able to run every day. The weather seems to be warming up a little over there, so hopefully my goal will happen. I'm aiming for 20 miles over the 10 days we're over there which should be achievable so long as the roads are clear of ice and snow...

Wish me luck!