I guess that it’s that time of year for everyone to mention their New Year’s resolutions for 2021.
Losing some weight
It is no secret that my waistline, belly, hips, and everything else have expanded during this pandemic. I cannot entirely blame the pandemic, because I have not been too happy with my physical appearance for the past few years. My first weight loss goal is to get under 200 pounds. According to my Lose It food logging app, I can drop down to 190 pounds by May, which would be a nice birthday gift to myself. I plan to reduce caloric intake and restart intermittent fasting. The latter activity worked wonders for me when I did it for the first time a couple of years ago. It did help that I wanted to drop a few pounds before visiting Cancún for a birthday getaway. Actually, thinking about it . . . I started intermittent fasting for Lent and decided to keep it going until the summer.
Getting my running mojo back.
Although I have been running during this pandemic, the lack of racing has really reduced my efforts during my daily runs. For the most part, I’m walking quite a bit during these runs. For example, I’ll cycle between running and walk 0.5 miles for a 6-mile run. This definitely has to change in 2021. My major running resolution is to run a half marathon every month during 2021. This was one of my resolutions for 2020; however, the pandemic caused the cancelation of pretty much all in-person races. In my defense, I did run half marathons from January to March in 2020. I would like to get my running fitness back to where I can (decently) run a half marathon at a moment’s notice. It would be awesome to get back to 1:45 half marathons, but I will take anything under 2:10 . . . for now. Although there have been limited in-person races, my plan is to run the route for the New York Road Runners’ (NYRR) Fred Lebow Half Marathon.
The idea is to run my own half marathon during the last weekend of each month. Since I’m running the same route, it will be easier to measure my progress.
I did mention that I was a bit hesitant signing up for more virtual running challenges. I guess that I lied because I signed up for NYC Runs 2021 Challenge.
For this challenge, challenge seekers decide how many miles they will run during 2021. For my goal, I plan to run 2021 miles, which seems like a nice number for the year 2021 (oh sorry, MMXXI). That’s about 5.5 miles per day for the year. This may be a bit of a lofty goal because my 2020 Strava stats said that I ran 1010 miles, so I will attempt to double this in 2021.
Engaging more with the running community
My primary reason for setting up an Instagram account was to engage with more runners around the world. Unfortunately, my Insta has pretty much been a potpourri of a bunch of random things. To be perfectly honest, I’m not really sure about how to go about engaging more with runners through social media. Perhaps, Instagramming just is not my thing.
Reading more
I make this resolution every year, but I really want to read at least one running-related book per month. I read a few books last year, but I’m not really sure why or when or why I fell off. The couple from the Marathon Training Academy has a nice list of books that I can get started with (https://www.marathontrainingacademy.com/my-book-list).
Let’s see how 2021 will go.