Running Resolutions

Here's a brand new year & brand new goals to conquer...

When it comes to running, setting goals keeps me motivated. Having a target to achieve, eggs me on and its probably the biggest reason why I get out of bed at 4:00 am when all around me are fast asleep.

Somewhere in September last year I figured out my goal for this year. It happened when a friend texted me for training advice for her upcoming 10K. She told me how she ran her 1st 10k earlier in the year with hardly any training and that she wanted to be better prepared and run stronger this second time around. I asked her what her timing was like for the first one and she glibly said, "1:07 or something. Pathetic no?"

My best time to date (look on the right panel) is 1:08:35. This is after a few 10K races and several months of training. Now they say, in the running community, never to compare your timing and pace to anyone else. Yeah right! Sure this girl probably has about 10 years on me but I must admit that it was still a little bit of a slap in the face. Thats when I decided that I would work on my speed and build my way up to a sub 60 min 10K. 2017 - Goal set.

How do you shave off  8 minutes and 36 seconds from your time? Easy - just run faster! Indisputable logic, but let me break this down. It takes me on an average 1 hour and 10 minutes to complete 10K. Thats an average pace of 7'00" to a kilometre. To meet my goal, I would need to bring my pace down to a little less than 6'00". Which means running each kilometre a minute faster. In real time, that won't just happen overnight. It will take a lot of practise and a lot of dedication to gradually bring my pace down.

Ofcourse I had to comb through several resources to find a training plan that will allow me to do just that. None were perfectly suited - they either were at too advanced a level or had too many running days or were clashing with my schedule etcetera, etcetera. So I ended up borrowing from several sources, tweaking it to suit my fitness levels and my likes, to come up with a plan that looks like this:

Ofcourse, I know it will get edited along the way based on how I fare. But its a start!