It’s February 1 already, so this is only a full month late! Before setting goals for 2020, I wanted to first reflect on 2019.
My 2019 running goals were:
- Central Park Half: 1:50 (stretch goal: 1:48)
- United NYC Half: 1:47 (stretch goal: 1:45)
- Cherry Blossom 10M: 1:20 (super stretch goal: 1:15)
- Fall Marathons (Berlin & NYC): TBD time goal, complete training cycle and races without injury (time goal ended up being 3:45)
And the actual results:
| Race | Time Goal | Actual | Achieved? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Central Park Half | 1:50 | DNF | ❌ |
| United NYC Half | 1:47 | 2:03 | ❌ |
| Cherry Blossom 10M | 1:20 | DNS // 5k in 25:53 | ❌ |
| Fall Marathons | 3:45 | 3:57:20 @ Berlin 3:54:50 @ NYC |
❌ |
Yikes! What happened? I ended up with pretty bad runner’s knee from January – April, during which I did very little running and lost some fitness and speed, affecting all my spring races. Luckily, I started working with an excellent physical therapist in April, just in time to (mostly) get back in shape for my fall marathons.
Central Park Half (2/24): I ran a marathon (26 miles) on my 26th birthday in 2018, and while I didn’t intend to continue that particular tradition (either running a marathon on my birthday or running a number of miles equal to my new age), the idea of running a race and setting a personal best on my birthday sounded appealing! I optimistically started this race, thinking it could be my comeback from knee pain, but alas, it became my first DNF after 5 miles.
United NYC Half (3/17): I had just started working with a personal trainer to help with strength/core work. Unfortunately, I got a rotator cuff injury after our first session and had lots of pain in my shoulder/neck/upper back. It was literally painful just to lift my head up, and I would have skipped had this been a smaller race, but the United Half is the United Half. Add in the knee pain (and being woefully untrained), and it’s honestly a miracle I made it to the finish line at all.
Cherry Blossom 10M (4/12): at this time, I was still seeing a different physical therapist. A couple of days before this race, he had me do Bulgarian split squads and other exercises, which left me with extremely sore hamstrings/glutes. I’m not exaggerating when I say I could barely walk normally, and no amount of rest, ice, or stretching in those two days helped. Anyway, I’m lucky this race lets you drop from the 10 Mile Run to the 5k a day or two before. Even without the hamstring issue, I don’t know if I even had enough fitness to run 10 miles at this point. This wasn’t how I wanted my first-ever 5k race to go, but at least I managed to keep up a tempo pace and did not have to slow jog or walk. The silver lining is that I overheard two women in Dashing Whippets singlets at the 5k start line talking very positively about Finish Line PT, which led to me dropping (okay, ghosting) the PT I was seeing then.
Fall Marathons: I missed my somewhat ambitious 3:45 time goal by 12 and 10 minutes, respectively. On the other hand, I didn’t experience any major injuries during my training and still had two solid sub-4 races, so overall I think this is a win.
There were some clear problems with how I set goals in 2019. I looked at the list of races I was registered for on January 1, thought about what times I wanted to run for each based on my 2018 performances, and wrote those down. Unfortunately, this left me with a static list that I never updated to reflect the lost training and fitness while dealing with my injury. While they may have been ambitious but appropriate goals given a solid winter/spring training cycle, they quickly became near-impossible. Missing each goal also affected my motivation and enthusiasm for continuing to run and race, creating a negative mental/emotional cycle as well.
Setting my goals on or before January 1 also meant I had less visibility into what would come later in the year. I literally did not know which races I would do in the summer or fall, other than the major marathons. For example, I ended up racing the Brooklyn Mile and the New Balance 5th Avenue Mile; I had never raced a mile before, and I couldn’t have chosen an appropriate goal in January even if I had known I was going to do those races. Of course, not every single race needs to have a time goal, but it is hard to set realistic time goals without knowing if I even plan to race that distance and what the rest of my schedule approximately looks like.
Fortunately, I’ve learned some valuable lessons that I hope to apply to my 2020 running goals.