New Year's Resolutions

It's the last day of 2011 and about 35C outside, so today I've decided to stay inside, try to stay as cool as possible, and work out what goals I should set for next year. Most of these are to do with running, but I'll get some others out the way quickly.

1. Play more chess and push my rating towards 2300. This is what I need to become an FM titled player. I have about 140 points to rise, but at this level that is very hard. I will have to up my game, which means putting some work in :(

2. More coffee!! My best coffee of 2011 was probably at St Ali's in South Melbourne. Unfortunately, St Ali's is always packed and the service is always stretched (don't get me wrong, they're really good in there, just always rushed off their feet). So I'm on the search for more good coffee places, and I'll no doubt hit some bad ones around the place.

3. Running. So here it is. What are my goals for the New Year? Well first, as far as this blog is concerned, I'm not going to post about every running session. I've decided to break my training into 10 day blocks and I'll blog about my sessions rather than each individual workout.

The sessions will consist of 3 long runs, 2 of 10km and one longer. There will also be interval training, speed and strength training as well. OMG, this sounds serious! Actually, it is pretty much the same as what I'm doing now except each run is targeted at improvement, even if only a small bit.

And the reason for this is that I don't want to make a complete idiot of myself when I enter some runs this year, which I am going to do!

Puffing Billy Run: I became aware of this after joining an Australian Runners Forum, CoolRunning, and the more I think of it, the more it appeals to me. So I am going to work towards running this race which is about 13.2km and I'll be happy to complete it in anything under 80 minutes which is roughly 6 minutes per kilometre. It's on 6th May so I have 4 months to prepare for it and as I'm already running 10km, I should be able to handle it....I hope!

De Castella Run: this is one I saw a flyer for in 2011. Unfortunately, it was about 3 days before the race was due to take place. The Rob de Castella run is a 15km run for a cause which is quite important to me, mental health research. My wife has been a mental health nurse for about 15 years so this seems an appropriate run to aim for. The de Castella run is on 26th August, so there is plenty of time between Puffing Billy and this one for me to train and try to improve more!

The big goal for 2012 is to push my running out to 20km. Then I will consider a half marathon for 2013, and maybe even take on the marathon distance in the future.