2012 Goals

The New Year is upon us! Which means a new year of running goals.

Having been able to run everyday this week, on a treadmill however, without any increased pain in either my feet or my hips, my mood has significantly increased. That being the case, I began seriously considering what my goals are for this year. This is what I have so far.

1) Run 2000 Miles -166 miles a month, 5.5 miles a day
2) Complete Hat Run with Dave and Wayne without hurting myself.
3) Break 4:30 at Blues Cruise in October
4) Run the PA section of the Appalachian Trail this summer
5) Get one guy from my Mantrip crew to sign up and complete an Ultra this year.

Running 2000 miles will be difficult. Given that I'm injured right now I'll be starting the year in a hole but hopefully I'll be able to shake this and get back to covering some serious ground very soon.

Running with Dave and Wayne at HAT is seriously in jeopardy right now. I'm certain that I could train through the pain but I'm sick of doing that. I need to be very careful over the next 2 months to make sure I can continue training without making my hip and feet any worse. I really really want to run with these guys though. I've coached them for the last four years and being able to run their first race with them would be such a great experience. Worse case scenario I'll just crew for them but I'd sure love to run it instead.

Blue Cruise! Man I want to run well at that race next year. Coming within 9 seconds of breaking 4:30 last year was great and at the same time 4:29 would have been so much cooler. This year I want to crush my PR there. I just like the race a lot. Not crazy about the swag but the race itself is great. It's almost 100% single track. That's hard to find. Maybe this year Justin Braley won't bail and we can go out to the race together.

Ok, Appalachian Trail run. I think that running the trail in it's entirety is one of the great accomplishments any trail runner would love to completed. While I plan on attempting that for myself somewhere around 2016 I figured I could start getting to know the trail this summer. This plan still has a lot of logistical problems but hopefully it'll happen. I'm thinking that maybe myself, Chris Palladino, and a few BCRR guys could run the PA section with one of our friends crewing for us. It shouldn't take more than 5 days and would be a lot of fun I think.

Getting someone from Mantrip to run an Ultra this year might be tough. Justin is probably the most likely  of them all but there's hope for Charlie and Wade as well. Fogarty signed up for one.....but that didn't work out. All of these guys have been very supportive of me and my transition into ultrarunning and I would love to do the same for them. Last year a few of us got to run down a mountain trail together and it was just fantastic. None of them consider themselves runners at this point but the thought of possibly getting them all into the sport so that we could all travel around and race together.......that just sounds so awesome. We'll see!