I am an occasionally dedicated, but mostly casual runner. I have traditionally had a bad habit of starting and stopping, then doing nothing for months on end, but since early 2011 I’ve found that RunKeeper does an excellent job of keeping me motivated: having a few mates able to see exactly what I’ve done and, more importantly, seeing what they are doing is exactly the incentive I need. There are other incentive structures, like StickK, or having a friend hold your money and not give it back unless you run. They are brilliant and I’m likely to use them again for short-term goals, but for me, it’s the public record and my friends’ encouragement that seem to keep me going in the long run.
Particularly keen members of the audience might want to see entries on my blog tagged ‘running’.
My 2012 running goals:
- Run in every month – I managed 7 out of 12 in 2011.
- Never go more than two weeks without a run – I had two breaks in 2011, one of them for six months!
- Run at least 104 times over the year (i.e. average 2+/week) – I ran 77 times in 2011.
- (Added 1 April 2012; no it’s not a joke) Run a total of 800km in 2012 – I ran 479km in 2011.
(Yes, I realise that goal #1 is a subset of goal #2, it’s just how I think)
That’s it. There are other things I’d like to do. I’d like to have a couple of 100+ km months. I’d like to do 10km in under 50 minutes. I’d love to do a half-marathon. But those are ambitions, not concrete goals. Besides … if I really do manage to knock out 15-20km per week for the next few months then by the time summer is here I’ll be absolutely raring for a half.
Charts (last updated 6 March 2012):
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