Running goals for 2021

This year a few of my 52s relate to my running, specifically:

  • Set a running goal
  • Implement a running plan
  • Implement a strength-building plan (to help improve my technique and reduce injuries)

I mean, 2020 wasn’t all bad, and I did manage to get back to consistent walking. I’m just really looking forward to building on that during 2021.

I wrote about the virtual event I started in September to run around Australia – here’s a video showing my progress so far! I’m almost at Coffs Harbour!

Run Down Under: September – December 2020

Set a running goal

This year my goal is to run a 10km run non-stop again.

I spent the better part of 2020 injured or recovering from my achilles strain, so my fitness is gone. I’m rebuilding and slowly increasing my runs, but I haven’t been consistent at all.

At this point I haven’t run for more than 5mins straight in a year. My longest was a 5min run, 3min walk, 5min run.

Achieving this goal will be dependent on the next two.

Implement a running plan

I’ve restarted the Couch to 10k training app by Zenlabs. The way the app works is you have three runs a week and slowly build your endurance. The 10k app follows the training program for the 5k, then improves upon that to the 10k.

One of the girls in my run club followed this plan with great success, and she’s currently working her way towards a half marathon. Such a great result!

I’ve tried to follow the plan before, but I just didn’t have the right mindset. I’d do a session here and there, and I think it took me three weeks just to complete Week 1. Not great.

To get more serious about it, I’ve begun to schedule my training sessions in advance using my new planner. You can see the 10k stickers in my week overview below.

Implement a strength-building plan

I train with a personal trainer once a month at the gym as a bit of a check-in. Typically I have a great session with her, and then…..nothing. I’m great at getting to the gym, but actually doing a strength session, not so good at. I’m notorious for doing cardio and then going home again.

So, again this year I’m getting more serious about it. The plan is still to meet with my personal trainer once a month (I don’t really have the funds spare to make it more often). However, during that session we’ll do a workout but also plan out the workouts for the next month. They’ll go into my planner and scheduled in as well, much like the 10k sessions (you can see the “workout” stickers in the week overview above).

The workouts themselves are mounted just inside the cover of the planner so that I can easily refer to the details, but also swap them out each month.

In addition to that I’m also restarting the 30 day plank challenge to build my core strength. There’s a million versions of the plank challenge on the internet, but here’s one from brightside.me:

My trainer has given me the challenge to do them all as side planks so that I’m not using my shoulders instead of my core. So whatever the time is for the day, I have to do half on one side and half on the other i.e. Day 1 would be 10 seconds on my left side and 10 seconds on my right.

I need to put this one in my planner too, but I’ll likely also look for an iphone app to help track it.

Let me know your thoughts!