Goals for the New Year

It is that time of year when everyone sets New Year's Resolutions of things they want to change or improve in their lives for the upcoming year. My personal feeling on this is that, without goals, resolutions are as pie crust. Easily made, easily broken as Mary Poppins says.

So here are my goals - create your own drum roll!

(1) Lose 20 pounds. I am almost halfway there, having lost 9.2 pounds in the last 7 weeks. To achieve my goal I have dragged myself back to Weight Watchers, become a huge fan of Skinnytaste.com, and managed most of my workouts based on calorie burn. The goal of 20 pounds is realistic and attainable and I am working on it at a fairly slow rate so that later I can actually maintain the weight loss and not end up right back with my pants too tight. Why is the weight loss important? As a triathlete that is a lot of extra weight for me to drag behind me in the water, pedal with on the bike especially up those hills, and stress my knees with on the run. In addition, there is goal #2.

(2) Complete the Tough Mudder. In May of 2012 I will compete with a team of 5 other people to complete the Tough Mudder in Vermont. The race is a 10 mile obstacle course and my friend Pastor Josh thought it would be great fun to create a team from our church to compete. We were able to get 6 of us registered before the race was full. Silly me - I thought it was a 10K when I registered. Fortunately for me, the other 5 team members are all strong men who can carry my dead lifeless body out of the race course and return me to my mommy. To prepare I am working on goal #1 which gives me less weight to heave over the obstacles, I am increasing the intensity of my workouts by including some of the exercises recommended on the Tough Mudder website, and lastly I am trying to maintain my current level of endurance which is already pretty high given my triathlon training. For maintaining endurance, goal #3 becomes important.

(3) Ride 1,000 miles in 2012. I have done some calculations and I believe this to be an obtainable goal, especially if I purchase an indoor trainer. An average of 20 miles a week will more than get me to where I need to be, provided I can ride all winter long. I was inspired in this goal by my friend Sean who has a goal to *run* 1,000 miles in 2012. I was not inspired enough to run with him, however. And I think he is a little crazy... But nonetheless, I will ride a minimum of 1,000 miles in 2012 barring any serious injury in pursuit of goal #2. In addition, I will make some serious progress toward this goal with goal #4.

(4) Go on a European bike tour. I am planning this for the fall with Cori and some of my other tri-girls. We will average 27 miles a day for 6 days touring through three countries. It will be amazing! This is a longtime dream finally coming true for me. All three of the above goals will help prepare me for the rigor of this tour. The good news is that the 27 miles are spread out over an entire day with plenty of opportunity for sight seeing and enjoying being in Europe. And the calorie burn each day will afford me copious opportunities for sampling the local food and wine without compromising goal #1.

How about you? What are your goals for 2012? I would love to hear!!