In 2012, I broke up my goals into categories, because I figured it would be easier to complete each category instead of having a long list.  That seemed to work OK, but I think that perhaps a year-long focus was too much.  I may just set quarterly goals for 2013, to ensure that I’ll be able to focus on them completely instead of punting on a lot of goals without a hard deadline (which is what I did a bit of this year).

Running a marathon was probably my most successful goal throughout the year, and I think that is because I had a hard deadline (early june) and a concrete training plan for getting to where I needed to be (that mostly held up).  In 2013, I’ll try and make sure that all  of my goals have this component, instead of just a few of them.

1. The first health goal for the year will be to run a marathon.  This was the goal that I performed best on out of all the goals that I set for the past year, and as mentioned above, it was because I had a deadline and a plan.  A great learning experience for me while running, but also for looking back at the end of the year and trying to figure out why this one went through with flying colors and the others, well, didnt.
2. Be in Good shape for my honeymoon.  - This went ok, but not as good as I had hoped.  I was getting into pretty good shape training for the marathon, but before the honeymoon I basically took about 3 months off of my training.  That didnt work out so great.  Even then, I was still in pretty good shape.  I’m going to give myself a half pass for this.
3. I’d also like to eat more veggies.  Next summer, H and I are going to be getting veggies in our CSA along with our friut, and I’d like to make sure that none of that ends up in the compost heap.  In order to do this, I’ll need to eat more veggies next year, both as snacks and sides, as well as main dishes.  So, one of my goals for next year will be to eat vegetarian at dinner 3 times per week.
   Though I havent kept that great of track with this, I think this was a pass.  I have eaten veggie meals with H all year, and only eat meat when we go out to dinner or on some other rare occasion.  I cant honestly say that I feel lots different when I eat vegetarian vs when I dont, but it could be that the change in my body happened so long ago that I dont notice it anymore.  Either way, I do like eating less meat (mainly because it’s difficult to tell with meat what happens to it before you eat it) so I’ll probably keep this going for next year.  I’m going to call this a pass.

I did OK on my health goals, but not that great in terms of sticking to them for the whole year.  I was really great in Q1 and most of Q2, but didnt really keep it going for the long term.  There was one point where I had gone to the gym every day for more than 3 months, and there was another time where I didnt go to the gym at all in about 2 months.

Not exactly happy with the consistency, but I still did some great things this year.  My 5k time went down to a PR on thanksgiving, I finished a marathon, I did OK with my diet and didnt gain any weight (but unfortunately, didnt lose any either).  This list isnt all bad, but it does leave plenty of room to work for 2013.

Readers: What health goals do you have for 2013?  Are you trying to lose weight, workout more, or something else?  Do you have a running or other exercise goal (with a time) to beat, or are you just interested in picking up a new habit?

At the beginning of the year, I decided to run a marathon.  Up until that point, the longest race I had run ever in my life was a 5k, which is slightly over 3 miles.  Even counting the 5k races I’ve done, I think the marathon was my 3rd or 4th race ever.  While I dont consider myself to be out of shape, I never thought of myself as a runner.  I didnt like running all that much, and because of that, I never ran to stay in shape – I did other things like swam or went to the gym and lifted weights.  Needless to say, running a marathon was a huge goal.  I had never run anything close to that amount, in a race or not.   This goal was a huge  step up from anything that I’d ever done, and honestly I wasn’t sure how it was going to come out in the end.  I finished, but not in the time I would have liked.  Overall though, I’d still call this goal a success.

After the marathon, H and I focused most of our energy on the house and remodels, and have been moving along swimmingly.  Now that we are mostly through the woods (we dont sleep on a heroin mattress in the basement anymore, we have electricity and heat) and it’s almost thanksgiving, it’s time for our thanksgiving day run.  Every year we visit my aunt, uncles and cousins in Montana for turkey day.  Last year, we started a tradition to run a thanksgiving day race, called the turkey trot.  Everyone in my family did it, as well as H and most of the extended family.  I knew we were doing the race a few months in advance, and while I watched what I ate in the days leading up to the race, I didnt train one single lick for the race.  I attribute this to the length of the race – it’s just a 5k, basically 30 minutes of jogging – something that I could do without training, so why use my time training for that, if I can finish in a respectable time no matter what I do.  I think the marathon worked for a few reasons, and here they are:

1. Running a marathon was a huge  goal for me.  I’d never run anything that long in a race format (or other) in my life.  In fact, I’d never run half that distance, or even one quarter of that distance.  Knowing this, I developed a healthy fear of what would happen if I missed a training run.  I’d tell myself that if I missed one training run, I’d probably not be able to finish the whole race.
2. Small Steps were key – At the beginning of the training program, the runs that I had to do I knew that I could do already.  Most of the early training runs were distances that I had run.  I was easily able to put the marathon out of my mind everyday, and focus on my training run for that day.  Even though the goals were big, the chunks were manageable.
3. Big goals will set you up for even bigger goals.  Now that I know that I can run a marathon, I’m looking at other totally crazy goals that I can train for.  I could do the death race, an ultra marathon (something longer than 26 miles), the leadville 100  or there’s standard length triathlons, Half Iron mans and even full iron man triathlon.
4. You will develop positive habits – there’s nothing more fun than working towards something for months on end and finally being able to complete it.  Working hard for a long time at something with a distant goal will help you continue to set goals further out in the future, and keep you working harder for longer without the reward.  This would have helped me a lot – Training for 4 months was nice, but I wish I was still training for something right now.
5. Big Goals will help you get started – the beginning of my training was easy – it was fun training to run for a marathon, even if I was only doing 4 miles that day.  As I mentioned earlier, it’s hard to get excited for training for a 5k.  Where I live, there are 5k runs in the area basically every weekend, so it’s not like they are that special.  Marathons dont happen every weekend, and require a lot more planning.  Working backwards from race date, you can easily find a start date.
6. People around you will be super impressed.  In all seriousness, I didnt think the race was that big of a deal.  People that asked me what I was up to lately (answer being marathon training) they were all pretty shocked.  They know I’m not a runner or anything like that, so I got a lot of questions.  It was a great conversation starter.  Some simply said “I’d never put myself through that”.  I was happy to forget about those people, because they werent going to know what it felt like crossing the finish line anyhow.
7. Big goals are relative.  Running a marathon was a big goal for me, but perhaps it’s a small goal for you.  Maybe it’s way to big of a goal for you, perhaps a half marathon will better suit you.  Point is that no matter what your goal is and how others see it, as long as it’s a big goal for you, that will allow you the time to focus on the goal and eventually succeed.  Put the fear of what will happen if you dont train/practice/whatever into your head!

At the beginning of the year, I set a few goals related to workouts, the main one being that I’d run a marathon sometime during the year.  I track other goals like the number of times that I work out per month, but that doesnt really get much into the quality of the workout, or how much good I think it actually did.  The marathon was 4 months ago now, and I essentially stopped training for it about 5 months ago because we bought a house.  Stopping training was not really part of the marathon training plan, but it did happen.  After that was the wedding, the honeymoon and still more housework.  To make a long story short, I havent worked out with a regularity or intensity that I’ve been personally satisfied with since April, when I was marathon training.  I’ve had a tough time getting motivated to go to the gym in the morning, and am making tons of excuses about why I should do something else instead of run in the afternoon.

The odd thing is though, that for the better part of the last 6 weeks, I’ve been working out a fairly regular amount (In addition to walking/biking to work and for most of my errands).  Typically, I’ve been going to the gym 2-3 times per week, doing yoga 2x per week, and I’ve been running in the afternoons.  Even with all of that, I cant help but think that I’m not doing enough working out enough.  I’m not unhealthy or over weight.  I pass all of the routine tests and check ups that I have to go to for my health insurance to keep premiums low, but still, I’m not satisfied.

I’ve been trying to figure out why for the last few weeks, but the best that I can settle on is that I dont have a goal to focus on (H has suggested that she feels the same way).  Since there’s no goal, I’ve got nothing to work toward.  I’ve got nothing that is going to pry me out of bed in the morning like my “be in shape for the wedding” goal that I had.  I got married, so now it’s time to totally let myself go (kidding).  I finished my marathon (barely) so now I cant use that as motivation to get me off of the couch before (or after) dinner.  Of course, there’s the goal that served as the driver for the aforementioned goals, which is to stay healthy throughout life.  Unfortunately, that goal seems so, so far off.  I wont really start reaping the benefits of that for at least 10 years, if not more.  Though the marathon was 6 months away when I decided that I’d enter and train for it, I could at least see the day on a 12 month calendar!  Things that are very far into the future seem to be very difficult for me to take action on, as evidenced by me leaving more than 1k on the table over the last 18 months.

To this end, it looks like I’m going to need to find a new goal to make sure that I can drag my carcass out of bed in the morning and hit the gym.  The thing is, I’m not exactly sure what I’d like to do in this arena.  I did the warrior dash last year with a friend and had a great time, so something like that may come into play.  I did a triathlon last year as well.  Even though I had was I considered to be a relatively crappy race that I was not satisfied with it was still fun.  The race was one of the “sprint” tris, so perhaps a longer version could be fun, but that would almost require a bike more equipped for the race (and that has not been involved in a few crashes).  I think that would be something that would make sure that I did better (and probably enjoy the race more), but I’m not sure I’m ready to spend the money.

As I sit here and write this, I’m continuing to fight the urge to put this off.  The temperatures are dropping outside, which will make running more difficult for me (I hate running inside).  There arent that many events in wyoming in the winter, which would require travel, and obviously raise the cost.  The holidays are coming up, and I am not good at working out while I’m on the road.  As of now, I’m still looking and hopefully I can impulsively pull the trigger on a race of some sort sometime soon.  Here are a few I’m considering at this point:

• Spartan Race:  I’m seriously considering this, and it will most likely be the one I end up signing up for.  It is an expensive race, but I think it would be a lot of fun.  I’ve even duped a college buddy into signing up as well!

Unfortunately, that’s all for right now.  Many of the races are in 2013 (what a great reason to put off working out!) and dont have dates finalized quite yet.  Unfortunate for sure, but its what I’ve got to deal with.

Readers: do you ever have issues with motivation like this?  What have you used to overcome them?  

This is a guest post from Julian who blogs over at frugaal.com. He writes about a range of topics and is particularly interested in the ways in which sustainability intersects with personal finance.

I sit here to write this article as someone who’s always looked for ways to live a healthier and cheaper life and has turned to running and cycling as two tactics to try and put these strategies into action. I’m not someone who’s always been incredibly athletic, or always keen to get up at 6am to
go for a run in the rain, or someone who’s resolutely avoided cars or public transport in favor of cycling at every possible occasion to save money at the gas pump. So in many senses, I’m not at all well positioned to be telling others how to do more running and cycling – or, more generally, and more importantly, how to live a healthier, greener, and cheaper life altogether.

But I feel my experiences of running and cycling over the past five or so years of my life are typical of many people in that I’ve found it hard to keep up the good habits for any prolonged period of time, even if part of me wanted to. And for that reason – given that, now, after a long period of trying and giving up I do finally feel that cycling and running are much more embedded into the day-to-day routines of my life – I feel I am in a position to share some of my experiences and offer some advice with the hope of at least letting others know they’re not alone.

Setbacks, Comebacks, and Motivation

About five years ago I bought my first pair of proper running shoes with the intention of making it a new hobby of mine. But I always found it hard to find that ‘get up and go’ feeling for more than a few weeks at a time and, ultimately, that was why I would always give up and stop going for runs
after a few weeks of kick starting a new routine. So what was stopping me? Primarily I found I never really enjoyed running. I would find it boring; I found the process of going out, coming back and getting a shower and settling back down into whatever task I was doing was just too much fuss
and bother. So time and time again I would have a burst of enthusiasm that was then followed by a crushing sense of apathy about the whole process of ‘getting fit’. Also, I found the routine-element hard. Sometimes I would just forget to go for a week or two and that alone would be enough for me to stop and break the routine rather than kick start it again.

A year ago, however, I decided to take a different approach. I was fed up with all the stop/starting so decided to find a different way to get into an at least fairly consistent exercise routine. Firstly I focussed on making the whole process more enjoyable: I find running for anything more than about 50 minutes mind-numbingly boring, so now I only go on sub-40 minute runs. I also always take my iPod with me which was something – for some reason – I didn’t do before hand, and I now also keep track of my times. Not only does keeping a log of my times (I generally run the same or similar routes each time) provide a measurable way of increasing the intensity of the exercise over time without increasing the amount of time it takes me, it also adds some fun as it means I am able to see how I am getting on. Another big problem I had was getting into a consistent routine of going running and sticking to it. So I have addressed this by saying I will go for three runs a week. I know other people do a lot more, and I’m sure people would say I could do more. But the point of setting it at three is that I know it’s a realistic target, which means I actually feel guilty when I don’t achieve it. And that sense of guilt means I am eager to redeem myself and meet the target the following week.

As far as cycling goes, I’ve always owned a bicycle during the different stages of my life, but after passing my driving test and buying a car all the short journeys that I use to cycle were replaced with a car journey. I’ve never really used bicycling as a form of exercise either, and I still don’t now really, simply because for the time being at least I find running to be a quicker and easier form of exercise for me to fit around my life. However, since selling my car to get rid of the costs of having it whilst I was at college, I found I got by just fine without a car. For longer journeys, I’ll get a lift or use public transport, but having no car again has made me realise two things. Firstly, that cycling short journeys (say less than 5 miles) isn’t significantly quicker in a car, and can even take the same amount of time or even longer if you’re driving in a lot of congestion. And secondly, that cycling somewhere is much more satisfying than driving it. Yes, I know that’s an easy thing to say, and I won’t bang on about the
money-saving and environment-saving benefits of cycling, but returning home from work knowing you’ve cycled it makes the feeling of returning home from work that little bit more rewarding, for example, and cycling is also a great way to kill two birds with one stone if you are finding it hard to fit exercise into your life.

So…

The overarching lesson and advice from my personal anecdotes is, therefore, not to force cycling, running or any other form of exercise into your life, but rather to find a way to fit it into your life.  Because if you’re like most of us who don’t have a huge urge to replace every car journey with the
bicycle, or don’t have the time or the energy to go for a run at 6am every morning, then a sudden and intense change of exercise routine will soon become anything but a routine. In other words, you’ll become demoralised, apathetic, and give up very quickly. Sure, by adapting things to your
lifestyle in a moderate and sensible way you might not be pushing your body to the limit, and you might not be saving every last penny you can on gas, but you’ll achieve a compromise that you can stick with, and that’s surely better than nothing.

Readers: do you get around mostly by cycling?  Do you treat it as exercise when you keep track or do you just treat it as a normal, everyday activity?