RoyalDryness

I need to take that perspective sometimes too. Instead of focusing being better than others, just being the best me I can at the moment.

You are killing it...as usual.

Are you sure it's not from the imaginary dog that was going to the bathroom on your neighbors lawn a few years ago?

Great job re-framing mid-race to being thankful for what you could do and taking joy in it. That's a lesson that I need to learn more often.

Good luck with training!

That's a nice bit of training there.

Congrats on the PR and great 2017!

Have any of the couples from The Bachelor/ette actually worked out?

Clear sidewalks are a godsend for pre-dawn running.

Seems like 2017 was a good year for you, hope 2018 is even better!

I'm glad I could provide someone inspiration! Good luck on your goals. I think you can do it.

This is why you are the de-facto president here, always bringing the positive wisdom.

That is a truly amazing year!

It's a weird nickname that friends gave me a long time ago because of something I don't like to talk about anymore.

I’m pretty sure at some point I wrote down my 2017 goals, but who knows where they are or what they were. I can probably guess, whatever they were, I didn’t meet them. So that leaves me with the new year. Should I make new goals? Should I say, “screw it, you’re not going to meet them anyway,” to spare myself the shame of falling short 363 days from now? Should I make some goals that are kind of easy so that I can claim victory? Should one of my goals, if I do indeed make goals for 2018, be to stop relying on the crutch of a series of rhetorical questions in my writing? Well, since I already started I might as well put some goals down in writing. You know, for accountability and whatnot. So here are my 2018 goals from most attainable to literally (and I mean literally in the literal sense of what literally meant until teen girls used it incorrectly so frequently it got an addition meaning that is the complete opposite of the first) impossible. Still be a runner at the end of 2018. If you run you’re a runner, so this should be fairly easy. I mean, even if I lost a leg in a shark attack I could get one of those springy prosthetics and still run. Though that would probably mean no more swimming in the ocean. But swimming in the ocean isn’t a goal so it’s not a problem. Set an age group PR in the 10k. This one requires only covering all 10 kilometers during a 10k race as I have not run a 10k in 5 years therefore any 10k finish would be, by default a 10k PR for my 30s. I have one on the calendar for March so that should hopefully happen. Don’t buy running shoes without trying them on first. “What are you, some kind of moron?” I can hear you saying. I’m many things, one of them is frugal about running shoes so when a pair is on sale online sometimes I buy them even if I haven’t actually ever worn that particular model of shoe. “They let you return them if they aren’t right,” I tell myself. So how many pairs of shoes have I returned? One, and it was because they were both right shoes. Not sure how that happened, but they were very nice about it. Run 100 miles in each of the 12 months of 2018. There was a time in my running life where this would have been a given. Now, with kids and a job and a wife and a not-20 something year old body, that’s not as easy. But it’s not that hard either, so long as I stay relatively healthy. Get rid of this ugly, ugly layer of squishy stuff that has engulfed most of my body in the last few years. I’m not putting a number on it, but I need to shed some pounds which will make the previous goal easier. And will be more achievable if I also meet the next goal. Eat more whole food, drink less whole six packs. I usually (usually) don’t drink a whole six pack in a day. But they don’t last as long as they should. Too many drinks in the evening means harder to get up early, which means not running before work, which means not feeling as good all day, which means “yeah I’ll have a donut,” which means, “yeah I’ll have another donut,” and now you get more of the squishy stuff. The whole food part is pretty self-explanatory. Run a marathon in 2018. This shouldn’t be that hard to achieve in theory. But it’s tougher than it seems with the kids and wife and job and junk food and beer and squishy stuff. Like the last few goals, the better I do on the others, the more likely this becomes. Run 2018 miles in 2018. Seems fun, right? If I train for a marathon that will up my mileage which might make this possible. And 3 days in I’m only a 5.4 miles behind. I could make that up with just an extra .0149171270718232044199 miles per day for the rest of the year. Set a half marathon PR in 2018. My PR is 1:37:14. What puts this so far down on the list of “possible?” As a baseline my last half marathon would have allowed that version of me to have finished, got some post-race food, showered, changed, taken a nap, eaten again, binged the second season of Stranger Things, learned to knit, taken a Caribbean cruise, then walked back to the finish line to cheer me in. Nothing is impossible, but this…it’s pretty close. Celebrate my 29th birthday. “Why is that the last one?” you ask. “Celebrating a birthday isn’t hard at all.” Well, I’m currently 34. Told you it would be literally (like literally, literally) impossible. *I'm never going to stop doing the rhetorical questions thing. It's too ingrained in me. Literally.