Happy New Year to you all! I hope everyone had a great time celebrating with friends and family!

Now that 2010 is here, it's time for me to lay out my plans and resolutions for the year.

Goal 1: Continue to improve at tracking my mileage. This was something I only did so-so on in 2009 and I want to have an accurate look at my running in 2010.

Goal 2: Cook at least one meal a week using fresh and organic (when affordable) ingredients. This meals like real cooking, not making some mac n cheese or oatmeal. I plan to keep a record of each meal each week on the blog. I'm hoping that when the blog redesign comes I'll be able to have this challenge have it's own page, so all the recipes I try will live together in one place.

Goal 3: Run lots of races of all different lengths. I'm registered for the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler in April. I'm considering a St. Paddy's Day 8K and otherwise, my calendar is completely open. I'd like to have at lest one half marathon in the mix and maybe, maybe one full marathon.

Goal 4: Access overall, knee health and how injury prone I've been this year before making a final decision about the marathon. If I run any marathon, it will most likely be the Baltimore Marathon or the Marine Corp Marathon. Both are local and pretty feasible logistics wise. I will only be running a marathon if I'm in a good place health wise to do it. I don't want to risk an injury or more knee problems by pushing it to get to this distance.

Goal 5: Spend the off season focusing on cross training, with a specific focus on strength training. It's something that I normally neglect pretty badly, but I want to be stronger this year so I've got to increase the strength training. If nothing else, I want this to the focus of the next few months when I won't actually be in training for anything.

I'm looking forward to working on each of these goals this year and I hope that the end result will be a fun, injury free year of running.

Happy New Year!

I know it's a few days late, but I was busy putting together my goals for the year and my tentative race schedule. I'm sure you were all in such suspense waiting for them.

I'm not a big resolution maker, but the one resolution I'm making this year is to be more diligent about tracking my mileage. I've never had a good way to do it. Sometimes I remember to post an ORN at the bottom of blog entries, but sometimes I don't. I almost never tally at the end of the month. So my resolution is to be better at it. What's your best method for tracking your mileage? Do any of you actually use those training logs you can get at the book store or do you have some Web based thingy? Do tell.

As far as my race calendar goes, I want 2009 to be a year of middle to short distance races, focusing on having fun and improving my times. I want to diversify and try different distances. I've never actually raced a 10K or a 15K.

The only long race I'm doing is my marathon in March, which is kind of a left over from 2008 anyway. And to be quite honest, after missing almost 2.5 weeks of running because I've been sick, I may have to drop to the half anyway if I can't kick this thing and get back to training. I mean I'm hoping I don't have to do that. I'd love to run the full 26.2, so it's just something I'm going to be evaluating for the next few weeks.

And now for the calendar:
Valentine's Day 5K -- Feb. 14
St. Paddy's Day 8K -- March 15**
National Marathon -- March 21
Scope It Out 5K -- March 29**
Cherry Pit 10 Miler -- April 5
Annapolis Half Marathon -- May 31
Baltimore 10 Miler -- June (no set date)
Dawson’s Father’s Day 10K -- June 21*
Dog Days 8K -- August 2*
Virginia Beach Half Marathon -- September 6***
Metric Marathon -- October 4*
Under Armour Running Festival (still deciding the 5K or half marathon, this will be a decision made much closer to the event) -- October 10
Komen Race for the Cure 5K -- October near the end of the month
Down’s Park 5 Mile -- November 7*
Celtic Solstice Five Mile -- December
Anniversary Run 15K -- December 13*

* = These races are still very much up in the air and could be swapped for races that sound like more fun or work better in my schedule. Races with stars could be skipped if a big sporting event will conflict (this mainly pertains to fall races).

** = Would really love to do both of these races, just not sure how realistic it would be to race three weekends in a row, with one of them being a marathon. Perhaps could use one as part of taper and one as a recovery run if I run them just for fun.

*** = My mom and I did this race two years ago and wanted to do it again this year but both of us were nursing injuries. If she wanted to do this race again, I would.

So there you have it. My plan for 2009. I really just want my running to be fun. I've felt these past few weeks that I've been really having to force myself to get out and run (although that could be because I'm sick)and I hate that feeling. I want to run for fun and run races that don't require insane amounts of time for training.