New Personal Goals

It feels awesome to set a goal and achieve it... really! I have totally changed the way I think about setting short term goals since finishing my marathon in under 5 hours. Before my last race, I was convinced that there was no way I could improve my marathon time by almost 2 hours. It just seemed like too big of a goal at times and I almost considered settling for "anytime under my last marathon time" as the goal instead. However, I figured that if I didn't try to do it, I'd never know. Therefore, I tried and (to my surprise) I succeeded. At this point, anything seems possible.

Since my race, I've been thinking about my new goals and what I want (really want) to achieve next. My "big picture" goal is to be happy; isn't that everybody's goal? I know that in order to be happy, I need to focus on the things that make me happy. Things that make me happy are (in order) my family, running, coding, drumming, and everything outdoors. Some of the happiest memories I have from my early years with Jennifer were when we had no money, no TV, no internet, a $100 thrown together beaten down drum set, a roof over our heads, and each other. I want to teach my girls that happiness is not a material thing, and I plan to do that by being my own student. This new hobby of mine (ie. running) has taught me that the word comfortable is not analogous to happy. By this I mean that sweating, cramping, cringing in pain, and sore muscles wind up giving me long-term happiness in the end. Watching TV, eating crap food, and lounging around in the air conditioning (ie. being comfortable) does not give me long term happiness; rather it's a quick fix to immediate satisfaction and ends up making me feel like crap at the end of the day. I know this because it's more or less how I've lived my life the last few years.

My new plan is to focus on eliminating all the things that make me unhappy. For example, one thing that makes me unhappy is that I'm no longer able to perform basic physical tasks that my body was intended to perform. Right now, I can run for 5 hours strait with proper fuel and hydration. However, I can only do about 3 (good-form) chin-ups, 1 (good-form) shoulder width pull-up, 20 (good-form) push-ups, and 100 (good-form) sit-ups before needing a break. When I was 19, I could do all of these things until the cows came home, but I've since lost this ability. I have decided that I'm going to fix this problem. :)

My new short term goals are as follows:

• Do the 100 push ups challenge: http://hundredpushups.com
• Do at least 1 wide angle (> shoulder width apart) pull up by next month
• Run Hocking Hills Indian Run 60k trail race in September and simply finish
• I've already signed up for it
  
• Run Columbus Marathon in October and finish in 4.5 hours or less
  
• I've already signed up for this too

Something I'd like to start looking into next spring is rock climbing. However, the fact that I struggle to pull my 200 lbs body up with my arms leads me to believe that I have a little bit of work to do before looking into that. :) I've accepted the fact that my weight is here to stay, so I'm going to offset this with physical strength.

So these are my goals. I've posted them for all to see in hopes that it helps me commit to these goals (like my 5 hour marathon goal post). When you see me, ask me how I'm doing on them, as I may need kicked from time to time. :)