Happy New Year! As I spent the past week looking back on 2014, it was kind of amazing to see just how fantastic the year was. There were difficulties for sure. I think that sometimes we can get lost in what we didn’t do that we forget all that we did get to accomplish. For 2014, I was definitely guilty of this. However, January 1st gives us a chance to hit the reset button and start all things new. So, let’s look at the goals I have for 2015. Shall we?

The first goal for 2015 is to set a PR in each race distance over the year. What are my current PR’s?

Marathon – 6:21:45 set at the 2014 Walt Disney World Marathon

Half Marathon – 2:43:25 set at the 2013 Rock n Roll Los Angeles Half Marathon

10K – 1:15:42 set at the 2013 Pasadena 10K

5K – 32:46 set at the 2012 Pasadena 5K

For the Marathon distance, I’ll be attempting to best my Walt Disney World Marathon at the Los Angeles Marathon on March 15th.

For the Half Marathon distance, my first attempt to PR will be at the Surf City USA Half Marathon on February 1st. It’s a flat, fast course that I set my second fastest half marathon time in 2014.

For my 10K goal race, I’ll attempt to set a new PR at the Cypress 10K on July 25th (assuming the date I found is correct). I ran this race back in 2012 with some friends. I signed up for the 10K, didn’t train for it at all, and ended up finishing the 5K instead. The course was very flat. It’s a 5K loop that the 10K racers complete twice. At the end of the race, I was kicking myself for not training and having this be my first 10K. It’s a great course to attempt a PR!

For the 5K distance, my first attempt to PR will be the Angels Baseball Foundation 5K on April 11th. I’ve run this course the last 3 years. They changed things up a little bit last year with a new course, cardboard stand ups of Angels players, two bands (on a 5K course!), and a finishers medal. Plus, you get to run the warning track of Angel Stadium. What’s not to like? I’m not sure if the timing of this race will work out well for me in the PR attempt. It is around one month after the Los Angeles Marathon.

Here are the races I’ve got on my mind to run in this year…

Inaugural Star Wars 10K

Inaugural Star Wars Half Marathon

Surf City USA Half Marathon

Los Angeles Marathon

Angels Baseball Foundation 5K

Rock n Roll San Diego Half Marathon

Cypress 10K

Awesome 80’s 5K – Pasadena

Rock n Roll Los Angeles Half Marathon

Avengers Super Heroes Half Marathon (if there is the rumored challenge with a 10K, I’ll probably do that)

That’s 10-11 races that I’m pretty confident I will do in 2015. You probably noticed that I didn’t include the Disneyland Half Marathon or Dumbo Double Dare. As of now, I’m leaning towards skipping the Disneyland Half Marathon. However, I keep going back and forth on this one. I have thought of doing the Disneyland 10K alone or the Half Marathon alone. But, I’m undecided as of now.

All of the above marathons have a lottery system for getting in. I don’t have the dates for the 2015 Bank of America Chicago Marathon yet. However, the Marine Corps Marathon and the TCS New York City Marathon lotteries are both before I run the Los Angeles Marathon. So, it’s a bit of a risk for me to even think about them before running my second full marathon. However, I plan on entering the lotteries for all of these marathons and see if I get in. If I don’t get in to any of them, I’ll take some time to consider trying to get in a charity slot for one of them. Not sure yet which one.

Next running goal for 2015 is to run 1,000 miles. If you include my New Year’s Eve morning run of 3 miles, I ran 583 miles in 2014. In 2013, I logged 636.47 miles. So, 2014 was a little of a down year. Given these totals, you may wonder why I chose 1,000. Well, I set a goal for myself that is well beyond what I’ve done before. I’m hopeful that by setting such a high goal for myself in 2015, I’ll find that ever elusive consistency. There’s a couple of ways of thinking about this goal.

• 19.23 miles per week
• 3 runs of 6.41 miles for 52 weeks
• 83.33 miles per month

When training for any distance race, we all know how the mileage differs from week to week. If I am able to get into a fall marathon, this distance seems doable. If not, we shall see. I haven’t fully worked this goal out.

My next goal is to be able to run an entire 5K without any walk breaks. As a Jeff Galloway run, walk, runner, I’ve gone away from trying to reach this goal. Back in 2012, my first year of testing the running waters out, I tried the couch to 5K plan a couple of times. The furthest I got was 2.5 miles on the treadmill. Well, I’m not exactly going from couch potato to 5K. So, I’ve got this plan in my head that won’t begin until after the Los Angeles Marathon in March. According to my plan, if I start two weeks after the Los Angeles Marathon, I should be up to a good attempt by the end of June. I’ll go into more details about this plan in March when I begin.

So, above is a picture of me on today, January 1, 2015 and a picture of me on my engagement day, May 3, 2008.

The last fitness goal is one I’ve talked about before…the Journey to 160. For 2015, my goal is to lose 96 lbs. That would be loosing 2 lbs per week for an entire 52 weeks. If I can average 2 lbs of weight loss for the year, I’ll meet that goal. The above graphic will start to make a regular appearance on my weekly recaps. As of today, I weigh 248.8lbs. So, by December 31, 2015, I hope to weight 152.8 lbs. That would put me approximately 7 lbs. past my Journey to 160 goal! To get completely real here. If I were to end this weighing 160 lbs., I’d call it a huge victory. So, the 96 lbs goal would be the icing on the cake. I don’t want to weigh less than 150 lbs. That would be pushing me towards an unhealthy weight on the other side of the spectrum.

I’ll be going back to some of the recipes that I saw in this book as well as another Rocco Dispirito book to help with cutting the calories. Many of the meals that I saw helped me loose over 30lbs. in the past. So, I’m hopeful that I can keep up the work I did back then to keep the pounds coming off for an entire year. As I go along, I’m sure that I’ll need to make adjustments. After all, plenty of folks gain weight while training for marathons. Also, some folks find that their run times slow down due to fewer calories in their diet. So, the goal to lose weight could hurt another goal in this list. Every month, I’m planning on assessing how the plan is working and make adjustments accordingly.

One of the changes I’m planning for this blog is taking the first Saturday of the month to talk about the goals I will be setting for that particular month. In that post, I will not only talk about the goals for the current month, but how I fared with the goals set in the previous month. For example, on the first Saturday of February, I’ll have an extra post for the week where I’ll talk about my goals for the month of February. I will also go over how I fared with the goals I mentioned the first Saturday of January. I’ll continue that for the course of the year. In those posts, I will not only talk about fitness goals, but other life goals that I’m pursuing for that particular month. After all, some goals we set are not ones that we will pursue for an entire year. Also, some goals for the year, require smaller steps to get there.

So, there you have it. My running and fitness goals for 2015. What are your goals for 2015?