2022 Running goals

Normally, I don’t have New Year’s resolutions. In my mind, they are just a bunch of ideas that cause unnecessary stress because I’m not going to meet the goals. Given that I got properly into running in 2021, I did make an exception for the current year. My idea was to at least run one 10k per month, and run one half-marathon over the whole year.

Twelve times 10k

This year, I ran at least one 10k per month. In November, I was nervous about meeting the goal, as I had shin splints at the beginning of the month. Luckily, that improved a lot during the second half. In total, over 2022 I so far have run 21 times when the distance was 10k or longer.

Two times 21.1k

Next, I also wanted to run my first-ever half-marathon during my sabbatical. This only happened in the very last week of the sabbatical, because of illness in our family (and travelling a lot). Being out for a week or longer has a pretty negative effect on the training schedule. After I ran my half-marathon in August, I stopped running for a few weeks, again due to being sick.

I’m really proud of this effort. I was hoping to finish it in less than 2 hours, and ended up even being able to cut that running time down to 1:54:21.

I had also hoped to run a half-marathon race in 2022, but that didn’t work out. For both races I looked into, events in the time leading up to it prevented me from participating and not risking an injury.

So, when the end of the year came near, I decided I wanted to add another half-marathon to the mix. This time, rather than focusing on speed, I wanted to give myself an elevation challenge. My first half was on near the beach, so my elevation gain was fairly low (only 63 m). In the second half-marathon, I did 284 m of elevation.

Other higlights

Running has become a big part of my life, and some of my 2022 highlights included running. Next to meeting the two goals I mentioned above, here are a few more runs that I thoroughly loved.

• I would’ve not guessed this at all in the beginning of the year, but after noticing the improvement in my pace, I thought it would be amazing to run a 10k in less than 50 minutes (or less than 5 minutes per km). In November, I started a 12k run and noticed I was feeling great. I ended up running the first 10k of that run in 48:10. I broke several records that day.
• While I didn’t do a half-marathon race, I had loads of fun with a 10k race we did in Ceres with the whole family. Kim and I ran, and Mila joined us in the running pram. She loved the interactions with all the runners around her.
• When I was in NYC in September, I didn’t have a lot of time for sightseeing. I decided that doing an early run would probably be a good way to see a lot in a short amount of time. Running across both the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges was wonderful.