The start of a new year usually gives us an opportunity to reflect on our goals and aspirations. New Year’s Resolutions have mixed reviews though. Setting goals and achieving them are separate things. Our 2022 Grambassadors share some of their New Year’s Resolutions and their thoughts.
If you are looking to set a New Year’s Resolution to help build some mileage in the new year, consider taking the KP Challenge. Three great local races throughout the spring and summer and a chance to get a guaranteed entry into the 2023 Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon. All proceeds from the KP Challenge races benefit the Young Athletes Foundation, Grandma’s Marathon’s charity that has donated more than $1.4 million to the community’s youth and recreational athletic organizations through our shoe program, grants, scholarships, and free youth events.
Carrie Alajoki– A New Year’s Resolution is an opportunity to set and achieve a goal. Many people decide this is the chance to start doing something or stop doing something. Resolutions often include broad goals like exercise more, lose weight, save money, or sleep more hours at night. Sometimes the goals are more specific like exercise five days a week, lose 50 pounds, or stop smoking. For us runners, we might pick a certain race, distance, or time we are trying to beat. Too often, the New Year’s resolution is a large goal that can be challenging to accomplish. If you can’t run five miles on December 31st, you won’t wake up on January 1st being able to sail through those five miles. Weight loss, smoking cessation, better diets – these are all things that can be accomplished – but if they were easy to do, we wouldn’t need a New Year’s resolution to accomplish them.
For me, New Year’s is a chance to refresh my goals and look at challenges that get in my way. If I had to pick the big goal for 2022, it would be to PR my half marathon time. The risk of saying my New Year’s resolution is to PR my time means I either accomplished my goal or I failed. If I have a great half marathon but am one minute short of a PR, did I fail? Setting the goal to PR takes many other steps to get there. Training, stretching, nutrition, etc. It is important to set yourself up for success. It’s no lie, I want to PR my half marathon – but this is not my resolution. My 2022 resolution is to plan more. Simple as that. I do better when I look at the week ahead and plan my workouts and nutrition. Like most of you, we are a busy family. Always on the go. I do better when I plan. This takes work. Grocery shopping, meal prepping, packing lunches, and having a gym bag always ready to go. Even though planning helps me stay on track towards my goals, it is important not to confuse planning for inflexibility. There will be weeks I don’t make every work out. There will be days I don’t eat my planned lunch. And that is ok. But with planning, I am more likely to reach that bigger goal.
Your life will never really be less busy. Don’t wait until the “right time” to work on your goals. Start now. But be realistic. If you goal is to lose weight in 2022, make your New Year’s resolution something that will help get you there. Don’t get hung up on unrealistic numbers. Make small changes that add up to big changes. So, stop smoking, lose the weight, exercise more – but pick a resolution that will help get you there!
Shawn Jarvis- I used to make resolutions every year on New Year’s Day and like many of us, I would typically fail within a month or so. Out of frustration, I tried setting intentions and goals that are realistic and achievable with a little reach. After setting mine, I work hard to revisit and evaluate my progress throughout the year.
- Participate and complete 3 Half Marathons and 2 Ten Milers. I’m already registered for two – Great Grandma’s Half Marathon Challenge and G’Eau Big Half Marathon & 5K
- Increase my annual running mileage over 2021 (592 miles as of 12/28)
- Increase my Yoga practice (1 class/wk or 2 classes/mo) and continue focusing regaining strength
- Read a minimum of 6 books (3 Personal Growth topics and 3 Fiction)
- Return to playing my Saxophone at least once a week
Michelle Ziebarth – My new years resolution is to find more opportunities to be brave. Anyone who knows me knows I do not like to step outside of my comfort zone and this year I want to push myself more to “get comfortable in the uncomfortable”. For my running this means pushing my pace a little bit and trying out some new training ideas. I am very much a slow and steady wins the race and never have a goal time just a finish kind of person and I am ready to start pushing myself a little more.
Darius Moore– Quality for the Boston Marathon at Grandma’s! I need 3:00 to get in.
Caitlin Wachsmuth- To practice more mindfulness and gratitude. I caught myself going through the motions in 2021 and I want to do things with more intention in 2022.
