I have never really been one to set serious New Year’s resolutions. In my family, the belief is that if you want to change something about yourself or achieve some goal, you shouldn’t be a ‘Monday starter’, in reference to the fact that we would all give ourselves the weekend to bask in our old habits and try to convince ourselves and everyone around us that we would start working on our goals on Monday (I still wasn’t very good with this, but it was the mindset nonetheless). The belief system that we had was that you should start right away. No matter what period of the week, month, or year it is.
That being said, there is something about the New Year that I have found to be quite inspirational as I get older. The other night, I sat down to my computer and took stock of the ways in which I could change my life for the better in 2025. I came up with a variety of perceived personal issues that I could attempt to solve: the fact that I spend way too little time in the gym, the fact that my diet is unequivocally fucked up, or the fact that I have virtually no money saved, even after landing a job that pays reasonably well, considering that I have no college degree as of yet. The goal to change these things is reasonable, but I didn’t have a way to tie them all together until I began to reflect on my high school cross-country career.
In my high school days, while I was a three-season athlete, I did not use that word to describe myself. I was first and foremost a musician, and along with that came being a student and a boyfriend at the time. Never did I really consider myself to be an athlete, even though I ran cross-country in the fall, swam in the winter, and ran track / played volleyball in the spring. I just thought of myself as someone who played sports (I understand that an athlete is someone who plays sports, but the difference between the two concepts is significant. One is just an activity, while the other is an identity.)
That being said, I still enjoyed when I achieved certain accomplishments in the sports that I played. I enjoyed being the varsity men’s swimming captain in my junior and senior year. I also enjoyed in 2018 when I would run my fastest 5k to date. My time was 21:47. This time is nothing incredible or impressive in the world of high school cross-country, but it was my personal record nonetheless, and I had pride in it.
There were a group of guys on my team who would always talk about their aspirations of breaking twenty. For the uninitiated, this means completing a 5k in 19:59 or lower. I also had this goal, but it felt out of reach for me at the time. As I reflected on this in 2024 and took stock of where I’ve been since, I decided to set an overarching Ney Year’s resolution to finally break twenty myself.
Of course, this is going to be an uphill battle. Since 2018, I’ve put on an estimated 75 pounds and my 5k time has suffered greatly. In November 2024, I ran in the Thanksgiving Turkey Trot with my partner, and I finished at a personally depressing 38:14.
To be fair, I did virtually no training in preparation for that race and I did end up walking for a couple of minutes, so I do believe that my actual full-effort 5k time is somewhere in the low-thirties. That’s still at a minimum a whopping 10-minute time difference that I want to try to make up for by the end of the year.
I would be lying if I said that this goal was uniformly aimed at making me a faster runner and nothing else. Obviously in order to run faster I need to lose weight and rein in my diet. I will also need to incorporate regular intense exercise into my daily routine. These are all three habits that I have tried and failed to make apart of my life over the past four years, so I am reasonably skeptical of my ability to keep up this time around. That said, I am actively trying to build systems and safeguards that will help me to reach this goal. I also hope that regularly keeping up with this blog (and maybe future vlog?) will help to keep me on track.
In the realm of food and diet, I am going to adopt a schedule of intermittent fasting where I start eating at 12:00 pm and stop eating around 8:00 pm. Outside of that time range, I am not allowing myself to consume anything above 10 calories (I gave myself the 10 calorie exception because sometimes I like to have an energy drink in the morning and they range from 0-10kcal). Also, within my eating window, I am going to try to eat 80% whole foods and 20% processed foods. Sometimes I try to go balls to the walls on certain goals (eating exclusively whole foods, for example) and when I inevitably fail or burn out, I quit altogether. The 80/20 mindset is supposed to function as a safeguard to that tendency.
In the realm of exercise, I have a loose schedule that focuses mainly on cardiovascular exercises like running and biking. However, I also want to incorporate some cross training days where I will do weight training in the gym. I am going to adopt a full-body routine and complete this routine three times a week. A couple of days ago, I ended up spraining my ankle (article to come on this in the coming week) which changes my training plan a bit, but there is still a plan, and that is what matters.
As far as races that I currently have scheduled, I have a 5k at the end of January and a 10k in the beginning of April. I want to try and sign up for a race probably once every three months to gauge my time progression and keep myself competitive. I am also considering getting a private running coach, but I don’t want to get started with that until I officially break back into the twenties as it will be easier to be coached if I am conditioned.
I expect to update this blog at the end of every week as well as at the end of every month with updates and thoughts on how the process is going.