2010-02-01

2010 Goal Progress

With January behind us, it's time to reflect on my progress toward meeting this year's new year's resolutions.

So far my weekly relationship goals have been met; I'm connecting with Katie, friends, family, mentors, and mentees (manatees?) as much as I set out to. My exercise and activity goals have largely been met, although my progress toward body composition goals isn't advancing as quickly as I would like. This may be related to my caloric intake, which is still too high.

Professionally things are moving along. Although I've only closed 25% of our seed round of financing, many additional parties have expressed interest and I am confident that we'll get it done by the end of March. In the meantime we're also progressing toward our Series A financing, which is exciting, and our first pilot installations have been a huge success. By now we have reduced CO2 emissions by only 0.01 tons, but it's a start!

One major goal checked off this month actually occurred on Saturday. I set a new year's resolution to run a 5k race in under 22:00. This time was chosen somewhat arbitrarily. I've only run one 5k race before, almost three years ago, and I came in at 24:28. 22:00 therefore seemed like a stretch goal worth training for.

I haven't done any 5k-specific training other than running a timed 5k a few times a year but I do run greater distances at lower speeds with more frequency. This seems to have helped as I ran a timed 5k last week as a warm-up for this weekend's race and I came in at 22:35. I'm about 15 pounds lighter than I was at my last race and I'm sure that helps!

Saturday Katie and I entered the Texas Med 5k, which kicked off at 8:30 AM. The race route wound its way through the [very flat] Texas Medical Center and proceeds went to the Harris County Hospital District. I had been very excited about this race as it would be my first race running barefoot. My confidence wavered, though, when we woke up to a rainy 35 degrees F! Was this really the environment in which I wanted to debut my barefoot running? Maybe I should wear shoes and save the Vibrams for the next race . . .

I steeled myself, though, donned my Swiss cold weather running gear, put on my Vibrams, and headed to the race. To make a long story short, I blew through my 22:00 goal and finished at 21:43, #46 of 1,000+ runners. #1 came in at 15:21 so I still have quite a ways to go if I want to place! It took a lot out of me as I dry heaved at the finish line, but it felt great to nail one of my 2010 goals so early. I'll run at least one more 5k this year and will see how much I can improve on that time--it would be great to get down into the teens!

Katie also came in significantly under her goal time so we celebrated together at the finish line. They had hot food, cold beer, and live blues for us at the after-race party, but we didn't stick around long--too cold!

Now, with one goal checked off, it's time to redouble efforts in pursuit of the others!

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