21 - 2023 Reflection and 2024 Intentions for Running and Fitness

It’s a new year!! Bless.

I LOVE the new year. I love the sense of renewal it brings. I love that it follows the holidays, which feel so warm and homey and familiar. When it comes to setting resolutions, I don’t think you really need to wait for some specific calendar day to reflect and think about change. Any time is as good as any other to do that baselining, but January gives an awfully convenient reason to do it. It’s the start of a new year! 

Early last year I started the practice of outlining my resolutions for the coming year. Through several sessions sitting with my journal, I listed out all the things I thought I wanted to do in the year, detailed what I enjoyed about those things/what they did for me, and spelled out what it would look like to work those things into my lifestyle and day-to-day. That all gave me a lot of comfort and security—knowing what I was doing and why, as well as having the sense to know when things weren’t serving me well. 

I want to bring that intentionality to my running and fitness. In this post, I’d like to look back at my running through 2023 to celebrate all the little wins and acknowledge any challenges and then set some intentions for 2024.

2023 Reflection

First, a brain dump of all the lil wins:

• Las Vegas Rock n Roll Half Marathon (1:36:10, PR)
• Running around Mammoth Lakes while friends went skiing
• San Diego Beach and Bay Half Marathon with coworker friends (tune-up, 1:40:40)
• Eugene Marathon (3:22:45, PR) 
• Starting strength training in prep for Eugene
• Getting a gym membership
• Starting this blog!!
• First 70+ mile training week
• Santa Clarita Half Marathon (1:36:00, PR)
• California International Marathon (3:38:13)
• 50k in Vegas

Not an exhaustive list, but just the top-of-mind things right now. And man, there’s a lot of goodies in there. 5 races, 3 PR’s. Strava says I covered 1700 miles, which is the most I’ve done in a year! And yet I felt through the year that I was never running enough. 

2023 felt rocky, and the only races I really felt secure going into were the ones early in the year until April. After that was a bout of injury and then never feeling like I could back on my feet and get consistent with running. I remember the Santa Clarita Half, CIM, and my Vegas 50k all felt like dice rolls where the result was up to chance. 

All things considered, I had a good year. In all of those major runs I felt like I got the best possible result given the circumstances, but going into 2024, I know I want more. More than what has felt like a string of lucky runs and chance results.

2024 Intentions and Race Planning

I feel like I’m going into this year wide- and bright-eyed and with firm resolve. There’s a whole year of training and races ahead of me, and even now my mind is racing to find the outer limits of all this potential. I don’t want to set discrete goals, but rather intentions or attitudes that I want to develop around running.

First, I want to be more consistent in my running. I went into 2023 with this in mind as well, but I learned through the year that life’s surprises have immense capacity to distract me from running or even leave me too thin—mentally, spiritually—to want to run. In 2024, consistency has two requisites: 1) the resolve to run and 2) the resilience to handle or bounce back quickly from those surprises that are out of my control. Mixed in there is also a good bit of maintaining boundaries better. 

Second, I want to love every bit of the running. A lot of the time I do! And don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying I need to gaslight myself or feed some delusion that every run should feel beautiful and magical. Ask me any day of the week and I’ll tell you I love running. But I do notice sometimes that happiness, joy, fulfillment, whatever comes after the fact, like in retrospect. After the deed is done. After the miles are logged. It’s true some days I’ll just have to drag myself out the door, but I want most days to be fueled by eagerness and excitement! Not an overly rigid adherence to some numbers on the calendar. Last year I had been so regimented and focused on the function of running that fun became more of an afterthought and a happy consequence of the running. This year, fun and love and joy will be my primary driving force! 

Third, I want to be more social with my running. I run nearly all my runs solo. And that’s worked for me so far! But I do notice I get a boost of energy and motivation when I’m around other runners. In the past, I always prioritized my own performance, and that led me to put any interest in run clubs and community aside. My concern was that paces or workouts set by the run club or group would impact my own progress. I know now that I can hold space for my needs within a social setting, or just be willing to be flexible. 

Fourth (and kind of a branch-off from above), I want to continue to grow my own community in running. I love introducing people to running and helping them navigate their running journey. I’ve had a lot of friends ask me for training plan advice or shoe recommendations or injury prevention techniques. And I’ve had a lot of success rallying different groups to train for their first races! I want to do more of that. Part of that is also doing more blogging and maybe expanding my platform. Not that I want to be some brand rep or influencer, but I think I want to provide different types of resources beyond this blog. I’ve also just kept this blog project pretty low-key for the past year, so I might look into plugging it more. 

Fifth, I want to run more while traveling. Last year I visited Chicago twice and New York and New Jersey and Austin. I think I only ran in Austin once, and that was a struggle to even start. In New York I completely missed out on the chance to experience the vast and diverse run club culture! I used to try to get a run in every place I traveled to. More than just the workout, it’s a really fun way to explore and engage with a new place. I’m reminiscing now about runs I’ve put down in Chicago, Salt Lake City, Southern Utah, Raleigh, Baltimore, Portland, San Jose, San Diego. Some of my most potent memories are from runs I was able to weave into the travel. I think the biggest challenge last year was that running on vacation was always a hopeful ‘maybe’ instead of a planned priority. So in 2024, I’ll also hold that space as I plan my travel.

Sixth, more racing! Ultimately all of this running is in pursuit of being a better runner, and part of that is racing! Here are the races I’m looking at:

• Feb 24 - Las Vegas Rock n Roll Half Marathon (registered) - my hometown run. I’ve run this the past two years, and this year I’ll get to run it with more friends!!
• May 29 - Everest Marathon (in planning) - I trekked to Everest Base Camp in 2022 and learned of the Everest Marathon, which starts at Base Camp and ends in Namche Bazaar. I knew upon leaving that I wanted to someday return to run the race, but I didn’t think it’d be this soon! 
• June 2 - San Diego Rock n Roll Half Marathon (uhhhh..) - this one’s not looking tooo likely. My friends whom I ran my first half marathon with are running this race! So I’d love to join them, but timing’s looking really dicey if Nepal goes through.
• November 3 - Las Vegas Marathon (tentative) - The INAUGURAL Las Vegas Marathon!! It’s home, and the course looks sick. Red Rock Canyon to Arts District and finishing at Fremont Street. I kinda covered this route on my 50km run in December. It promises to be fast, and I’m stoked to see what racing hard will feel like in my hometown. The only hang-up I have in my head right now is that it’s 5 weeks before CIM. I’ll have to think hard about my goals will be for these races if I want to do both. 
• December 8 - California International Marathon (registered) - every year! This is my A race. I will master this course. 

And last but not least, I want to be more rounded in my running and general fitness. This past year I felt very rigid with my running. Other activities were an exception, at best. It was always some mental calculus to think about doing anything else because I feared it would affect my running. I didn’t hike much, and hiking was a big part of my 2022! WHACK. I want to open up space to do all the other things I enjoy or that might come along. Hiking; pickleball with Anya; we recently got a basketball and started spending nights shooting hoops! I wanna seamlessly work these things in alongside my running. I know I won’t be able to do it all and that I’ll have to make compromises, but I know that it’ll be just a lot more fun and fulfilling to be more open and flexible. 

Another part of being rounded in my running is owning a more holistic view of running. I had started strength training and yoga last year, but I always just viewed them as supplementary. Optional. And when planning is poor, optional easily becomes negligible. I’ve come to understand that strength stability, stability work, mobility work, and recovery are all essential to developing myself into the runner I aspire to be. The trick will be orchestrating it all in a way that is sustainable.

Wrapping Up

Woooh I threw up a lot more words than I anticipated. But yeah I think that covers all my thoughts on last year and planning for this year. Today is January 8, and I’m really happy to say I’m living out my intentions well :) I hope to carry this energy through the year! And when I wander astray, I’ll have this post to anchor myself back to. 

To close this off, I wanna share some of the beautiful sights I’ve collected on my runs in 2023:

As always, thanks for reading! Til next time~

And stay tuned for the next episode: My 50km Solo Run in Vegas