2009 Goals Revisited

I was thinking about my 2009 goals today.

"So, what about 2009? OK, I've got three goals. I will "age up" to the M55-59 age group this year. I'm not going to blow away the competition there even if I can go as fast this year as I have in the past. However, while the "best" guys are quite a bit faster than me, the older age group is just a little slower overall. My first goal is to place in the top ten of my age group at the BSLT 70.3. In order to do this, I will almost certainly need to be faster than last year, but given "normal" weather conditions I ought to be able to do this. My second goal is to finish the Silverman in less time than it took this year. This might seem like a "soft" goal, but just finishing the Silverman is pretty challenging. If the weather there is better, and assuming that I do finish, I should be able to go under 15:30. My last goal is to run a sub 21:00 5K. This is not going to help me much when it comes to running 13.1/26.2 miles at BSLT/Silverman, but it's something I want to do. I used to run 3 miles in 21 minutes when I was a cadet at the USAF Academy, and that seemed pretty easy at the time. As recently as 1996 I could run 1.5 miles in less than 9 minutes. OK, I'm older now, but there are plenty of guys in my age group who can run 5K's even faster than 21 minutes. I'll work on this during the next few months. If I can do it I'll do it before the end of May. One way or the other, I won't worry about trying to do this after the end of May. After that, I'll be racing BSLT and ramping up for Silverman."

I managed to finish 9th in my age group at Buffalo Springs, and I was very happy with that result. I finished Silverman in 13:30:42. which was two hours faster than my 2008 Silverman. (It sure helps to have nice weather.) I never managed a 21-minute 5K run. The best I did was 21:38, two weeks after Silverman.

However, I have real hopes to get below 21 minutes this year. I won't be training for any Ironmans, so I'll have time to spend on running 5K's. The past few years, I was spending so much time doing 3-5 hour bike rides and 1-2 hour runs, there wasn't much time left for anything else.

2010, the year of the 5K run!

muffinman