¡Feliz año!
I've just come back from a week of snowboarding in Switzerland. It has been a pretty eventful week, a bit of a mixed bag really. While travelling in Switzerland was a plus, the low-lights were the not-so-nice weather conditions for snowboarding, baggage delays and delayed flights from country to country. At the moment, my baggage is somewhere out there. The good news is that I should be getting it back at the end of the week. The bad news is that I have to travel to the UK to retrieve it.
But now it's a new year and I'm back in Spain, away from the very cold weather of the Swiss Alps and good ol' Blighty. A new year is simply a demarcation on the calendar, but I have always found it a good time to assess and reflect upon my own goals. My motivation level may not make it all the way through the year, but I know this is the time I have set to commence achieving specific goals.
I'm getting rather excited at the challenges facing me in 2010. Incidentally, 2010 in the Chinese horoscope is the year of the Tiger. The Tiger symbolises courage, boldness and self-assurance. Now I don't follow horoscope readings of any shape or form, Western or Chinese. I think it's all rather nonsense. But I think that the challenges that I've set in 2010 will require me to adopt the spirit and characteristics of the Tiger - to be courageous, bold and self-assured in whatever I embark on and encounter along the way.
The biggest goal I have set for myself is to qualify for Boston 2011. This will require me to run 3:10:00 in an upcoming marathon event. But after some reflection I thought to myself "why run 3:10:00 when I could break 3 hours instead?" That's a nice round number to aim for.
I've just come back from a week of snowboarding in Switzerland. It has been a pretty eventful week, a bit of a mixed bag really. While travelling in Switzerland was a plus, the low-lights were the not-so-nice weather conditions for snowboarding, baggage delays and delayed flights from country to country. At the moment, my baggage is somewhere out there. The good news is that I should be getting it back at the end of the week. The bad news is that I have to travel to the UK to retrieve it.
But now it's a new year and I'm back in Spain, away from the very cold weather of the Swiss Alps and good ol' Blighty. A new year is simply a demarcation on the calendar, but I have always found it a good time to assess and reflect upon my own goals. My motivation level may not make it all the way through the year, but I know this is the time I have set to commence achieving specific goals.
I'm getting rather excited at the challenges facing me in 2010. Incidentally, 2010 in the Chinese horoscope is the year of the Tiger. The Tiger symbolises courage, boldness and self-assurance. Now I don't follow horoscope readings of any shape or form, Western or Chinese. I think it's all rather nonsense. But I think that the challenges that I've set in 2010 will require me to adopt the spirit and characteristics of the Tiger - to be courageous, bold and self-assured in whatever I embark on and encounter along the way.
The biggest goal I have set for myself is to qualify for Boston 2011. This will require me to run 3:10:00 in an upcoming marathon event. But after some reflection I thought to myself "why run 3:10:00 when I could break 3 hours instead?" That's a nice round number to aim for.
One of my running heroes, Dean Karnazes, is noted for the magnatude of the challenges he takes on. Sometimes he succeeds, other times it's not so pretty. The grander the challenge the higher the potential for catastrophe. The point I'm trying to make is to have the courage to try. Failure can lead to incredible discovery. Embrace failure as an opportunity to learn and grow. Shake it off, pick up the pieces, and move on. As Sylvester Stallone said in his movie, Rocky Balboa, "it ain't about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much can you take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!"
Before I ran Berlin last year, I never thought I would be capable of breaking 3 hours in a marathon. This time I'm going to give it a go. Regardless of the outcome on September 26, 2010, I can say, with the attitude of the Tiger, that I had the courage to try.
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