At our Thriving Women’s retreat in November last year, we agreed we would run the Mother’s Day Classic together in May. That’s either a 5km or 10km run. We had a few runners in the group who offered to put together training plans for those of us who hadn’t run before and needed to be race ready (aren’t we lucky!).
I received the plan and it looked doable. The training weeks were mapped out for us, starting in February and finishing on race day in May. The interesting thing for me was the plan didn’t tell us to run a certain number of kilometres, just a certain amount of time. So, instead of running for 1km, it said to run for one minute, then walk for four minutes, and so on.
I’m guessing by the end of it, I will be able to run 10km!
At the time I received my training plan, I was already thinking about my goals for 2020 – both personally and professionally.
I’ve read that the failure rate of New Year’s resolutions is about 80%. So, as I was thinking about what I wanted to achieve in 2020, I decided to start training for the Mother’s Day Classic before the end of 2019.
I started week one in the middle of December. I decided I would do week one twice and the final week twice, too, to bring me up to May. It’s going well and I feel like I have “flipped the system”. Or maybe I have just created the useful belief that starting a New Year’s resolution before the start of the New Year will give it more “stickiness”.
I guess what I’m trying to say (holiday brain is clearly still with me!) is that even if you don’t have a plan for 2020 yet, you can create one at any time. Sometimes, doing some activity in the right direction is a good start.
Don’t wait for a new year, a new week, a new month to get started. It’s a load of bollocks that you need to wait. Get cracking now!
And if you’d like to share with me your plans and goals for the year ahead, please do. Email me at emma@emmamcqueen.com.au