I’ve made a goal.

That’s always been my problem, the lack of a goal. In this case a particular goal for a particular activity. The activity is running and the goal is to run a 5 K race. Not to win, and not to place, but just to run in an organized event.

I’ve toyed with running for the past few years. Mostly in the last five. I’ll start running and then I’ll stop running. I’ll hurt myself and stop running or I’ll get a cold and stop running or I’ll have too much else going on in my life and stop running. Well, now I’ve evaluated my free time and came up with a plan to ease into running so as to minimize injury. Thus far, I have worked up to five repeats of four minutes running, one minute walking with five minute warmup and cool down walks. Next week, I will change it up a little and go for twelve minutes running with a five minute walk in the middle. I will do that for one or two weeks and then switch to thirty minutes continuous running.

The time frame is tight. I need to start looking for a race for early February, around the time of my birthday. Pretty much, a 5 K (3.1 miles) is the shortest road race one can find. If I run approximately 30 minute I will be running shy of 5 K. So the race distance will not be out of the question.

The real question is if I enjoy the racing. If I don’t, that will become some lousy motivation for continued running. However, if it’s a good experience, well, I might have motivation for another race. Actually, if it’s good, I’ll do what I do with the dentist and plan my next visit before I leave the office. Okay, that might not work with racing, but I can certainly find another race to run in short order.

See, as I mentioned, the racing is the key. I know, how obvious, I have heard it for years, set a goal like a race to keep running interesting. So fine, I’ve done that.

Now, all I have to do is actually find a race to run and I’m set.

I’ll keep you posted.