I love a good New Years Resolution. Every year I decide on a new averagerunnerpaul lifestyle. Will I eat salad every day? Get a “The Rock” sick pack and ripped body? Wake up to my alarm on time? The new year is full of these possibilities!

Not everyone shares these views on resolutions. Janel isn’t crazy about them and neither are most my friends. I often hear that the arguments against New Years Resolutions are people saying why not make the change right now? Why wait for the new year? Wouldn’t you want those goals to impact your life right now? To those people I say, “Bah!” and I don’t give a better argument. They are probably right.

On my end, I love the build up to a new challenge for the year and measuring goals from January 1st on. It makes the data neat and tidy too. Reading the stories of people who made their changes on the first of January and never give up is a favorite past time of mine to hear about. Gotta love all those good stories. From people running their first 5k to hitting a 100 mile time goal, they are all great in my books. But, it definitely is hard to actually commit to sticking with your resolution.

According to a recent study of around 1,000 adults, only about 6% of people (60 in this case) maintain their resolution for the entire year. Most years I am in the 94% category. In fact, probably almost every year. Last year included!

What are some reasons we give it up? Well I know some for me. Behavior change is hard. I love the idea of losing weight every year and if I am honest with myself, I love pizza way more. I just ate it before posting this blog post. Shoutout to a local place in Austin, Texas called Baldinucci pizza for a fun New York Style! (Not a sponsor, I wish). Back to behavior change. I love the idea of waking up early to run yet I hit the snooze button more often before work than anything else. We love the idea of change, but what is the behavior we actually do more often?

The Few, the Proud, the Resolutioners

The good news is if you made it past the second Friday of January, sometimes referred to as “Quitter’s Day”, you have gotten over the first big roadblock of the year. Way to go you! Almost 80% of goals are ditched by February so if you make it to spring, you are in the small percentage that may hit their goal for the year. I believe in you!

On my side, it helped that a lot of my New Year’s running goals were year long goals so technically, I have until December 31st to achieve them. That is one way to have your goal last longer…

A few of my goals can start to be measured though and we can get an idea for trends if I will make them or not. One goal was to break 3:30 in the marathon. Am I at a 3:30 marathon pace right now? Nope! Am I in shape for a half marathon at that pace? Nope again. Is there a chance I do it later in the year? Maybe. If my mileage is increasing properly it would be more likely. Other goals this year include averaging 30 miles of week of running and hitting 100,000 feet of total elevation gain in 2026. The measurable goals through data with my miles would be my total mileage hitting over 1,560 for the year. That average elevation gain a week would need to be 1,923 feet. Let’s see how the first 10 days have gone in January!

Start of January – 10 Day Data

Total Miles: 30.5 miles

Total Elevation Gain: 1,152 feet

Overall, not too bad. Does this mean I am on track? If you said no, I would say you are most likely correct. Hopefully you only thought I wasn’t on track after seeing the data though and didn’t guess the truth before reading this post…Now, let’s add what one should be at for mileage and elevation to hit 30 miles a week and roughly 2,000 feet of elevation gain for the first ten days. Survey says…

Where I should be for mileage: 42.7 miles

Where I should be for elevation: 2,740 feet

Welp!

Data doesn’t lie. It may be used to tell a partial truth but this is pretty black and white. I am behind. Am I worried? Nope for the third time today. Luckily, my resolution is still alive. Why? Because I can always add more miles and elevation each week through the end of the year. For running 30 miles a week, one needs to cover about 4.3 miles per day. I may need to go for 4.35ish now but that isn’t too much more. I think I’ll be able to up my mileage much more significantly later in the year; especially during ultra marathon training blocks. For now, the focus is to slowly build up leg strength without injury. Fingers crossed for my shins to stay strong.

As for elevation gain, I need to really focus on prioritizing that each week. 100,000 feet covered upwards in a year is no joke. I could see myself falling far behind that quickly. Being in a flatter area of Texas, it’s easier to do my runs from home and even after an hour of running, I only hit around 100 feet of elevation gain. Do I love the lack of hills? Typically. I do prioritize running a hill workout about once a week. And by workout, I mean I run a hilly route at an easy pace while still sweating buckets. If I want to get towards the 100K elevation number, I will need to do this twice a week. If I make it to running the height of Mt. Everest at the end of the year, it will be a good safety net towards getting to the year goal.

Anyways, we got a whole year to go! Are you on track for your goals set this year? Do you like to set New Year’s Resolutions or nah? I’d love to hear and I hope the start of 2026 is going great for y’all!