January

The last week of 2021 went quite promising for me as I managed to use the holidays to find time to get some runs in. Most weeks in 2021 were all over the place and I rarely found a rhythm to stay consistent for longer than a month. I wanted to take that momentum into 2022 and tried to set some goals.

For January, I wanted to maintain a decent weekly level and run 60k every week. I've run more in the past, but I wanted to set an achievable goal while still enjoying some flexibility to do other things during the winter season:

Sometimes the weather or other logistics meant that I needed to shift things around, but I think it worked out and I even got to do intervals, a threshold run and a long run on most weeks:

Most runs were in the dark, many with snow and in windy conditions - but there were some exceptions and sometimes it even felt like you're running in spring with the alpine scenery being a very beautiful backdrop:

I was also looking for a second goal: improve my flexibility. I was never able to do a full forward fold or even touch my toes. So why not work on that. Initially I wanted to set "touch my toes" as the goal, but following Antranik's recommendations I was able to touch my toes after simply following the toe-touch progression videos 🤯. Having achieved that on the first night, I felt like focussing on my hamstrings would better complement my running goal. I aimed for doing the hamstrings routine 2-3x per week. While progress isn't as visible as after the toe-touch progression, I feel like it's improving quite noticeably and I'll continue stretching for another month.

Probably the more ambitious goal I set is to run 3000k this year. Last time I managed to get that many runs in, was in 2016 with 4100k and then got close with 2600k in 2017. So let's see what 2022 brings 😸