Happy New Year and Happy New Me

This is just a recap of a bunch of resolutions/goals that I've been talking about in too many different places.

MC had the idea first. Her goal for 2006 was to walk for 180 minutes, during 4 walks per week. I like the idea of counting minutes instead of workouts. You get extra credit when you do more, and it's easier to 'catch up' when you have a bad workout or week.

So, I'll start with the same plan:
Walk 4 times per week for a total of 180 minutes.

However, other activity counts too. 1 minute of walking will equal 30 seconds of running, 1 minute of cycling, 1 minute of swimming, and 2 minutes of weights.

That will do for a start. I'll refine it in February, when I see how this is really working.

My nutrition needs to improve. I'll start by eating one fruit and one vegetable minimum per day. Yes, this is a sad place to begin. This will be reviewed Feb 1, with a possibility of increase.

Some other ideas for goals:

• Improve my swim time for 750m to under 20:00
• Improve my run time to under 37:00 for 5km
• Improve my bike time to under 60:00 for 20km

It would be ideal to nail these in one fell swoop in one sprint tri. However, reality may trash my dream. I'll settle for nailing them one at a time, even in a non-race setting.

Right now, my 5km time is about 39:59, my swim time is hovering around 26:00, and my bike time (which always seems to have a headwind on the return trip) is around 1:20:00. So I do have some work to do. But these times are my default times when I do absolutely no training. So any training will improve things. I haven't done a swim time trial since last May. I had some major swim technique improvement this fall. I haven't tested whether it's made me any faster.

(I'm starting my new year today, since I was sick all last week)

I'm adding rowing to my fitness units. 1 minute of rowing equals 2 units.