 And step number eight, come on now. Bring it home now, bring it home now, everybody. Here we go. Happy new year, everybody. How you doing? It's January 1st. I can't believe it. We made it through 2019 and we're onto a new decade together. It's amazing. And I thought, you know what? This is a perfect day to talk about how to meet your running race goals in 2020, since we're starting off the new year together here in the studio. And I get a lot of questions about this topic, but I don't think I've ever put all of my thoughts into one vlog about my eight-step process point by point. So we're gonna go through it together on reverse engineering, you getting to the starting line as prepared as possible and in the right situation for you, who you are as a runner, because we all have different skill levels, ability levels and passions, what our personalities are attracted to in the running space. So that's the focus of the vlog today. But first, in case you missed it, I decided yesterday afternoon, you know what? I just wonder, as the new year begins, if some folks are gonna need a little extra motivation and inspiration to get out the door today. So yesterday afternoon, I published a vlog. What did I title it? Basically motivation to go run in 2020. So upper right-hand corner, click on that little bar that pops out and it's a short two-minute montage of all the best clips from 2019. I think you will enjoy it. So go check it out in case you haven't seen it yet. And pass it along. Like, oh man, I've got so many thoughts about the future and growing this YouTube running family but pass it along to your running friends that are like struggling to get off the couch, struggling to get out the door as 2020 begins. And let's dive in. Here we go. Step number one on how to meet your running race goals in 2020. And these steps, they're very specific and they're in a particular order for a reason. And you might have a different strategy and that's great. This works for me. And it's also based on some mistakes that I've made in the past and trying to avoid them for the future. So I hope you can glean some wisdom from what I'm about to share. Like, cause I've definitely signed up for some races that maybe didn't bear the most fruit that I would have liked. Okay, so here we go. Step number one is find the niche of running that you enjoy the most. And we've talked about this. It's been like three or four months though, made a vlog about it, operate hand corner on how to find your running niche. What do I mean by that? There's a lot of different types of races out there. Okay, there's long, long races. There's shorter races. And then there's different surfaces, grass, track, road, dirt, sand. There's also, you've even, you know, to a certain extent snow. I've seen running races on snow. So finding your niche comes down to figuring out what you enjoy the most and what you're good at. Cause guess what? If you're good at something, you're probably gonna enjoy doing it more and more, which means you're probably gonna be more motivated to train. And as far as how to find your niche, these are some ideas, time trials. So go out and do a 5K time trial. And if you are really good at it, keep doing that. Keep following that path of success. Maybe you're good at 50Ks with a lot of vertical gain, okay? So go do some testing in your training to figure out what niche of running you're good at and that you enjoy. Also at the end of the day, you have to simply sign up for races that maybe you've never, like if you were struggling with, let's say the marathon distance and then you decide in 2020, you know what? I'm gonna try a 10K in February cause I'm struggling with this long stuff. Like it's just, it hurts my knees or something isn't working. Drop it down. Come back to 10Ks. Come back to 5Ks and see how you do there. Okay, so that's step number one. Find your niche within running. Step number two, know thyself. And this is, this builds off of step one, know thyself and it connects. But what do I mean? I mean physically and mentally. So I signed up for my first 100 mile race in 2018 and I was excited to race my first 100 miler. I actually ended up dropping out of the race at 50 miles for a couple different reasons. But what I realized after taking time to reflect and that's a key point on figuring out how to know thyself, you gotta reflect. And right after the race, and you can do this too, after your half marathon, after your 10K or maybe you're doing a one mile road race, take like, not like immediately after but definitely within like two hours after the race. Take five minutes, 10 minutes to reflect on how do you feel? What's going through your mind? Did it bring you life? Did that race bring you life? Or did it kind of like, did it kind of make you leave a little bit of a bitter taste in your mouth? I know after the 100 mile race in Steamboat Springs, it was a little bit of a bitter taste. It just taught me like, okay, I did not find my niche well before this race. I dreamt a little too big, okay? And that's actually step number three in the process that I go through, the eight step process is be, and we talked about this 10 days ago, be an optimistic realist. So dream big, but keep it rooted in reality. So going into that, going into registering for that 100 mile race, I was dreaming big, but I was not rooted in reality. I was not tuned in enough. I didn't know my body well enough to know that my legs were not ready for 100 mile race at that point as a 33 year old. Why? Because guess what? I still have some speed in my legs as I figured out in 2019 with Amsterdam and New York City. And I'm ready now and excited to push myself and test myself at shorter distances to see how fast I can go. Because again, if you do something that you're good at, you're probably going to enjoy it more. So that's step number three, become an optimistic realist, okay? Dream big, but keep it rooted in reality, all right? Step number four, find your race, okay? Rubber hits the road. It's actually time to start finding your race that you're going to register for, but register for a race that is in your genre, in your niche of running that you really, really enjoy. Now, I'm not saying you can't move around, like go from road marathons to 100 mile races at some point, like I think that's fun. I think it's good to test new waters within the running space. So for example, you've got big city marathons and small city marathons. If you don't like crowds, don't register for New York City, right? Register for a smaller marathon and go enjoy that. Or again, if you don't enjoy elevation, like getting into high altitude, but you enjoy 50K races, believe it or not, there's 50K races at sea level and guess what, there's 50K races on the roads as well. And as far as how to find a race, a couple websites that you can look at are, and you probably already know about these, but ultrasignup.com, halfmarathons.net and marathonguide.com, okay? Those three websites are starter places. There's so many websites out there with that list, all these races that you can look into in research for your niche of running that you are interested in. And what's nice about this fourth step is that once you find your race, you register, you pick your race, you register, and then you commit. Cause that hitting that registration button, it's like a air of relief. You actually have a goal to shoot for, all right? It's so key. I'm telling you, it's so key to have a goal to shoot for, especially starting the new year. So that's step number four. Step number five, oh boy, reverse engineer the training. So you registered for the race, you've got a date out in the future, and then you count backward, okay? We'll talk about this in another vlog soon, but you count backward how many weeks and how many months do you have to train from that point in time, out in the future? And then you reverse engineer your training from that point, makes sense, okay? We'll get more into the details of how to write a training block later in January, okay? Step number six is accountability. Oh yeah, accountability to the training. So whether it's from a teammate, whether it's from a family member, a coach, or your training log, okay? Maybe you don't have a connection to anybody else in the running world. That is okay, trust me, because guess what, we runners, we're a little strange. Sometimes we don't know any other runners out there. I get it. So running logs, so what you do with your training schedule, you write it out, you get it, you know, as much detail as possible, and then you commit to it. So your training log becomes your accountability partner for the training leading into the race. Step number seven, we're almost there. Practice makes perfect. You know the old saying, practice makes perfect. So practicing the distance that you're going to race or doing tune-up races or tune-up time trials before you actually show up at the starting line. So many of you know this, but in case you don't, if you're getting ready for a marathon, you usually do a half marathon race about three to five weeks before the marathon, depending on your schedule, but depending on how the training is going, in order to get your body ready for what you're gonna put it through on marathon race day. So that's one strategy for the step number seven is practice makes perfect. One last point on practice makes perfect is course previews. I cannot stress enough how important it is if you have time, but to research the course that you're gonna be racing on, to know the elevation profile, to know the turns that you're gonna be making. I know for me personally, when I, you know, hopefully the goal is to show up November 1st in New York City. Now that I've run the entire New York City marathon course once, I can't even tell you how much that's gonna help me mentally because I'm really, I'm a really good visual learner. Like I can walk through the entire course right now in my mind. And now I can apply that experience to the 2020 race on November 1st, okay? So practice makes perfect, that's step number seven and step number eight. Come on now, bring it home now, bring it home now everybody. Confidence, confidence, confidence. If you complete all seven steps before step eight correctly, you will, I promise you, you will show up at the starting line with confidence. And I'm telling you, when you've got confidence at a starting line, when you are fit as a fiddle and you have put in the work and you've had somebody hold you accountable to the hard stuff of the training and you've previewed the course. And, and, oh, back to step one, you're dialed in to the distance and the discipline within running that you can excel at the most. I'm telling you, you will run faster than you've ever run and raced before. I never dreamt that I would ever break one hour and 10 minutes in the half marathon. I never thought it would happen. My previous PR before I showed up in Amsterdam for the half marathon was I won 111 basically. Now it was at elevation, but I never thought I would dip under 110. I ran 106.53 in a marathon race. So that's step eight is confidence, confidence, confidence. I'm telling you, embrace the confidence, enjoy the confidence and harness it and put it with you right in your pocket when you show up at the starting line at your races in 2020. All right, does that sound good? Let's go chase down those goals. I hope those steps made sense. And again, you probably have some steps that are very similar, but I'm glad I made this vlog at the beginning of the new year because again, I get a lot of questions around how to prepare for racing. And now I can take this vlog and send it to you. And that question of the day, do you have a process for figuring out your running race schedule and arriving at the starting line as ready as possible, as confident as possible? Okay, I know there's gonna be a lot of great comments down there, so make sure you go check them out. And that's that. Thanks for watching. Happy new year onward to 2020. Here we go. It's gonna be a good one, everyone. It's gonna be a good one. All right, we're gonna toss it back to the vlog from exactly one year ago on January 1st. That'll be on the right. And then on the left, we'll toss it back to the two minute motivational video that I edited yesterday afternoon. That'll be on the left for you all. All right, seat beauty, work hard, and love each other. See you tomorrow.