Miles for Christmas

This year I haven’t set any particular goals or resolutions yet.  I’ve had two things circling round in my mind – I think I’ll set a goal of running 500 miles this year and it would really alleviate the whole single mom stressing over the holidays thing if I started putting away money for the holidays now.

As luck would have it I somehow came across a blog post on Just call me B! giving me the perfect way to tie these two goals together.  Pay myself a dollar for every mile that I run.  500 miles in a year equates to about $10 a week, not an amount I’ll miss but an amount that will be very helpful come Christmas!  As I’m not the most crafty person in  the world I’ll spare you a picture of my empty but clean pasta jar with the lid glued on.  I mean miles for money jar.  Whatever.

Anyways, I have not just one but 2 motivators to run my 500 miles this year because I also signed up for Run This Year 2014.  It’s a running community committed to run 2,014 miles, or 2,014 Kilometers in 2014.  When I first read about it I thought interesting, but ya, NO.  I can’t run 2,014 miles in a year – I’m lucky to hit 3 miles on my long runs!  But they also have a third choice, Get Your Own Goal.  Perfect!

500 miles here I come, and I have both a group of equally determined runners AND a promise of a Christmas actually pre-paid to motivate me to get there.  Win and win.

Do you track your miles run, miles biked, pounds lifted or something similar per year?  What’s your goal for 2014?