Stick­ing With Your Resolutions

New Year’s Day was just a lit­tle over a month ago and, judg­ing by the increased avail­abil­ity of tread­mills at the gym, it looks like the New Year’s res­o­lu­tions are start­ing to slip.

How are you doing with your run­ning and fit­ness goals? How is the rest of your fam­ily doing?

As the Hol­i­days pass and we become re-​​absorbed into the activ­i­ties of our daily lives, it gets eas­ier and eas­ier to find excuses — espe­cially at this time of year. It’s too cold to run out­side … It’s too dark to run in the morn­ing … It’s too dark to run in the evening … I’m get­ting tired of the tread­mill and wish I could just run out­side … I’ll just skip today … I’ll get back on track tomorrow …

Pub­lish your run­ning goals and keep track

One of the best ways to make sure you don’t slack off is to pub­lish your run­ning and fit­ness goals and track your progress. It doesn’t have to be com­pli­cated. One tech­nique is to just post your goal in big let­ters on the fridge or the fam­ily bul­letin board — DADDY WILL RUN 3 TIMES A WEEK. Then keep a log sheet handy and write down each time you com­plete a work­out or oth­er­wise make progress towards your goal.

You can also use some great online tools to make your goals public.

• Day​tum​.com is a sim­ple and attrac­tive site where you can post goals and track met­rics for free. This is the site I’m using to aggre­gate and track my Run 48 States progress. Cre­ate your page in a few min­utes, then post it on Face­book, Twit­ter, or email it to friends that you know will keep you honest.
• Map​MyRun​.com (affil­i­ate link) is a com­pre­hen­sive site that lets you log work­outs, pub­lish them to your Face­book and Twit­ter accounts auto­mat­i­cally, and view met­rics in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent ways. Bet­ter yet, if you get your run­ning friends on it as well, you can link your pro­files and see what your friends have been doing to keep each other honest.
• Run​k​eeper​.com is another online option that is a bit more stream­lined than Map­MyRun. It has less func­tion­al­ity, but is much eas­ier to use and is bet­ter designed. You input your work­outs on your iPhone (sup­port for other devices com­ing in the future) through the Run­K­eeper app avail­able through the App Store for free. Run­K­eeper then charts your progress both on your iPhone, and on their web­site. It inte­grates nicely with the GPS capa­bil­i­ties of the iPhone, plot­ting your course on a map dur­ing your run and pro­vid­ing sta­tis­tics for dis­tance and pace. It also inte­grates nicely with Face­book and Twit­ter, and allows you to build a net­work of run­ning bud­dies called your “Street Team.”

There are plenty more out there. These are just the ones I’ve used. If you have a great sug­ges­tion, let us know about it by leav­ing a comment!

Rely on your fam­ily for support

Believe it or not, your fam­ily wants you to be suc­cess­ful in your run­ning and fit­ness goals. Think about how you feel about them. Don’t you want your spouse to be healthy? Don’t you want to help your spouse find time to work out? Don’t you want your kids to be healthy and to real­ize their goals? Well your fam­ily wants that for you too.

You should have shared your fit­ness goals with your fam­ily when you set them. If you didn’t, share them now. OK, maybe not right now, but do it today. Make sure your fam­ily knows what you’re try­ing to achieve, and that they under­stand why.

Then ask them for help. If you are start­ing to find your­self strug­gling to keep up with your com­mit­ments to your­self, tell them what your chal­lenges are. While you’re at it, don’t make it all about you. Ask them how they’re doing on their fit­ness goals. Work together as a fam­ily, as a team, to really under­stand what each of you wants to achieve — and then sup­port each other and help each other be successful.

Work­ing together and keep­ing your lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion open helps your entire fam­ily sup­port each other. You can cel­e­brate each other’s suc­cesses. You can help each other deal with chal­lenges as they come up. You can use your run­ning and fit­ness goals to bring your fam­ily together, and keep each other on track.

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