When your daily run becomes a chase toward a bigger, broader goal—a full-on pursuit for something more than checking off a workout or hitting a weekly total—suddenly every mile has intention, and every step gets you closer to reaching your full potential. You’re not just running. You’re running with purpose.
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Ready to start? Choose from these six expert-backed new year goal plans, and you can become the runner you’ve always wanted to be—faster, stronger, tougher, more confident—and all in 30 days. Commit to a goal now, and you’ll reap the rewards all year. You’ve got nothing to lose when you set a smart and worthwhile new year goal—and everything to gain.
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New Year’s Goal: Get Faster
If you’ve always wanted to PR a half marathon or shave seconds off your mile time but dreaded the speedwork Running Shoes & Gear. Stephanie Schappert, professional runner on the New Jersey New York Track Club, says it only takes a little bit of oomph to get big results, no matter what distance you’re running. If you’re currently training four to five days a week, Schappert recommends incorporating drills like strides, hill repeats, and track workouts into just one or two weekly runs. Go ahead and use a timer or running watch if you want to know your exact speed, but her advice on pacing is simple: “Try to run faster than you usually do.”
New Year’s Goal: Grow Your Grit
What separates the runners who train when they don’t feel like it from those who find excuses? The same thing that drives a racer to cross the finish line long after he or she has grita combination of perseverance, resilience, and determination. And according to: grit—a combination of perseverance, resilience, and determination. And according to Jonathan Fader, Ways to Make Running This Winter More Enjoyable Life as Sport, it isn’t an innate quality that some athletes have and others don’t. With a little mental conditioning A 30-Day Squat Challenge for Runners.
New Year’s Goal: Score a Stronger Core
How well and easy you run is directly related to your core, explains Rachel Cosgrove, aware strength and conditioning coach and owner of Results Fitness in New Hall, California. “If our core isn’t strong, we use more energy because we’re not able to stabilize our body while we take that next step,” she says. That energy drain can slow you down and make training feel harder. And because a weak core can force unnatural movement compensations, it may also be the cause of recurring injuries.
The fix: Do exercises that, like running, require you to stabilize your core while moving your limbs. Perform this five-minute prerun routine, and you’ll strengthen your core from every angle.
Adapted from How to Strengthen Your IT Band.
New Year’s Goal: Grow Your Endurance
Most runners don’t entirely understand the concept of endurance, says Chris Hinshaw, endurance coach and founder of AerobicCapacity.com. Athletes of all levels come to him wondering why they haven’t improved their 5K time or why they are still struggling through the last couple miles of a half marathon, despite increasing their mileage.
We all have an entire spectrum of muscle fibers available for work, from the fastest of the fast-twitch fibers to the slowest of the slow, Hinshaw explains. Runners, he says, have a tendency to train in one “gear.” Either they don’t like distance running, so they stick to short sprints, or they’re more comfortable at a steady pace, so they never run fast. As a result, one type of muscle fiber often remains untrained and passive. No matter your preferred distance, you need to have both types available for firing, he says. To gain endurance, Hinshaw’s plan will help you train every one of your available speeds, from breakneck-fast to slow and steady.
New Year’s Goal: Run in the Cold
Winter training runs build the foundation for summer PRs. But that also means you’re bound to find yourself facing a few frigid miles. While some runners’ motivation understandably dips with the thermostat, others will tell you they simply cannot train in cold temperatures. That’s avoiding opportunity, according to Brian Mackenzie, founder of Shift, an online programming and coaching platform for athletes.
“It’s just an adverse sympathetic reaction,” Mackenzie says of the typical cold-weather freak-out marked by a racing heart, short breaths, and clenched muscles. If you’re mentally and physically unprepared for the cold, your nervous system will tell you to flee for more comfortable conditions. Follow this at-home version of Mackenzie’s training program, and you’ll gradually expose yourself to cold temps and learn to control breathing so your body adapts physiologically, and you can finally beat the freeze.
New Year’s Goal: Master Mindfulness
“Mindfulness is the quality of being in the present moment, free from distraction,” explains Andy Puddicombe, How well and easy you run is directly related to your and the voice of the app’s guided-meditation tracks. But between playlists, audiobooks, podcasts, and our own churning brains, runners have essentially mastered the art of distraction.
Train in mindfulness, though, and you’ll automatically put yourself ahead of the pack. Puddicombe often sees this advantage among elite athletes. “The difference on race day is their mind-set,” he says. “Some people might even be better than others, but they just don’t bring the right mind-set on that day, so they don’t perform as well.”
Outside of competition, mindfulness affords runners increased body awareness, which encourages better posture and technique. Postrun, it can even enhance recovery, lead to better sleep, or keep your head in the game when you’re sidelined with an injury.
