On the public accountability front, I only have a couple of goals explicitly shared: my 2020 running OKRs. There are other goals I planned to share and focus on in order to build up areas where I know I could use improvement.
In this post, I’ll review the current status of my running goals and share a couple of other areas where I plan to focus.
Running OKR Review
In late January I shared two OKRs intended to put me on a solid path to running a marathon in every US state by the time I turn 50.
Objective 1: Build confidence in ability to complete the 50 by 50 challenge
Key Results:
- Complete 4 marathons this year
- Run at least one marathon less than 12 weeks after previous marathon
- Write a post-race report to capture what worked and didn’t to better prepare for future races
Current Status: On hold
The Tobacco Road Marathon was to be my first marathon of the year and kick off the ticking of boxes that is this OKR. The night before our flight to North Carolina, Yaeka and I — really, Yaeka was the one smart enough to realize it needed to be done — made the call to cancel our trip.
The race organizers were obviously feeling as stubborn as I was and hadn’t made the call to cancel things before March 12th, but I think as was the case with much of the rest of the country, they realized that shit was getting real with COVID-19 on March 11th with the suspension of the NBA season, news that Tom Hanks had tested positive, and Donald Trump finally taking things serious enough to make an Oval Office address.
I still have three marathons scheduled for the remainder of the year, including the Utah Valley Marathon which is scheduled for June 6, 2020. The organizers haven’t called it off yet, but with the extension of many physical distancing measure in place through at least early May, I’m not holding my breath and it’s questionable how comfortable we’ll feel traveling at that time.
Objective 2: Mitigate factors that could derail 50 by 50 challenge
Key Results:
- Maintain running consistency with a goal of at least 20 miles per week throughout the year
- Complete at least three physical therapy exercises three days per week
- Build two days of cross training per week into my training routine
Q1 Status: 53%
The Good: Even with upcoming marathons on hold, I’ve managed to maintain 20 miles of running each week. This should keep a solid enough foundation for me to build miles back up once I know what my next race will be.
The Mixed: I managed to get back into a routine of leveraging OrangeTheory for my two days of cross-training per week, but with the close of non-essential businesses in Washington since mid-March, and my lack of ability to do anything other than running that is good for me (see “The Bad”), I’m back to just running.
The Bad: Despite knowing it’s good for me, I have neglected my physical therapy exercises. I’m currently in the process of building a pretty good morning routine and hope that I can leverage habit chaining to incorporate these exercises into my regular routine.
Plans to address in Q2:
In addition to leveraging habit chaining, I’m going to experiment with putting my physical therapy exercises on my Garmin workout calendar. This will provide a prompt for me to complete them and I may feel a slight twinge of guilt if I skip them.
Additional Areas of Focus
Running is an easy area to focus on for personal OKR/goal sharing. I already had a long-term milestone I was targeting and the measurement of progress is relatively easy given apps/devices available for tracking.
Two areas where I know I need additional work and have struggled with accountability/measurement are:
- Developing my emotional intelligence to strengthen relationships
- Focusing more time on creation and less on consumption
I’m not sure if I’ll develop full-fledged OKRs for these, but there are definitive actions that I have in mind — and have already started taking — to address both of these. More to come in a future post.