2012 Goals

2011 was a decent year. I ran my first 5K and 10K, biked 100km for the first time in a couple of years, and got quite a bit better at soccer. I made my first batch of mead and capped the year yesterday with a bottling party at my friend’s place.

We bottled 4 growlers and 11 liter bottles of Gingerbread Joe. Final gravity was 1.018, for a rough ABV of 6%. It won’t be carbonated for a few more weeks, but I’ve got a 12oz bottle that I’ll crack open in February to test.

Anyways, the goals.

Run a 25K
I had originally planned to run a half marathon last fall, but I didn’t do a very good job training for it and injured myself in August. I’m signing up to do the 25K for the River Bank Run this year, which is 15.5 miles, or slightly more than a half marathon. I’m also hoping to beat my pace times for the races that I ran last year (St. Patty’s Pacer, Panther Prowl, and Lakeshore Miracle Run).

Pwn that dune from Hell
Last year I ran the Lakeshore Miracle Run 10K, which took you down the road, through the woods, along the beach, and then up this beast:

This year, I’m going to run up the entire thing. All thousand feet of it. It’s probably going to mean that I spend a fair amount of time after the River Bank Run running along the beach, but if it means I can work on my tan, then I’m all for it.

Bike 100 miles in a day
My cycling buddy got a new road bike for Christmas, so this year we’re gonna tear up the roads. Last year with a little more training we probably could have done the full 100 miles in the Holland Hundred, but this year it’s definitely being done. At the tail end of the season in September, there is a 100 mile ride in Three Oaks that I’m also signing up to ride in. I figure it’s a good follow-up to a half marathon the day before in Holland.

Get certified
The problem with studying for certification exams is that it reminds me of the worst parts about college (the studying). I haven’t been doing a lot of it lately, but that’s going to change. Professionally, my goal for 2012 is to get my MCITP Enterprise Admin certification, and my VMware certification. It’s going to mean a lot of reading, but it will pay out eventually.

Try 40 new recipes
Living on your own is pretty nice. There’s no roommate taking a shower at inconvenient times, no arguments about the utility bills or who’s doing the dishes, and nobody has to suffer my taste in music. Another upside is that you can cook whatever you want, but the downside to that is that there’s only one person around to eat it. This means that when I make bean and bacon soup, or almost anything else, I’m eating it for a week. This meant that I was content to cycle through a somewhat limited set of recipes and didn’t have much incentive to try something new (aside from a few spectacular experiments involving a grill).

My goal, from a culinary perspective, is to try 40 new recipes this year. It doesn’t have to be a complete meal; it can just be a side dish or a dessert or a bread recipe, but I figure if I’ve got a kitchen as stocked as mine, I should put it to use.

Anyways, those are a few of my goals for the year. Since many of them also encourage fitness and intelligence, when the apocalypse comes next December I’ll last more than five minutes, which I think is a pretty handy bonus.