Running News Daily

New Year's resolutions for runners and how to keep them

Create a consistent running plan. 

Consistency is key to improving fitness and sticking with something. While sure, you’ll experience some fitness gains from running haphazardly, lasting and life-changing benefits come about after developing a healthy habit.

Train with a group. 

We’re stronger together. As a brand dedicated to growing community, we understand first-hand the importance of finding your tribe. And when it comes to training, turns out there’s science to back it. According to a recent study, when you work out with a group, your levels of emotional, mental, and physical stress are much lower than they would be if you worked out alone.

Incorporate strength work into your weekly training. 

Running is a repetitive forward motion. Without incorporating a balanced strength-training plan, it’s easy to experience muscular imbalance and injury. But weight training doesn’t mean throwing around heavy weights in the gym, a group fitness class might be exactly what you need. Check with your Fleet Feet to see if they host any weekly classes in the store.

Start a meditation practice. 

We promise we’re not getting woo-woo on you. But seriously, meditation will make you a better runner (and a better person, too). That's because meditation helps you to de-stress, cultivate compassion, and feel calmer and more in tune with the present moment. When it comes to running, meditation also helps you manage pain. Meditate your way to a new PR? Maybe so!

Set at least two race goals. 

Like we said in this post, if you want to accomplish your goals, you need to set specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-focused goals. We recommend setting a PR goal in a race distance you’ve already completed and then setting a new distance goal for later in the year. Perhaps you’re shooting to break your 5K PR in the spring and then working to complete a half marathon in the fall.

Stretch every day. 

We’ve written about the balance of strength to flexibility before. But we’ll say it again and again because it’s that important. Incorporating a few key stretches after every workout will help keep to keep you injury free. Check out this post for some runner-specific yoga poses.

Perform self-massage after every hard run. 

Massage feels good and helps us recover faster by improving circulation, decreasing inflammation, and reducing muscle tightness.

Create or participate in a fun weekly group run to spice things up. 

Like we learned in number two, it’s beneficial to our health to run with other people. Take that one step further and incorporate social runs like a weekly pub run, run n’ brunch, or run + coffee. This will keep training fresh and interesting, so you’re more likely to stick to it.