Happy New Year 🎉

Congratulations! The Earth has completed another trip around our sun.

Everybody takes the arbitrary time of the New Year as a fresh, new start. Why not? It’s as good a time as any.
After the year that most people have had, it’s probably best for morale if we kick 2020 into history and take the 1st January 2021 as this fresh, new start. How long will the “new year, new me” (or you) last?

Let’s face it, 2020 wasn’t the greatest year by any means. However, I still got a fair bit done, ticking some bits off my Life List.

My Life List Trello board

Amongst other things, in 2020 I managed to:

• Summit Kilimanjaro, the first of my Seven Summits.
• Run the #CalendarClub challenge in April, running a mile × the day number, totalling 465 miles and raising £3000+ for Mind, mental health charity.
• Run my first ultra-distances - 50km road running and 60km in tedious 1.5km loops of a park (for added mental hardship).
• Skydive for the first time.
• Pass the exam to become a member of Mensa, the worldwide high IQ society.

The biggest pain point for me was not being able to travel. I had holidays, activities, and expeditions cancelled and postponed. Here’s hoping they’ll be back on this year.

New year, new goals

So now’s the time to start planning new goals and aspirations for the year. I actually started about a week ago.

I’m good at planning

I’ve had the Life List Trello board since 2014 with my overarching lifetime goals and aims on. I only update this a few times a year but use it to draw ideas from to plan for the next year, month, week. I won’t go into detail…go and have a peek if you so desire.

Some 2021 goals

A flavour of what I want to do this year:

• Finish my RAID Open Circuit SCUBA instructor course - I only have the exam remaining.
• Boston (UK) marathon - aim for a sub-3-hour finish to qualify for the Boston (US) marathon.
• Complete Olympic and middle distance triathlons.
• Ironman UK - my first Ironman race.
• Ironman Ireland - my second Ironman race.
• Ring O’ Fire - a 3 day, 135-mile ultra trail race around the entire coast of Anglesey, Wales.
• Complete a winter skills mountaineering course.
• Traverse the Cuillin Ridge, Isle of Skye, Scotland.
• Summit Mount Elbrus in Russia - another of the coveted Seven Summits.
• Run the London marathon - my place for last year got deferred to 2021. I’ll be running to raise money for Shelter.
• Hit some new personal best times running:
  • 5km: sub 00:18:00 (currently 00:19:05)
    • 10km: sub 00:38:00 (currently 00:41:11)
  • half marathon (21km): sub 01:25:00 (currently 01:38:44)
    • marathon (42km): sub 03:00:00 (currently 03:22:02)
• Read 52 books.
• Listen to 52 audiobooks.
• Buy a house.

Watch this space. For a bit.