New Year: New Goals and New Approach

The other day I received in email from Wordpress. It was titled, "Your Year in Review". I clicked on the link which took me to a very cool and graphic outline of how often I had posted, what I posted about and how it was received. On one hand it was exciting to see all that had happened, and on the other I was sad that I only posted 11 times in the entire year.It seems that as one year merges to the next that the world tends to focus on celebrating the previous year and setting goals for the next. I find it a little funny that all of this revolves around an arbitrary day in the middle of winter, but I've caught the bug and I am going to set a few goals for 2016. I also thought I would share a few of the things that I am working on and planning for the next several months.First and foremost, I need to publicly state that I am going to write more often here. There, I said it. If you read this blog, and I know there are at least a dozen people who do, I need your help. Please hold my feet to the fire. If I go more than 2 weeks without posting anything, bug me. Send me an email, harass me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, but please don't let me fail. I have plenty of interesting things going on so that I should be easily able to write a little something every couple of weeks. I am also going to focus my social media on Instagram. I like the platform the most and am going to put my efforts there. At this point, things get interesting. Another major goal I have for this year is to reduce the amount of time I waste on social media. This may seem opposed to my first two goals of writing more on my site and posting on Instagram, but that's hardly the case. I am ashamed to admit that I often spend at least an hour everyday on some form of social media. It is fascinating to me, but a tremendous time suck.Now, on to more important things, like running. Last year I took a step back from racing and spent nearly the entire year adventuring. I ran a lot, but didn't have much of a training structure. After an amazing race at The Rut and a poor performance at The Bear going in to the Fall, I made the decision that it was time to explore my actual potential as an athlete. I had a desire to race, and to train with more structure, but felt that I lacked the skill and discipline to coach myself to a new level. After a few weeks of emailing, web searching, and deep thought, a series of very amazing events led me to a coach. For the last 6 weeks I have been working with Scott Johnston, co-author of Training for the New Alpinism and one of the most experienced endurance coaches out there. Scott has been instrumental in helping me re-calibrate my training and view of being a professional athlete. He and I will be working together to prepare my body for the upcoming season.So, I have a new coach, big deal right? Well, I think it is. With the exception of 6 months of my running career I have been self-coached. I did not have hardly any formal coaching growing up and frankly lacked in that department. All that I have accomplished to this point was from trial and error, the internet, and hard work. I am positive that I will be able to do much more than I have in the past with Scott's help.This year I am going to focus on racing the Skyrunning World Ultra-Series. I have been going back and forth since the Skyrunning Calendar came out between the Ultra and the Extreme series, but the timing of the Ultra events makes the most sense to me. I will race less than I ever have, and be more prepared than ever, which should make for some serious fun!So that's it for now. I have another post coming soon, that I actually promised over a month ago, about my time in Hong Kong. In late October-early November I went to China and Hong Kong. I posted about the China part of the trip, but not Hong Kong. So that delayed post is next, likely followed by a report of a winter traverse of the Grey's River Range that Ty Draney and I did a few days ago. I would appreciate any comments or thoughts that you (all 12 of you) have about the upcoming goals, posts or anything else. Thanks for following along!