Goals for 2016

As it now mid-February, it is now the time of year when I finally update you with my goals for this year. 

Recap of 2015

But before I set out my goals for the year ahead, how did I do with my goals for last year?  Well, I set out 4 goals:

1. Start running again
2. Get physically fit again
3. To develop a non-trivial side project using JavaScript.
4. Marry my girlfriend Mei.

So, tackling each in turn:

1. Running – a partial success. I did build up my running, just not as much as I had hoped.  Looking at the sub-goals:
   1. As you can see from the graph of my monthly mileage below, trying to run 80 miles a month was probably a bit too ambitious.  I averaged just over 30 miles a month over 2015, and was hitting over 45 miles per month once I got going.
   2. I ran in one Parkrun, the Ecos run in Ballymena on Saturday 10th January 2015. Frankly, this was just too big a goal, and would have meant giving up every other Saturday morning. I needed to make this goal a lot more manageable.
2. Get fit – a definite fail.
   1. My end of year score in the Five Minute Fitnes Challenge was 182, actually down on my personal best of  194.
   2. My bodyweight at the end of 2015 was 78.4 kg at around 23% body fat – very poor. I started 2015 weighing 80.7 kg.
3. Develop a side project in JavaScript – Another fail! I did have a couple of side projects on the go, specifically one to export OneNote documents into markdown format, but I never got round to completing them or releasing them, due to a lack of time and interest. I’m not too concerned about this, as I have been heavily committed to my new role since April, and have been learning a lot. But I do think this something I need to look at again this year.
4. Marry my girlfriend Mei – Yes!! Mei and I married in the summer at St. Patrick’s church in Coleraine. The massive dip in my monthly running mileage was caused by the August wedding (and associated stress) and our honeymoon cruise to Norway.

So, based on a very mixed bag of results for last year’s goals, what about this year?  The main lessons I learnt from last year was to focus on a single big goal, and to be realistic about what you can achieve. Funnily enough, it is not the first time I’ve learnt the same lessons. So for this year:

1. Continue to focus on my running
   1. Run 12 Parkruns by end of 2016 – a slightly more realistic target!
   2. To be running 60 miles per month by the end of the year
2. Focus on my blog
   1. To blog a new article monthly, and to start focusing on generating more technical content for my blog.
   2. Migrate my blog away to a new blogging platform. Blogger was a good platform to start on back in March 2010, but it is definitely showing its age.  It is time for a blog makeover!!
   3. Make more time for blogging by giving up Twitter for the year. I enjoy Twitter and I have some good conversations there – but I also waste a lot of time, and occasionally I get dragged down into exchanging bile and snark. I would rather spend the time on something more meaningful and long term, like my blog and other side projects. I’ll occasionally post links to my own content on Twitter, but otherwise I’ll be avoiding it.

As usual, even if I don’t achieve my goals, I’ll hopefully learn or achieve something worthwhile.

Five Minute Fitness Test

In a previous post, I mentioned one of my goals for this year was to achieve a score of 250+ in the Five Minute Fitness Test. In this post, I’m going to describe the fitness test I’ll be using.

I came across the test in The Para Fitness Guide by Sam McGrath, the former Head of Parachute Training and Selection. If you’re interested in bodyweight training and getting in shape, I can’t recommend this book highly enough.  I’m particularly like this test as requires no equipment and can be done anywhere. And, as it depends on bodyweight only, it is good way to compare your relative muscular endurance over time.

The test is as follows:

• Press-ups – as many reps in 60 seconds
• Rest for 10 seconds
• Sit-ups (feet secured) - as many reps in 60 seconds
• Rest for 10 seconds
• Star Jumps - as many reps in 60 seconds
• Rest for 10 seconds
• Squat Thrusts – as many Reps in 60 seconds
• Rest for 10 seconds
• Burpees – as many reps in 60 seconds

In the book, the following fitness scale is used based on your combined score for the above exercises:

Fitness Level	Basic	Recruit	Soldier	Paratrooper
Score	0-99	100-199	200-264	265+

So far, my best score for the test is 194, so I still have some work to do to break 250+. 

Fair warning, this test is a lot tougher than it sounds. I strongly recommend taking it easy the first time you try it. I generally do this test once a week.  But I recently came across another Five Minute Fitness Test, and I have started alternating between the two for variety.

Goals for 2015

2014 was a pretty miserable year for me. I lost my mother due to illness. I spent a large part of the year not working, and I was quite unfit, as I wasn’t running due to a recurring Achilles injury.  I well aware that there are far too many people who are lot worse off, and that I am actually very privileged, but I can’t help but look back at last year with a lot of regret.

2015 will be a much better year.  I am planning to marry my beautiful girlfriend, Mei, in September.  I’ve just started a new role that I’m very excited about, and I’m now starting to run seriously again, after a lot of physiotherapy and exercise to rehabilitate my ankle. 

These are my goals for the year ahead:

1. To start running again!! Specifically, I want to:
   1. Run 80 miles per month by June.  I’m currently running around 25-30 miles per month, a very low mileage.
   2. Run every Parkrun in NI by the end of the year,  There are currently 19 Parkruns setup in Northern Ireland; I’ll be amazed if there isn’t 20+ by the end of the year.
2. Get physically fit again!!  Starting to run again is one thing, but I also want to improve my overall fitness.  This will mean:
   1. Achieve a score of 250+ in the Five Minute Fitness Challenge (blog post to come)
   2. To weigh 70Kg at under 15% body fat by December 2015
3. To develop a non-trivial side project using JavaScript. 
4. Marry my girlfriend Mei. The most important thing for the year ahead will be my marriage to Mei in September. 

Quotes

A few quotes that I’ve came across over the past few weeks that have really spoken to me:

“I Do Not Intend To Die, Washing A Teacup”

Attributed to Margaret Thatcher, The Iron Lady 2011 (courtesy of Jack Monroe’s excellent blog)

“A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.”

Traditional English nursery rhyme, courtesy of a comment on Barry Adam’s fantastic article “How I’ve been shafted by Darryl Collins from Banjax and Gingerparts”.  Take the time to read the comments – they’re a revelation.

“First we form habits, then they form us. Conquer your bad habits or they will conquer you.”

Dr. Rob Gilbert, Sports psychologist.

I think you can probably see a trend emerging from the quotes above.  It is time I got off my backside and started doing stuff again.

Race Calendar - 2013

Update - June 2016

You can now find a list of all my road racing results at http://www.andyparkhill.co.uk/p/race-results.html.

Just to post a list of the races I plan on running this year.  As you can see, I’m concentrating on 10K races (not surprising given my goals for the year), and a monthly attendance at my local Parkrun.  I’m also hoping to run a few slightly longer runs.
The races below marked in bold are races I have already signed up for:

Date	Race	Distance	Result (Minutes)	Pace (MPM)
February
Saturday 16th	Portrush Parkrun 5K	5K	20:13	6:30
April
Sunday 21st	Titanic Quarter 10K	10K	42:53	6:54
May
Saturday 4th	Portrush Parkrun 5K	5K	20:55	6:44
Monday 6th	Belfast City Marathon	Team Relay C – 7.1 miles	54:00 (approx.)	7:36
Friday 17th	Les Jones Memorial 10K	10K (actually about 9.5K)	39:42	6:44
June
Saturday 8th	Larne Half Marathon	13.1 miles	96:56	7:24
Friday 14th	Active Antrim 5 Mile Road Race	5 Miles	33:34	6:43
Sunday 23rd	Great North 10K	10K	43:38	7:01
Thursday 27th	Jude Gallagher Memorial Round The Bridges 10 Mile Road Run	10 Mile Road Run	70:00	7:00
July
Saturday 6th	Portrush Parkrun 5K	5K
Saturday 20th	Kennedy Kane McArthur Festival of Running	10K
Friday 26th	NFU Mutual 5 Mile
August
Sunday 4th	The World Police & Fire Games Half Marathon	13.1
Saturday 17th	Portrush Parkrun 5K	5K
TBC	Dessie’s Run	10K
September
Sunday 22nd	Belfast City Half Marathon
December
TBC	Seeley Cup 10K

So far, the Athletics NI race calendar doesn’t go further than the end of August, but I would expect that the biggest race of the year will be the Seeley Cup 10K , which is normally held in November or December.  As well as being the Northern Ireland championship event, it will be the race in which I hope to break the 40 minutes barrier.

Two other races of note – the Newcaste Parkrun in June. and the World Police & Fire Games Half Marathon in August.  The first race will be when I visit Gateshead to be a spectator at the European Athletics Team Championships.  I was lucky enough to be in London last year for the Olympics, and I am hoping that the Championships in Gateshead can be just as exciting.

I’ll continue to update this post with my planned races, and the times of the races I actually run. You can also check out my athlete profile on the Power of 10 and Run Britain sites.

Classical Music Starter Pack

A few people have asked about the classical music I plan on listening to this year.  Which composers?  What symphonies? 

I’ve put together this list of essential classical pieces after reading Discovering Classical Music by Ian Christians.  The book gives a concise introduction to classical music, and then takes ten of the greatest composers and gives a pen portrait of each, before examining their most accessible music. These are the pieces of music that stood out for me:

• Mozart
  1. Piano Concerto No. 22
  2. The Jupiter Symphony
  3. The Jupiter Symphony
  4. The Magic Flute
  5. The String Quintet in C
  6. Requiem
• Beethoven
  6. The Fifth Symphony
  7. The Fifth Piano Concerto (Emperor)
  8. The Violin Concerto
  9. The Moonlight Sonata
  10. The Archduke Trio
• Bach
  11. The Brandenburg Concertos
  12. The Concerto for Two Violins
  13. Toccata and Fugue in D minor
  14. Magnificat
  15. B Minor Mass
  16. St. Matthew Passion
  17. The Goldberg Variations
  18. The Well Tempered Clavier (performed by Glenn Gould)
• Schubert
  19. The Unfinished Symphony
  20. The Trout Qunitet
  21. Impromptu
• Berlioz
  22. Grande Messe des Morts Requiem
  23. Symphonie Fantastique
  24. Witches Sabbath
  25. Nuits d'Ete
  26. Te Deum
  27. Roman Carnival
  28. Dramatic Symphony, Romeo and Juliet
• Verdi
  29. Rigoletto
  30. La traviata
  31. Otello
  32. Requiem
  33. Aida
• Bruckner
  34. Third Mass
  35. Te Deum
  36. Seventh Symphony
  37. Fourth Symphony
  38. Fifth, Eight and Ninth Symphony
  39. The Third Mass
• Tchaikovsky
  40. Swan Lake
  41. Pathetique Symphony
  42. Violin Concerto
  43. First Piano Concerto
  44. Fantasy Overture, Romeo & Juliet
  45. Sleeping Beauty
  46. The Nutcracker
  47. Serenade for Strings
  48. Symphony No. 4
• Dvorak
  49. Slavonic Dances
  50. Serenade for Strings & Serenades for Wind
  51. Eight Symphony
  52. Cello Concerto
  53. American Quartert
  54. Symphony from the New World
  55. Seventh Symphony
  56. Sixth Symphony
  57. Piano Quintet
  58. String Quintet
• Mahler
  59. Second Symphony, The Resurrection
  60. Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn)
  61. Symphony No. 1
  62. Symphony No. 4
  63. Symphony No. 8
• Holst
  64. The Planets

If you are a classical buff, and want to suggest any other composers or pieces of music I should listen to, please add a comment below. 

Goals for 2013

"Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbours, and let every new year find you a better man."  - Benjamin Franklin

As usual, I'm late posting my goals for the new year ahead. I don't see this as being a bad thing. You should take time to consider how & what you are going to spend your limited free time on. This is particularly relevant to me as I have just started a new job with quite a long commute time.

Having looked at how I got on with 2012 goals (blog post to come), I decided to change tack completely, and to limit myself to just three goals for the coming year.

1. Break 40 minutes in a 10 kilometre road race.  My last 10K race time was 43:20 (Dessie’s Run, Derry 2012), so to get it below 40 minutes will take sustained, consistent training.  But I doubt if I’ll equal my PB of 35:15 minutes at the Seeley Cup, Belfast, some 8 years ago and when I was over a stone lighter.
2. This year, I will be making a big push to learn several new technologies in my free time. As part of this, I will post 40 articles on this blog, with the majority of the posts being technical articles.
3. To listen to 40 pieces of classical music.  I have always wanted to educate myself about great music, and I think it is about time I started.  I’ll blog soon about the various pieces I plan on listening to.

Making the Weight…

At the start of this year, I spent a lot of time analysing how I had met my goals for 2011, and setting my goals for this year.  One of those new goals was to get my weight below 70kg.

A quick look at my bodyweight log shows that my progress at the start of the year was slow but steady… Until April, when my weight jumped back up to 75Kg and it has remained consistently there ever since. 

It is pretty obvious I need some more motivation to get my weight done.  So if I get my weight below 70 kg by 1st December of this year, I’ll be taking a holiday in USA in 2013.  If I don’t make the weight, I’ll be spending a wet weekend in Portrush.  If that doesn’t motivate me to get into shape, I don’t know what will. 

You can continue to monitor my bodyweight log, and I’ll let you all at the end of the year whether I’ve achieved my weight goal.

My Personal Goals for 2012

After reviewing my goals for last year, it is time to reveal my goals for 2012:

1. Reduce my weight to under 70 kg.

Over the past few years, my weight has gradually crept up. With a tagline like “will code for cake”, how could my weight not increase?  As a software developer, my job is sedentary, and due to a chronic knee injury, my running days are over.  But this year, I’m going to lose the middle age paunch, and get back in shape.  I’m currently weighing in at 75 kg; back in my University days, when I was running and climbing daily, I weighted 68-69 kg.  I’ve already starting looking seriously at my diet, and I am exercising daily.  You can follow my progress by checking my bodyweight log – I update it daily.

2. Release a mobile application and a web application.

Over the past few months, I’ve been pretty disheartened about my career in general, and about programming in particular.  After taking some time to reflect on this, I realised it was for a very simple reason – I wasn’t doing any serious coding.  At work, I’ve spent the last 3 years working with SharePoint.  This isn’t the place for a Zed Shaw-esque rant on SharePoint development – suffice to say that the SharePoint isn’t the most stimulating platform to work with, and could definitely count as one of the most frustrating.  In particular, I’ve spent the past two months configuring SharePoint demos, as opposed to actually coding.  At home, I’ve haven’t done in serious coding on personal projects in far too long.

To get my passion for programming back again, I am going to start following Scott Hanselman’s advice and start doing more.  In particular, I will stop watching TV in the weekday evenings, and start work coding my personal projects.  As well more coding, I will be learning a new language – at the minute I'm still deciding whether to learn Python or Ruby. But my first project will be a Android application.  More news to follow soon!

3. Save 30% of my net income (in addition to pension contributions).

This follows on from my goal to increase my saving to 20% last year.  In the event, I saved 18.76% of my salary in 2011.  To increase my savings to 30% will be a major challenge, but one that will be useful to attempt, even if I fall short of the actual target.

The three goals above definitely reflect the lessons I learnt from last year’s goals.  The new goals are:

• Limited in number and scope – I’ve only got limited time and attention to focus in specific problems. So I need to focus on a small number of goals that can give the most benefit.  That is the main lesson form one of the best books I read last year – The Power of Less
  
• SMART.  I (and for goals 1 and 2, you!) will be able to track my progress.

Hopefully, I will successfully achieve all of my goals – but even if I don’t, I intend to have fun trying!

Review of My Personal Goals for 2011– Part 3

This is the third and final part of my review of last year’s goals.  In my previous posts, I covered the first three goals.  My fourth goal was:

4. Career - Become Microsoft Certified in SharePoint 2010.

I actually met this goal fairly easily, passing exam 70-573 (Application Development in Microsoft SharePoint 2010), and in addition becoming a MCITP in Business Intelligence Development (exams 70-448 and 70-452), as all 3 exams were required for work.  Of course the fact that Microsoft certifications for developers are effectively worthless is neither here or there. 

5. Financial – Save 20% of my net salary (in addition to pension contributions)

I feel slightly short on this goal, with a total savings of 18.76%.  Given that this was from a base saving rate of just under 10%, I’m counting this as a pass!

 

 

Overall, I‘m actually happy enough with how I progressed my goals, but there were definitely a number of issues with the goals I set for 2011:

• Too many general aims, with too many specific goals.
  
• The various goals were too disparate, with no underlying theme.
  
• Several of the goals weren't of any true benefit to me.

All of which I will take into account in my next post, when I’ll finally spell out what my goals are for 2012.

Review of My Personal Goals for 2011– Part 2

This is the second in an impromptu series of posts reviewing my progress in meeting my 2011 resolutions.  In the first post, I covered my goal of getting fit.  In this post, I look at the second and third goals:

2. Friends and Family
   • Spend some time each week staying in touch with friends and family.

There are so many things wrong with this goal that I really don’t know where to begin.  I met this goal; but then everyone who isn’t a hermit could have met this goal!

What went wrong?  It certainly isn’t a SMART goal, as it is not specific.  A better goal would have been to say that I would phone a friend or relative weekly. But the worst thing about it is that it such a blatant piece of  “motherhood and apple pie” that it is worthless to state as a goal.  Apologies!

What can I improve on? I need to consider if a goal is worthwhile pursuing – will it help improve me?  Will it improve the lives of those around me?  And is the goal a SMART goal?

3. Personal Interests
   • Read 100 new books.
     
   • Watch 50 films.
     
   • Release an open-source project.
     
   • Write a new blog post weekly.
   
   

Again, I repeated the mistake I explained in the earlier post – too many sub-goals.

A quick check shows that I read at least 73 books last year.  I’m not sure how many of these books were in the original list of 100 books I created at the start of 2011 – I’m guessing under 20. A lot of my reading is spurred by investigating random topics (for example, Judo, WWII, bodyweight workouts, Linux, productivity and self help books).  The list is evenly split between fiction and non-fiction.  The fiction selection is a mixed bag even by my standards.  Some were classics (Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin).  Others were simply dire (A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness – I threw it away from me after 20 pages).  You can view the full list on my Shelfari Profile.

I definitely didn’t watch 50 films during last year. At a guess, I watched around 25-30.  Which I’m very glad about.  Given the number of TV series that I follow, I certainly don’t have time to watch a film a week as well.

I haven’t released an open source project, which I’m very disappointed about.  Indeed, I managed to do very little coding in my personal time.  Likewise, I only wrote 7 blog posts last year, compared to 45 articles in the year before.  This is definitely something I’m looking to change with this year’s goals.

What went wrong? Again, too many goals.  Also again, goals that weren’t relevant – what was the point in trying to watch a film a week?  The book list is very useful, but the original list has changed from a list of 100 books to read in a year, to a list of books that I will read at some point.  In fact, I plan on deleting the original list and migrating the list to Google Tasks.  Trying to read all these books and films was part of the reason why I didn’t spend enough time coding and blogging.  the various sub-goals were in fact contradictory.

What can I improve on? Again, I need to focus on what is the true goal I want to achieve.  The goals to read a certain number of books or watch a certain number of films were irrelevant; I needed to focus on spending time on my personal projects, on actually creating something.  It is pretty clear that I’m spending 90% of my time consuming, and only 10% of the time producing, when it should be the other way round.

Review of My Personal Goals for 2011– Part 1

At the start of this year, I compiled a list of goals for 2011.  I thought it would be useful to look again at the 5 general aims that I set out then, to see if there were any lessons I could learn for the year ahead.

To recap, I had 5 main goals for 2011:

1. Get fit!
   • Reduce weight to 68kg.
   • Eat no chocolate, and work to reduce the amount of sugar in my diet.
   • Exercise daily for at least 45 minutes.
   • Get at least 7 hours sleep every night.
   • Start a martial art by April.
2. Friends and Family
   • Spend some time each week staying in touch with friends and family.
3. Personal Interests
   • Read 100 new books.
   • Watch 50 films.
   • Release an open-source project.
   • Write a new blog post weekly.
4. Career
   • Become Microsoft Certified in SharePoint 2010.
5. Financial
   • To save 20% of my net salary (separate from pension contributions).

I had hoped to do this review in a single post – it turns out, I’ll need to do a series of post to cover everything.  In this post, I’ll look at the first goal – getting fit. 

Overall, I missed this goal by a mile – I’m definitely not fitter than I was at the start of 2011.  Considering each of the sub-goals in turn:

My current weight is 76.4kg, higher than the start of last year.  A check of my online bodyweight log shows the following graph for my weigh over the 2011:

Part of the initial weight loss in the graph above was due to changes in my diet; I didn’t eat any chocolate in the first half of the year.  Unfortunately, I simply displaced my chocolate craving with other sugary treats.  In the second half of the year, my diet started to decline, and I started eating chocolate occasionally, which led to the weight gain.  I experimented at various times with keeping a photo food diary, but found it difficult to keep this going.  In the future, I’m planning on maintaining a written food diary, and looking at the use of portion control.

For the goal of exercising daily, it was partial success.  A quick check of my diary shows that I exercised on 312 days, or approximately 85% of the time.  There were two main periods when I couldn’t exercise – two weeks in April, due to injury, and a further two weeks in November, when due to major  deadline for a work project I couldn’t exercise as planned.  A major improvement in my exercise plan was to start each day with some light circuit training and stretching.  This only take 25-30 minutes, and is a great way to wake yourself up.  It also means that if I miss a scheduled exercise session in the evening, I only need to add a brisk walk for 20-30 minutes to meet my daily exercise quota.  This is something I plan on keeping on in future.

I definitely didn’t get 7 hours sleep every night. I also noticed that a lack of sleep definitely hindered my diet, as I tend to binge late at night. 

I did start a martial art during the year.  In fact, I started two, attending both Judo and kickboxing during the year.  Unfortunately, in my first Judo session, I tore my pectoral muscle (an extremely painful injury – I initially thought I had cracked a rib), which led to two weeks unable to exercise completely, followed by  6 weeks of light exercise.  I started kickboxing in June, and stuck at for 4 months, at which point I ditched it – I found it very boring.  Strangely, I could see myself going back to Judo.

What went wrong?  The overall aim of getting fit was a worthwhile one.  But I attempted to do too much, with too many sub-goals; I should have focused on losing weight.  I was already exercising regularly, but I was still slowly gaining weight.  I didn’t focus on the reasons for the weight gain – my poor diet.  Until this happens, I’m not going to get fitter.  I also wasn’t flexible enough in my goals – I didn’t plan on injury or work commitments stopping me training.

What can I improve on?  Concentrate on the core issue – my diet in this case.  Everything else will fall into place when this is dealt with.  Also, I need to be more flexible in planning to meet the goal.