I COMPLETED EVERY GOAL!!!!!! FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!!!!!!!

1. Complete 45% of St. Paul streets.
   As of last night, I’m at 50.04% completion, which is exciting!
   
   I’ve still got large chunks of the East Side, Payne-Phalen, Frogtown, and Midway to do – including the street where my first home was! There are some bits and pieces of downtown left, as well as some roads near the airport and in the Battle Creek area, and one tiny little street in Highland Park that I keep forgetting about.
2. Complete 25% of West St. Paul streets.
   This ended up being easier than I thought. I had the CityStrides site owner do a manual refresh at one point and I think that pushed me almost to 25% on its own. I have complete 58.39% of West St. Paul as of 11/30. My husband is at about 78% of it right now and will probably complete it entirely in the next couple weeks! I’m a bit curious if I can finish it before the end of the year, but I’m also trying to focus diversifying my running a bit more.
3. Run a solo Twin Cities Marathon.
   I did it on October 11th! It really sucked, but I am also really pleased that I completed it.
4. Get caught up and ahead on YTD mileage over last year.
   Done! I’m 48.57 mi ahead of where I was 11/30/19. If I’m healthy and motivated, I should be on track to have my highest mileage year ever! I just knocked on wood.
5. Run 3 new trails/parks in the Twin Cities metro area.
   I’m glad that I checked back on my goals for the fall, because I almost forgot about this one. I ran at Keller Lake Park in early November. The trails there aren’t very long, but they do connect to Lake Phalen so it’s easy to add in extra trail mileage.

On a gorgeous, 70F day a few weeks later, I ran at Elm Creek, which I know is a favorite of many trail running friends. It was lovely, and there are still plenty of miles left there for me to explore. And I can ski there too! If there’s ever snow.

I did a 10 miler on the Rice Creek Regional Trail (with some street running since I didn’t quite figure out where the trail went once in Circle Pines) – due to some poor planning I had to do the final mile or so by moonlight, but it worked out okay.

I got in a couple bonus locations – an additional section of Spring Lake Park, and a little trail in Marydale Park in the North End.

I think this is the first time I’ve ever met all my goals! That’s exciting! Yes, some of them were easy, but I did also run a solo marathon. I’ve also failed to meet easy goals before, so there’s no guarantee that I’d be able to do everything on this list – I had to do all 3 of the new metro area trails in the month of November in order to squeeze in that goal, thanks to poor planning and a poor memory.

I do like setting goals I might not achieve; I think there’s value in the struggle. I don’t necessarily consider it a bad thing to miss some of the goals I lay out at the beginning of the year/season/race. It’s only a bad thing if I fall short because I didn’t even try. It also makes it that much sweeter when I do accomplish everything I set out to.

As usual, I don’t plan to set any specific winter (Dec-Feb) goals. I’ve got plenty to keep me motivated with my long-term goals, plus I’ll set year-long goals at the beginning of next month. I do have a couple other things in mind to end the year (like a big run on the Solstice) and a few 2020 goals that haven’t been ticked off the list yet, so that should keep December interesting.