I’ve not made any New Year’s resolutions this year, as such – instead I’ve decided to make a set of targets I am going to (try to) meet in 2011. I’ve also decided to record them here, so in 11 months time I can measure against how I’ve done! These ‘targets’ are actually the minimum I hope to achieve.

So, in no particular order..

  • Go climbing 20 times.
  • Write 50 blog entries.
  • Deliver the Growing Leaders course.
  • Go the cinema twice.
  • Obtain and maintain a weight in the range 68-72 kg.
  • Submit a photo either for publication or to a competition.
  • Go camping.
  • Cook a dish I have never cooked before.

It’s not an entirely ambitious list. Climbing, and blogging are potentially challenging (I managed 12 climbs in 2010, and about 18 blog posts). My ideal is to climb once-a-week, but I’m given myself until the summer to get into this groove, mainly because of the littlest Handley. To be fair 11 of the climbs in 2010 were Feb-July, but in July I had an awkward fall which put me out of action for 6 weeks, and then a baby inconveniently came along.

I haven’t been 70kg in 11 years, but I did get down to 72kg in October (before I started using chocolate and caffeine as substitutes for sleep) – it’s subsequently started creeping back up. Actually the graph of my weight for 2002 – 2010 is quite interesting. Don’t often put pictures in my blog, but here goes:

Weight chart, 2002 - 2010

What’s interesting to me is, apart from the outlier in 2004, I’ve been more or less constant around 80kg, until 2009, when it suddenly plummets. For a while I was half-worried I had some awful illness, but I think it’s just that late 2009 is when I started climbing again, and the energy expenditure combined with a bit of motivation to stop snacking tipped the balance. You really notice an extra 10kg when you’re hauling yourself up a wall!

So far I’ve managed 5 blogs in 2011 (including this one), which is well on track for 50 over the year.