Where The Heck Did Your Jan Run Goals Go?

March 30, 2026 | By DLake

Something that most runners won’t say out loud: you’re not where you thought you’d be, and it’s not because you’re lazy or broken.

It’s possibly because you walked straight into the same trap that derails 80% of runners this time of year.

You crushed January and some of February because you were riding the waves of “New Year: New Me” mentality.

The new training plan had you crushing your workouts and feeling quite fast. But then, somewhere around middle to late February, when everyone stops saying “Happy New Year” to you that you haven’t seen since the new year, and something shifted.

You possibly got hurt, burned out, sick, or maybe, just maybe, you stopped caring for a day. That day turned into a few days, then two weeks. While it’s April 1st right now, if you continue sliding down this path, it will be December 29th, and you’ll legit be right back where you were 90 days ago.

I’m here to be the optimistic guy that I am and tell you something you might need to hear: You didn’t fail! You walked into a blueprint that was rigged to fail from the start. The good news is that you’ve still got time, but you gotta stop doing the thing that killed you during Q1 (yes, let’s act like a business here).

In this post, I’ll break down the two traps that got you and how to avoid them moving forward.

TRAP #1: PEAK FITNESS MADE YOU STUPID (The Overconfidence Trap)

This is the sneaky one because it feels like success.

You hit your stride around week four. You were running fast with a low heart rate and everything was flowing. So what did you do? You did exactly what you shouldn’t have done: you pushed harder.

More volume, an extra interval session, and you skipped that rest day because you were “feeling it.”

Here’s the psychology that’s easy to say but hard to do: Staying on course is progress. When everything’s going well, your brain gets overconfident. You stop respecting the thing that’s working.

The trap is thinking peak fitness is something you’ve own, but you’ve just rented it, and the rent is constant effort. Miss a payment is when you skip recovery, don’t eat at the right time, or stop planning a week in advance so you’re ready for life to throw the variables in front of you to slide out on like a Mario Kart banana. And now you’re sitting there waiting for the landlord Lakitu to ride his cloud and boot you out. (I’m playing way too much Mario Kart with my kid these days)

The Q2 fix: Stop asking “how hard can I push?” but instead start asking “what would April-You need to keep progressing 1% better in September?” Usually, it’s not the best time, but more like I “stayed healthy” or “didn’t burn out” or “actually recovered like a disciplined adult.” Write that down. Make that your non-negotiable. Everything else is secondary.

---

TRAP #2: YOU DROWNED IN TOO MANY VOICES (The Complexity Trap)

Before Jan 2026 you used to “just run”.

Then you wanted to be smarter about it, so you added a tool. Just one metric to track, which seemed reasonable. But then you heard about another approach (the Norwegian Singles) that made sense too, and you layered that in. A podcast episode landed on something you hadn’t considered, so you started paying attention to that as well. By mid-February, you weren’t running anymore but it was more like you were managing a dashboard and cross-referencing data from five different sources that half the time contradicted each other.

And somewhere in all that noise, you lost focus and got super confused.

Complexity is a killer. Not because information is bad. It’s because humans can only actually care about one thing at a time. You know what happens when you try to optimize for five things with no main priority that gets all the focus? You optimize for nothing.

Here’s what Derek Sivers figured out: Simple is the opposite of easy because simple is hard. This is not word salad, I promise. Let me say that again: Simple is the opposite of easy because simple is hard. This is because simple means you have to pick one thing and throw the rest away.

The Q2 fix: What’s the one metric that actually matters to you right now? Not what sounds smart, now what you wanted six months ago because you announced it to everyone on social media, and def not the upcoming race that all the runners in your local club are doing. The one thing that, if you got it even 80% right, would make the next five months feel successful.

Pick from these:

• Your running fitness?
• Your consistency?
• Staying healthy?
• Spending less time doing non-running things
• Spending less time doing running things (yeah, I’m in this boat right now)

Pick it and then delete everything else. Like unsubscribe, mute, unfollow, delete the app, 100% ignore.

THE SIMPLE FIX IS THE ONE YOU’VE BEEN AVOIDING

You already know what to do; you’re just waiting for permission to do less. Let’s crush Q2 and get 1% better together.