“New year, new me,” you determinedly tell yourself as don’t hit snooze on your 6:00am alarm for once and lace up those shiny white trainers Santa delivered last week.

We’re just over a week into 2026, so hopefully you’ve still got the juice to get yourself out the door with a fresh set of goals, and mainlined enough motivational Instagram slop that the cold, dark January mornings haven’t gotten the better of you just yet.

Here’s the looming bad news: while 2026 may be a new year, you’re still the same schmuck.

Unless you’re some kind of New Year’s Resolutions savant, history suggests you’re most likely re-upping on a promise you made yourself in 2025 then broke before February. But you’re not alone! Millions of runners all over the world are making the same resolutions over and over again, hoping for a different outcome. This time, however, we’re here to help you break the cycle. So if any of these common running resolutions find themselves already wavering on your vision board, we’ve got the answer to make them stick.

“I’ll activate before/stretch after runs.”

Take it from these newsletter writers and our aching Achilles tendons: if activation exercises before runs are still optional for you, consider yourself lucky. But if you’re a morning routine procrastinator, it can sometimes feel harder than a 20-mile run to simply do three minutes of prehab. The key here is to implement a reward system—be both Pavlov and the dog. Find a small, low-stakes treat in your life to tie to your PT routine. Maybe it’s a handful of Skittles; maybe it’s ten minutes of TikTok scrolling. BUT you have to get yourself salivating at the prospect of loosening up your hip flexors first.

“I’m going to PR in ____ this year.”

Well, that’s not a resolution as much as a hope, is it? We can all resolve to break four minutes in the mile or make a U.S. team, but good luck actually doing it. Resolutions that are outcome-based and not process-oriented are doomed to fail, because you’re not actually giving yourself an achievable day-to-day action. Instead, think about the steps that you (or better yet, you and your coach), think need to be done to get that big PR. Is it increasing your running from four days a week to six? Getting massage treatment once a month? Not swapping out every long tempo run for repeat 400s? Make a list of the changes you think need to happen to take you from point A to point (P)B, and bingo: those are your actual resolutions.

“I’ll start doing core.”

Nice. That’s an all-time classic. We all say it’s to stabilize our running form and lower our injury risk, but let’s be real: we all just want a sick eight-pack. And yet, the yoga mat sits in the corner collecting dust from January 10th onward until next December you solemnly declare that this is the year. This is a tough nut to crack, but one small step is to physically leave your house. Sure, you don’t technically need to go to the gym to get a few minutes of planks in, but at the gym there’s not a comfy couch or bed just inches away, and hey, you came all this way? This won’t work if the harder step for you is walking out the door than doing the sit-ups, but if you’re simply not a bedroom abs-master, a change of scenery could do the trick.

“I’m going to slow down on easy runs.”

Coaches around the world are screaming this one into the abyss, and yet stubborn, type-A distance runners everywhere insist upon clicking off slightly uncomfortable mileage simply to make their Strava graph look pretty. Telling yourself you’re going to notch it back 30 seconds a mile seems like a good idea in theory, until that third split clicks in and you start getting antsy. (And then you wonder why your legs are heavy for the next workout, week in and week out.) But peer pressure can be a good thing: get your training group on board and encourage public shaming. Vow that no matter how crisp the air or how springy the shoes, you won’t dip under 7:30 pace. Then relentlessly dog on the compulsive half-stepper who splits a 7:28, and the rest will fall in line.

“I’m going to eat healthier.”

This is a classic one that extends even beyond the running community. You head out on that first grocery store trip of January full of optimism, stuffing your cart with kale and quinoa and all manner of super foods. Inevitably, the complexity of cooking up new recipes or the urge to simply DoorDash a burrito overwhelms you and you’re back on your processed-sugar, fast-food BS. The fix to this one is to not aim for a full Gwyneth Paltrow-style reinvention; simply find one or two new, healthy recipes you actually like and go from there. Very few of us actually enjoy a plate of raw vegetables every meal, but hey, you like sweet potatoes? Cook those suckers up with a little oil and salt. Smash avocado onto everything if that’s your vibe. Treat your sweet tooth to a blueberry smoothie. Eating healthier doesn’t have to mean eating food you don’t like.

They say it only takes a few weeks of consistency for a practice to become a habit. So by the time we’re writing newsletters about Millrose, you could be a whole new runner—for good this time. You can do it!

For more of the top stories and analysis from the biggest stories in track and field from the past week, subscribe to The Lap Count newsletter for free. New edition every Wednesday morning at 6:00 a.m. ET.