I’d like to go over 2016 as it comes to a close. I’m
going to do this bullet point style.
• First, I’ve
been less than stellar about posting. Sorry about that.
Genuinely. And, even when I was posting regularly, my posts were so stale
and blah. Seriously, they were just me vomiting up my daily/weekly
stats. That’s why in 2017 I won’t be doing weekly weigh ins and
recaps. I’ll just kinda post willy-nilly like I’ve been doing the past
couple weeks. Talk about my workouts and runs and mix that in with
chatting about what’s going on in my life in general.
• Next up, I
wanted to PR everything…and I DID! My 5K PR is 26:45, 8K (5 mile) is
43:26, 10K is 53:59, 10 mile is 1:34:31, half marathon is 2:03:29, and full
marathon is 4:29:53. That’s pretty phenomenal! The only thing I
didn’t do this year that I really wish I had done was do a 1 mile time trial
where I just run 1 mile as fast as possible. I do know that my fastest
mile DURING a race was 8:04, but that was during a 5K race, so it’s not all
that accurate as to what I can do if I only had to run 1 mile and 1 mile
only. I’m guessing I can knock out a 7:30, maybe even faster!
• I set an
official goal to run 1000 miles this year but had secret hopes of doing at
least 1200 miles. I surpassed my official goal back around the end of
October. I passed up my secret hope in mid-December! I’m so beyond
proud of myself. In 2015 I set the goal to run 1000 miles too, but fell
way short of that goal. Part of that was largely due to 2 things:
temporarily falling out of love with running for about 2-3 months, and being
injured and in a walking boot and completely unable to run for 6 weeks.
• I did reach my
original goal weight of 160 and then I went even lower and set a new “ultimate”
goal weight of 145. And, I’m sad to say, that while I did get super close
to that ultimate goal, I did not reach it and in fact, thanks to an issue with
a medication I was taking, I regained over 15 pounds, putting me back above my
original goal weight. However, I did discover that I really like how I
look and feel at around 150 and I know that 145 is totally achievable. I
just have to try hard and control myself.
• I’m smack in the middle of the Austin Runner’s Club
Distance Challenge. I’ve already done 3 of the 5 races and I’ve rocked
all 3 of them, snagging a PR at 2 of them and a near PR at the 3rd
one. All 3 of the races so far are new-to-me races to run, so they’ve
been really exciting to run. I’m super excited to run the 3M half
marathon, the 4th race in the series as it’s another new-to-me race
and it has a net downhill trend, so I’m hoping to snag yet another half PR and
maybe finally finish sub-2 hour!
• I didn’t manage to be able to afford the lifetime
membership with the Marathon Maniacs or the Half Fanatics, but I did buy 2 year
memberships for each for now. I’ll do the lifetime when those run out.
• My Norfolk pine died. I was horrible at remembering
to water it or I would over water it. So I’m not sure if I drowned it or
dehydrated it. Maybe I shocked the poor thing and that’s what killed
it. At any rate, I think I’ll stick to fake plants for now.
• I have totally
rocked keeping up with my journal. My entries at the beginning of the
year were fairly short and to the point. As the year went on, my entries
became longer and better written. Also, my therapist seems to have broken
up with me because he didn’t show up to my last appointment with him and then
never responded to the email I sent him regarding it. Oh well, I was
thinking of stopping anyway. My running and journaling and increasing
hanging out time with friends seems to be doing me more good than my meetings
with him were doing for me.
• I was totally confident enough to run in just a sports bra
for the majority of the late summer and fall…until I had the medication issue
and regained some weight. I really love how freeing it is. Plus, as
a result, I met a whole fantastic group of ladies with the Sports Bra Squad,
which is a nationwide movement to help increase women’s body image and
self-confidence.
• I did manage to finally kick the diet soda habit, thanks
to my attempt at going paleo. Not only that, but I kicked sweeteners to
the curb completely. In fact, I had a GIANT box of the pink packets and I
gave them to a friend. I also stopped using trans-fat laden creamer in my
coffee and gave all the creamer I still had in my apt to my supervisor. I
did also cut back on my salt consumption. So that’s good too.
Overall, 2016
was decent. It wasn’t great and it wasn’t bad. There were more ups
than downs, I’d like to say…and I believe that too. I think, on a scale
of 1 to 10, I’d give 2016 a solid 7. Like I said…decent. I learned
a LOT. I failed a LOT. I succeed a LOT. I felt a LOT. I
did a LOT. This was definitely a year of doing a LOT and making a LOT of
memories. So, I can say I’m mostly satisfied. Sure there are things
I wish I’d succeeded better at…mostly finances. But I have big plans in
that regard for 2017. And then, of course, I didn’t reach my weight loss
goal and hang onto it.