New Year, New Goals

The New Year has arrived! 2014 will be a better year, or will it?

How do you plan to make 2014 a great year? Do you make resolutions? Or do you let the year bring what it may without outlining any personal goals?

I am a firm believer in resolutions. Not because someone will hold my feet to the fire if I don’t accomplish them but because it helps me keep my eye on the prize.

Do you set your resolutions on January 1 and then not check them until the end of the year when it’s too late or do you set timeline goals for each resolution?

I do both. I give myself timelines within the year that I should accomplish them, but am flexible enough that I don’t berate myself if I don’t complete something by a certain date.

What are your New Year resolutions? Are they purely personal, purely professional, or all of the above?

Mine are purely personal.

Do you share your resolutions?

I believe that if you share your New Year goals with others then you’ve cemented the deal and you push yourself to make them happen. That doesn’t mean I share all of them. There’s usually one very personal one that I keep to myself.

The best part of setting goals or resolutions, at least for me, is the chasing down of those dreams. It wouldn’t be any fun if it was just dropped on your lap. It takes heart and soul, sweat and tears to imagine a goal, set it, and achieve it.

What if you don’t achieve your goals? Do you kick yourself? Curl up in a corner and whine about it?

I tend to say as long as I tried then that’s all that counts. If I fall a little short then I pat myself on the back and determine if I need to adjust the goal. Is it more important to lose ten pounds or be able to run a 5K the entire time?

What are your resolutions for 2014?

I have a couple of running and health related goals this year. Okay, more than a couple.

My first goal is to run my first ultra marathon, a 50K. That’s 31 miles! I’ve already picked the race. It’s the Lake Waramaug Ultra in Connecticut on April 27. My only goal is to finish the race with a smile on my face.

I love running but I’m not exactly fast. My other running related resolution is to improve my half-marathon time to 2 hours 30 minutes. Last year I improved my half marathon time by more than twenty minutes. Yea me! So I’m only asking for another 10 minute improvement. Wish me luck!

Since we are talking time improvement, I might as well say that means I am also hoping to improve my marathon performance. Last year my goal was to run one marathon (the Marine Corps Marathon) and just finish. I did! I actually ran two marathons and I did improve between the two races so that was good, but now let’s see if I can do better when I run 4 marathons.

While I am at it, I want to run 2014 miles in 2014! Ha. Come on! Join me in the insanity.
For a more well-rounded health goal, I hope to lose 10% body fat. GASP! I just put that in black and writing for the world to see. I can feel my toes burning from having my feet held to the fire.

I want to improve my core. As part of this, I am pledging to do a 60-second or longer plank every day of 2014 and 20 body-weight squats. Now, this will be the hard part!

An easy resolution for me is to read 52 books, at least one a week. Since I’m an avid reader this is a fun goal and usually easily attainable. If this is one of your New Year resolutions, a good way to achieve this goal is to participate in read-a-thon’s. I really like the way the Dewey Read-a-thon is run and if possible, I participate in the 24-hr read-a-thon twice a year. Check out the Dewey Read-a-thon website at http://24hourreadathon.com/.

There is one more resolution on my list, but that one I am holding close to the vest. [WINK]

Hope you share your resolutions or goals and have fun achieving them in 2014.

Now, I'm off to work on these goals. Got my first race of the new year in a couple of hours. Okay, it's only a mile race, but it's with a friend and that time with a friend is more precious than any resolution.

Happy New Year! May it be the best!

Journey to the Marine Corps Marathon

It’s almost here! I am one week away from reaching my BIG running goal for the season! My stomach is flip-flopping, my nerves are jangling, and my heart trips over itself every time I think about it, but I’m ecstatic that the main event is only seven days away.

How did I get here?

It all started six months ago when a friend of mine suggested my next running goal not be just a marathon, but the Marine Corps Marathon. So when registration opened up for the Marine Corps Marathon, I was one of the thousands of people who sat at her desk and entered her information and waited then did it again, and again, and again until it finally went through. Yes, the registration site couldn’t handle all us crazy people coming at it all at once.

Once I received the email saying I was registered, that’s when the fun began!

The first thing I had to do was come up with a training plan. Yeah, well, just do a search on the Internet and you will find any number of them. I looked at them and basically took my race schedule for the year and incorporated several with that. I’m not an all-out runner, I do the intervals of run then walk so I trained according to that. The hardest part for me was working in the longer runs. Ugh! Running more than 10 miles by yourself or without a carrot dangled in front of you is challenging to say the least and sometimes very boring.

The boring is where I learned about getting the right music playlist. It gave me something else to focus on beyond the strides, the staying upright, and the timing of when to drink and when to toss a Gatorade Chew in my mouth. Once I got enough Eminem on my playlist I was set! Not kidding. Those of you who know me know I am a country music girl. Yeah, not when it comes to running. When Eminem hits my ears it’s just the right motivation to keep you moving even if you have blisters on the bottom of your feet or you can barely lift a leg for the next stride.

My training plan definitely included many races, way more than I am sure some professionals or elite athletes would recommend. But, for me I needed the added motivation of the people and the exuberance of crossing a finish line. More for me was the goal of getting faster. The races allowed me to challenge and push myself to improvement. Add to that I kept a spreadsheet of every race and the finish times so I could track progress or not. Oh, yeah, I got better, stronger, and faster!

Running alone is not enough to train for the Marine Corps Marathon or any long distance race. You need to work your core, strengthen your upper and lower body and learn to eat right to achieve a fitness level that will allow you to endure.

Thank goodness I already had the best trainer. Jon Tobey of The Fitness Factory is a fantastic group and one-on-one trainer. He listens and designs plans to help achieve your goal. And the training is never static, which is a personal pet peeve of mine. Every Friday was different! I never knew what to expect. Some days we’d kill my core, others we would do supersets of arms and core or legs and core. My favorites were the days he added in some boxing. Who doesn’t love to punch something! If that wasn’t enough, I did a double workout on Tuesdays where I incorporated Jon’s thirty minute metabolic meltdown class and his forty-five minute bootcamp. On Thursdays, I did just the metabolic meltdown. Great fitness classes that will challenge every part of your body.

So I had the running plan. I had an amazing trainer. Now all I had to do was figure out how to achieve the weight loss and eat for the fitness level I was trying to achieve. This was harder for me. Until I found my naturopath, Dr. Kristen O’Dell of Bedford Natural Medicine. This woman saved me! Almost two years ago I was diagnosed with kidney issues without knowing the cause. Kristen not only identified the issue, she treated it naturally! On top of that, she identified a root cause as to my health problems that I wasn’t even aware of. I have something called leaky gut syndrome. We identified the foods my body wasn’t absorbing, which just so happened to be almost all the foods I ate on a daily basis. Then we changed my diet and added a nice amino acid called glutamine to my daily routine. All I can tell you is that her supplements and the change in my diet have gotten me to be much more physically fit from the inside.

People ask me every day how I can eat like I am. For those of you who do not know, I am not eating gluten, egg, or dairy and many fruits and vegetables. I eat nothing processed when I can help it. The only vice I have not given up is my Mountain Dew. I have it every morning with my glutamine and magnesium powder poured into it. Yeah, both Jon Tobey and Kristen O'Dell cringe when I say that, but you know, a girl has to have one vice. [GRIN] When you want something bad enough you will do whatever you have to do!

In every pursuit of a physical goal there are bound to be injuries. Luckily my big one came early on in the training. I woke up one morning with excruciating back pain. I tried to blow it off, but that didn’t work. I ended up at a doctor office. Much like my kidneys, I was not satisfied with not being able to identify the issue and fix it. I’m a smart cookie though, and I found a magnificent chiropractor. The issue is my SI joint. Apparently, it doesn’t always like to stay where it belongs. Dr. Mark Stagnone of Stagnone Chiropractic has kept it in line and kept me running. I am grateful because I believe seeing him once a week has truly helped improve my running. Plus, he recommended I take glucosamine for my joints. Bonus! I no longer have to run with a knee brace.

Thanks to these three people I have a fitness level that I am ecstatic about and that I know will allow me to reach that finish line.

Speaking of people, I have to mention several people who have supported, harassed, harangued, and goaded me during this training. There are more than a few, but there are three that have done so on a regular basis and it is much appreciated. First, my friend Tony, a fellow runner who talked me into this life-changing goal. Thanks to Tony pushing me, I will be running the Marine Corps Marathon and more than likely, I will be running even further next year. My friend, Brendan, who whenever I started to doubt myself and my ability, would post words of encouragement or plain old tell me to get over myself. Can you ask for a better friend that one who tells you the truth?! Then we get to Heather. Heather is a runner I met this past year and we would meet up at several races. When I wasn’t scheduled for a race on a weekend, Heather would send me links to races and egg me on to join her. Who needed rest! Heather has always been faster than me so she became my carrot in those races.

Thank you all, and thank you to all my other friends and family who supported me. I will keep all of you in my heart when I run the Marine Corps Marathon next Sunday, October 27.

For those of you thinking about chasing a major goal in your life, here's a quick word of advice.

GO FOR IT!

No one else can do it for you. There are no shortcuts. Will it be difficult and challenging? Yes! Will you wonder if you can do it? Yes!

All it takes is discipline, determination, and heart. If your heart wants it, your mind and body will follow.

Marine Corps Marathon...here I come!

 

Starting at noon yesterday, I and thirty thousand other people spent ninety minutes plus in front of computers hitting refresh, screaming, pounding fists on desks or legs as we tried repeatedly to get to the registration page for the Marine Corps Marathon. Unbelievably I got to the registration page four times and finally on the fourth attempt it appeared to work.

 

I received the official confirmation email at 7:30 last night. I'm in! What an amazing feeling. I am now wicked excited and nauseasly nervous.

 

This will be my first marathon! I figure if I'm going to go fo it I might as well go for it in a big way and at the best race. The Marine Corps Marathon is the best and I am thrilled to be a part of the 38th Marine Corps Marathon.

 

Every year I make a list of new things to try and this year, a marathon was at the top of my list.  Looks like I am going to get a shot at making that goal.

 

Now the hard part begins. Training. Lots and lots of training!