Twelve months ago, I
cooked up a big idea to get into better shape for my New Year’s
Resolution. Rather than join a gym or
pledge to lose 10 pounds, I decided to be a little more realistic about
it. My bright idea was to try running…and
to stay running. In order to do that
(and be successful) I knew I had to set little achievable goals for myself.
My 2010 New Year’s
Resolution was to do a 5K every month for the entire year. It sounds like a lot, but really it was just
committing to finding and running one race basically every 30 days. My totally reluctant husband got drug along
for the ride and ended up (I think) enjoying himself. I couldn’t be happier to write that I actually
accomplished my goal!
We did race #12 in
Charlotte, NC and ran in the Jingle Bell 5K at the Olympic High School. Here’s the cool thing…the school is actually
in the district that Brett graduated from!
The race benefited the school’s Jr. ROTC program so we found ourselves again
competing against a bunch of super-freak-metabolism-maniac-17-year-old-boys
that actually jogged without shirts on.
Where were their mothers??
I’ve decided the only
thing worse that getting lapped by a teenager is getting lapped by someone
twice your age. I didn’t finish last,
but I wasn’t exactly leading the pack.
Of course, part of my problem might have been following directions
too. Olympic High School had just hosted
a cross country meet the week before and the grounds were still marked with their
trails. A couple of times, event
organizers had to guide me back to our 5K path because I ended up off in the
wrong direction. Whoopsie!
This was our first
only race to have an official cheering squad.
We managed to rope Brett’s parents into coming with us on our last
run. They were great sports about us
getting in at 2:00 a.m. and then running at 9:30 a.m. so we thought it was only
right that we snuck them a couple of granola bars and a Capri Sun after we
finished.
We scored our 12th
t-shirt and my next big plan is to put together a quilt of our 5K
collection. That’s a project that might
take another 12 months though…
My New Year’s Resolution
put us running 37.2 miles this year! We ended
up doing 12 races in 7 states and ran every type of course imaginable. From flatlands to ski mountains it seemed
like we trucked it through every terrain in the US. Neither Brett nor I actually won a race, but I’d say we never really lost either.
Our first race was in Killen, Alabama and
started at 11:50 p.m. on December 31, 2009 so we actually ran in our New Year. The irony is that I actually won an award for
finishing third in my age division in that race!
12 months ago at Race #1: Killen, Alabama
We are still trying
to come up with ideas for our New Year’s Resolution for 2011. I’m leaning towards ‘appear on a game show’
but Brett thinks we should do something a little more worthy like volunteer
work. We know we’re ready for another
challenge and are totally open for suggestions if y’all got any?!?
