2012

I’m going to state the obvious: the last few months were a major low point of 2012. A fairly serious injury brought me to a standstill.  I missed running terribly, every day.  I didn’t find another activity or passion to fill the void.  In the last few weeks of December, I resumed running, albeit shorter distances than I’ve ever run in my life and with a lot of trepidation.  I obsessed over every ache, twinge or pain in my foot.  Not a day went by when I didn’t fear my return to running would be shelved yet again.

I think I’m entitled to feel bad about the ordeal I’ve been through- no, continue to go through- with my foot.  But I refuse to let my hangups with my injury overshadow everything good in my life and give me a reason to say that 2012 was a bad year and my life sucks.  My husband, sweet little boy and good health are what’s most important- not the marathon I couldn’t run or an injured Achilles.  Life was good to me in 2012, even though my foot decided one day that it’d had enough.

At the beginning of 2012, I set some goals for the year. Here’s how I did with them:

• Run at least two marathons. This one was a success.  I ran the Fargo Marathon and Grandma’s Marathon.
• PR in at least one distance. Accomplished!  I PRed in the 15k and set a new 10k PR the day before my Achilles crapped out on me.
• Run faster this year in races I ran last year. I was only able to run one race in 2012 that I’d done the year before: the Prospect Park Track Club’s Cherry Tree 10 Miler.  I ran the Cherry Tree in 1:20:01, over three minutes faster than my time from the 2011 Cherry Tree race.
• Do more yoga. I killed this one.  At the beginning of 2012 I was doing yoga once a week and wanted to increase my practice to two times a week.  I did in fact start doing yoga with greater frequency, often practicing at least two times a week if not three.  Unfortunately I’ve had to scale back my yoga practice since the Achilles injury.
• Strength time more often. Another goal I met.  I vowed to lift weights at least once every two weeks.  I did better than that: I’ve consistently been lifting two times per week.   Purchasing a set of dumb bells is what made this happen.
• Kick my sugar habit. I took some useful steps towards this end: I stopped eating cereal containing added sugar and sweetened yogurt.  That’s good and all, but it didn’t mean much if later in the day I ate a Snickers or a huge cup of frozen yogurt piled high with candy.  I love sweets, I want them constantly and I feel deprived if I don’t have them.

That took longer than expected and I want to read my book before Taiho wakes up from his nap.  What I hope to accomplish in 2013 is for another post.