Nineteen Miles

New year, new commitment to blogging? It seems like every year is the same - I am the most productive in the first three months of the year, and then it goes steadily downhill until Nov/Dec when I can't seem to get anything done at all! Including blogging. But so many friends & family mentioned my blogging hiatus over the holidays and it reminded me that you guys actually do read this little blog! So I'm back, and my plan is to update (almost) daily, with shorter, more real time updates on my life. I'll probably post a link on facebook one or twice a week, so be sure to bookmark the blog if you want more frequent updates!

With all that being said, there's a bit of catching up to do before I get back to day-to-day blogging! The big events of the last few months (other than the holidays, of course) have mainly been running related. Sam and I ran the Dallas Half Marathon on Dec 9th, and I was thrilled to meet my goal of finishing under 2 hours! It was a warm and muggy day - not ideal at all for running - so I was really pleased. I've also continued to make progress on getting faster in general... I haven't tested my 5k record in awhile, but I've reset my 10k record several times.

And today, I did my longest run yet - 19 miles! Why, you might ask? Well that's the other big news, which some of you know already - I am planning to run the FULL marathon (26.2 miles) in Austin on Feb 17th. I actually decided a long time ago (June!) that I wanted to do it, but I was scared to commit or to tell anyone until I had some more training under my belt! After half marathon training was going well, I started telling people about the full around November. Once the word gets out, there's no turning back thanks to all of you holding me accountable! Sam is going to run the full also, although he's a seasoned marathoner compared to me (this will be his 4th). Right now, my main goal is just to finish(!) hopefully without any walking, but I would be very excited if I could finish under a 10:00min/mile pace.

Here's my current records from the Garmin website (my watch is seriously my favorite gadget ever):

As you can see, I'm a bit behind schedule on my 1200 mile goal, but I'm confident I can catch up with all the long runs I have coming up for marathon training.

Well that's it for now, I've got to get back to some serious NFL play off watching. Even the dogs are excited (or not....).

I'll sprinkle in updates on weight maintenance and life over the past few months as I blog this week. Thanks for reading!