December Goals

Posted on December 2, 2011 by HHRunner

I can’t believe it’s already December. To prove that I can’t believe that, when I stopped by the bank this morning to deposit a check and withdraw some money and I saw my available balance I just about choked. I spent the next 15 minutes of my drive to work trying to figure out what the heck Sean had bought and why the heck so much money was missing from our account. He said he bought shoes. Clearly it was more than shoes.

Oh yeah, it was our mortgage payment since it’s the beginning of the month.

Reality check over here, it’s December now.

NOVEMBER

I started out last month listing out my November goals, so I guess before I go into December I should see how I did with November right?

1. Improving my overall strength: check check. I’ve been strength training more – twice a week to be exact. I love strength training, and now that I’ve gotten back into it I’ve realized just how much I love it. Success.

2. Becoming a faster, smarter runner: ummm I don’t really know how to guage this one because I haven’t run any races that I want to think about. I’ve been good about listening to my body and I had a fantastic 18 miler last week that I was much faster at then the previous week’s 15 miler. However I had a wretched half marathon. So I don’t know where that leaves me. Maybe success?

3. Managing money better: yeah no. I don’t really know where our money is going right now, but I kind of threw a budget by the wayside. Fail.

4. Improving the quality of the blog: I don’t think I’ve actively done anything different. Oops. No idea.

5. Stress less: Nope. Been mega stressed. Fail.

I think it kind of evens out. Some successes, some fails, some I don’t knows. Such is life.

DECEMBER

I wanna keep December short and sweet though. It’s going to be a busy month with lots of temptations so there’s no sense in making lots of lofty goals that are out of reach.

1. Run smart and hard for the 30k: I am both excited and nervous for next week’s 30k. I’m excited because of how wonderful the previous 18 miles I had went. I’m nervous because what if I can’t recreate that? What if it was a fluke experience? I don’t even think I have a time goal, I just want to finish feeling strong.

2. Maintain my current exercise/weight: Janetha is hosting Dedicated December, a little challenge to stay active during the holidays. She’s offering a lot of cool little giveaways for different winners, and it’s a fun way to stay accountable during the holiday season.

photo taken from meals & moves

3. Continue to run smart and train hard for the marathon: It’s in a little over a month and I really want it to go well. I’ve been dedicated in my training and rarely change/switch workouts in an attempt to run well. I’ve put so much into this and I can only hope I reap the benefits of doing so.

That’s it! Short and sweet!

Don’t forget: You still have a few days to enter the RoadID giveaway!

How’d you fare on your November goals?

What’re your goals for December?

Accountability

Posted on November 8, 2011 by HHRunner

I have been blessed with an incredible drive to reach the goals that I set for myself. One of my college friends emailed me several months ago asking some questions pertaining to running and asked me how I stayed motivated to run. I have a lot of tricks for getting myself out the door or onto the treadmill, but the truth is once I’ve decided I’m going to do something not much stands in my way – both in life and in working out.

However that’s not to say that I don’t sometimes struggle with finding the motivation to work out, I think I’m just better at ignoring the little voices telling me not to go then a lot of people.

credit to Google as always

Over the past few months, though, I’ve found myself even more motivated than normal to hit the pavement or the weights, and I owe that largely to Britt and to my blog friends. Britt and I made a deal to commit to 1 yoga session, 2 strength sessions, and 3 quality runs a week (speed, tempo & long) and that has been the driving force behind getting me going when I’m less than enthusiastic about it.

Last night on my way home from work as I was thinking about the speed work on tap, we exchanged the following texts:

R: I’m so uninterested in running tonight it’s ridiculous

B: I was just gonna text you and say I really just wanna go home and drink wine. Not work out.

R: LOL ahhh I hate today!

B: Oh I mean no go workout. You’ll feel better after. And you’ll be super speedy in January if you do speed work.

I’m pretty sure that anyone driving next to me thought I was crazy because I was laughing out loud in my car. By that point I knew she was right, I would feel better, but I was still favoring not working out so I tweeted this:

Almost immediately Kim replied with this:

I couldn’t remember exactly what my speed work entailed, just that it involved 800 repeats. I told myself that if it was anything over 4 repeats I could put it off until the morning (except I suffer from exercise guilt when I do things like this so I probably would’ve guilted myself into it) and low and behold when I got home guess what I saw:

Of course, right?

At which point I decided that it had to happen. And you know what? Despite the extreme lack of wanting to run and a dead iPod resulting in a musicless (real word!) run, I had a fantastic run. Which further proves the theory that you never regret a workout.

Having people hold me accountable has been one of the best ways for me to push past any desire I have to skip a workout, and I am eternally grateful for each and every one of you that has given me support when I’ve needed it.

Do you have someone that holds you accountable?

November Goals

Posted on November 1, 2011 by HHRunner

First things first: did you all have a great Halloween?! Ours panned out perfectly. I came home and rocked a little over 4.5 miles of speedwork on the treadmill, showered, and then grabbed a glass of wine and Sean and I sat outside passing out candy to the kids until it got a little too chilly out and we had to move inside. Then we started in on the American Horror Story marathon that was playing because Sean had never seen it before.

Necessary:

I do have one complaint though: We had multiple kids and teenagers *ahem, you are too old!* come trick-or-treating to our door with no costume on. I’m sorry but I don’t think you deserve my candy if you can’t even dress up. Am I alone in this thought?!

In an effort to stay focused on the things in life that I am truly thankful for and to stay organized and on track, I’ve decided that each month I need to identify and focus on some goals. This month I am really focusing on getting healthy in every aspect of my life. In November I am really narrowing in on:

1. Improving my overall strength: I mentioned it last week, but Britt and I decided to make a valiant return to strength training by doing at least 2 sessions a week. What I didn’t mention was that we are aiming for a total of 40 minutes twice a week of overall strength training, with a focus on core strength. The thought behind this is twofold: (one) to get stronger and leaner and (two) to become better runners.

2. Becoming a faster, smarter runner: That’s pretty self explanatory. I want to be faster, who doesn’t? But I also want to be smart about approaching my running. I want to focus on really listening to what my body tells me… Specifically I want to enter into December feeling strong and confident when Britt and I tackle our 30k (which we both signed up for last night!!) I think I’m pretty smart about running right now, but there is always room for improvement.

3. Managing money better: After I quit my last job and started my new one I realized that I drastically cut down on my during the week spending. I can only assume it’s because I eat lunch at the office now vs. at my old job I would leave during lunch and shop. However, I was really good at keeping our weekly grocery budget hovering around $75 and in the past few weeks I’ve let that slip. I want to find a good budget for us and really work towards sticking to it.

4. Improving the quality of the blog: I love this little blog here a ridiculous amount so I’m constantly trying to tweak it so that it embodies me better while still catering to you. So, if there’s anything you are interested in seeing on here, please tell me!

5. Stress less: I am a control freak, no lie. My brain moves 100 miles a minute every second of every day and I am constantly worrying about getting things done. I spend Monday mornings updating my planner with things I have going on all week and then I go crazy every day adding more things to it. I want to focus on spending time with those that I care about more (myself included, I’m pretty important to myself… just sayin’) and worrying less about if the laundry is done rightthisverysecond or if the dishes are put up. They will be there tomorrow, the time I have with friends and family will not. I need to learn to prioritize what is truly important and what can wait.

I have a few other things that I am shooting for this month, but they don’t make the cut on the blog Smile

And now I’ll take credit for all the pretty fall pictures (nope, Morgue File gets the credit).

Oh and Melissa, I’m listening to Defying Gravity right now Winking smile

What are you doing to make November a better month?

Things I’m Thankful For

Posted on October 21, 2011 by HHRunner

I was in a pretty pessimistic mood yesterday (I know you’re probably shocked considering I started with 3 bad things on yesterday’s post). So in an effort to circumvent that today, I’m going to focus on the things that I’m thankful for right now.

1. I’m thankful for blogging because it’s given me new friends:

- Even though Britt and I went to school together, we didn’t actually start hanging out (working out together = hanging out, right? Right.) until we started swapping blog comments. I ran my first double digit run with her and talk to her just about every day now.

- Melissa and I talk all the time now and would have never even met (“met” used loosely because we’ve actually never met… this is not weird at all) but now I consider her a good friend (that I only talk to via internet. nope not weird AT ALL)

- Jenny and I just did a running swap (more on that this weekend or Monday!) which resulted in me getting a delightful little package in the mail (and Jenny you should be getting yours soon!! you are just way faster than me at mailing things out)

- Heidi and I reconnected after several years

…and that’s just to name a few.

2. I’m thankful for getting the heck out of my comfort zone

- Nicole just wrote a fantastic post about thinking BIG. If you had told me 5 years ago that I would be training for a marathon I’d have laughed out loud at the thought. I hated running. And now it’s all I think about. Every day I’m continually working to push myself farther out of my comfort zone and I never was one to do stuff like that. As corny as it sounds, running has completely changed my life for the better.

3. I’m thankful for my sweet husband

- My dad has told me multiple times that he is so thrilled with Sean and I’s marriage, which makes me tear up with happiness just thinking about it.

- Sean really is the most supportive husband. He has continually encouraged me to be a better person and I’d like to think I do the same for him. We’re totes besties.

4. I am thankful that after several very long years my best friend is moving back home

- My best friend since kindergarten is a military wife and they have lived in Virginia for years now. In December they’re moving back home. And there is nothing that makes me happier than that.

Tell me something you’re thankful for.

And go give my girl some love she’s having a bad day today

Competitiveness

Posted on July 13, 2011 by HHRunner

Merriam-Webster defines the word compete as follows: to strive consciously or unconsciously for an objective

Taken in that context, I am a very competitive person in just about every aspect of my life. Especially running. Nine times out of ten I have some sort of goal that I want to meet. Usually it’s a time goal that I’ve arbitrarily picked out. Sometimes it’s that I want to place in my age group. Sometimes it’s both. For instance when I ran the 10k, I had several goals set, the most important of which was that I wanted to run it under 53 minutes. I finished in 51:13 and finished first in my age group.

Within 20 minutes of finishing almost 2 minutes under my desired time, I already was plotting out the next time that I wanted to beat. My thought process went something like this:

YES! I DID IT! I AM AWESOME!

::20 minutes later::

Hmm… I should run it under 50 minutes. I will be really fast then.

And thus the new goal was born and now I won’t rest until it’s accomplished. The same is true for everything from 5ks to marathons. I set goals and if I reach them I immediately start to plan out how to exceed them.

Don’t get me wrong – I think having goals is one of the best ways to advance in anything and everything. But Em wrote a great post the other day about giving yourself some credit. And it really got me thinking – as competitive as I am, I’m doing some pretty awesome things right now.

I had a really sucktastic 16 mile run on Saturday. I bitched about it, both mentally and verbally, all day long. But I RAN 16 MILES. It was hard, it was miserable, I walked a lot, heck I stopped a lot, there wasn’t a single step that I took on Saturday that didn’t cause me some sort of mental or physical pain, but I did it. And if I can run 16, I can run 18. And if I can run 18, I can run a marathon. And that is a-freaking-mazing, whether I BQ or finish in 6 hours.

Sometimes I think I let my competitiveness with running get the better of me. Sometimes it causes extreme negative self-talk conversations in my head. And sometimes I need a good kick to remind me that every single day I’m working towards incredible things.

And a big tribute to Em for writing the post that sparked this post.

THAT BEING SAID, LB came over last night to run with me. It was a 2 mile training run for me, supposed to be easy, and I figured it’d be a cake walk for him. Needless to say, it was a very humbling experience for me, one that reminded me that we all start at square one.

We ran at about an 8:45 pace give or take – sometimes faster, sometimes slower. But by mile 1.5 he was dying and I could see it written all over his face.

So I stopped my Garmin and we walked. I started it back up and we ran. I let him walk while I ran back and forth until we hit roughly 2 miles (my Garmin died at about mile 1.83). And in that last half mile and for the rest of the night, I remembered everything about when I started running. I remembered getting winded after a mere 5 minutes. I remembered hating it. I remembered my first 5k and how freaking exhilarating it was.

1.5 miles at an 8:45 pace is pretty good for someone that never runs.

Oh and after taking our picture, Sean had to take this picture “for the blog” (his words) so that everyone knows that he was working while we were running, not sitting around eating bon-bons. Even though when we got back 25 minutes later he was sitting on the couch in the dark.

Are you competitive by nature? With what?

Do you set new goals immediately upon breaking old ones?