A New Year!

Wow! A new year. While 2011 flew by, I can't say I'm sad to see it go. There were a few rough patches thrown in. I realize I'm way behind on blogging. Truthfully, nothing much has happened in the past few weeks, with the exception of, ya know, Christmas! So, I'll get to that in the next few posts after I load and edit photos.

I'm mostly writing this post, on the first day of the new year, to declare some "resolutions", or goals, as I like to put it. Actually, I'm a only going to write down a few here, that are all health and fitness related. I know, I know, everyone makes weight loss resolutions and resolves to get in shape once and for all in the new year... This is a tad bit different as I've already begun.

I wrote a post back in October about running and posted about my first 10k. Well I've managed to keep up the running and actually really enjoy it. This isn't a surprise to me. I have run for fun in the past. Getting back into running shape is the part that sucks. So does the treadmill!

I started 'training' at the end of April last spring. I logged a total of 131 miles on a site called mapmyrun.com. That doesn't include a few races or any treadmill runs, so my total mileage was a bit higher than that. For real runners, that's not a ton of miles, but it's more than I ran the year before!

So, onto my goals. My big goal for the year is to train for and complete a half marathon. I can now comfortably run 5-6miles and not feel like I'm going to die or my legs are going to fall off, so I think it is completely attainable. I hope to keep this running base up through the winter and start training in March, and run a local half at the end of May (just a few short weeks after Bloomsday, which I also plan to run).

My second goal is to log a total of 500miles for the year, or an average of 9.6 miles a week.

I also have a goal to get faster. I'm pretty slow, considering. I started out running 11:35min miles. The past few weeks, that changed to 10:35 miles for shorter runs and 10:55miles on longer runs. I'm not sure how that happened, other than a few sessions of speed work at the gym and maybe the cold air makes me run faster to stay warm! I'd love to break 10min miles this year...we'll see.

My last goal for 2012 related to health and fitness? Finish losing this baby weight! Plus about 5lbs of Christmas weight that snuck on the month before I got pregnant with Isla. That gives me a total of 12lbs to lose, but I might shoot for 17, to weigh close to what I did on my wedding day.

I probably will track some on here, possibly weekly, my progress on all fronts, weight loss and training related. So be prepared for some dry posts like this one :).

To start it off, here is my plan for this week:
Sunday: run an easy 3miles (easy means not pushing my pace, just a comfortable run)
Monday: Zumba and lower leg weights
Tuesday: 20min of speed intervals on the treadmill and upper body weights
Wednesday: ab workouts at home
Thursday: either rest, or run 2-3miles after I get up, before work. Sometimes I'm just too tired or don't wake up in time to go before dark.
Friday: same a Thursday, but do the opposite
Saturday: 5+mile run. Might shoot for 7 just for fun :)

As far as weight loss, track all my caloric intake, don't go over my daily/weekly Weight Watchers points allowance (don't dip into activity points and earn at least 30APs)