Sunday, December 30, 2012

A look back at 2012

Ahhh, 2012. 
You have been quite a year. 
 
I set some easy goals for 2012 and I set some hard goals. 
 
The easy goals, or goal (since there was really only one easy one), was to read at least 50 books.  Since I'm always reading at least one (and sometimes as many as 2 or 3) books, I knew I wouldn't have any trouble with this one.  I'm currently in the middle of number 67 for the year.  I may or not finish it by tomorrow night, but even if I don't, I still more than met the goal of 50.  Yay me!!  If you are interested in such things, you can go here: Books read in 2012 to see what I read.
 
The running goals were harder.  A lot harder.  So hard that I didn't meet any of them.  Not one.  Nada. Zilch. Zero.  
 
Which has me more than slightly disappointed in myself in some ways.  But in others, not so much.
 
Here's the run-down:
 
Goal #1 - Run (or walk) 1200 miles
As of right now (7pm on 12/30) I'm at 918 miles.  I may manage to get a couple of miles in tomorrow to finish out the year, but I'm not anywhere close to 1200.
 
But, even though I'm 282 miles short of my goal, there's a lot of goodness and awesomeness crammed into those 918 miles.
 
Those miles include 12 races - 8 5ks, 1 8k, 1 10k, 1 15k, and 2 half marathons.  Look at that - 12 races in 2012.  Totally unplanned, but pretty cool, right? ;-) 
 
Those miles include 60 (give or take a few) miles that totally changed my life - the Susan G Komen 3-Day Walk for the Cure.
 
Those miles include running with my best friends - Actually running together in snow, in drizzly rain, in the cold (someday we will run together when the weather is good!!) And more often, running together in spirit, motivating and supporting each other in the journey to the Disney Princess and beyond.
 
Those miles include the fastest mile I've run to date (8:55mpm)
 
They include the easy miles that flew by as well as the hard miles where I struggled for every step.  They were all good miles and I wouldn't trade any of them for the world.  I may not have achieved the quantity of  miles I wanted, but I definitely had some quality miles.
 
Goal #2 - Run a 5k in 27 minutes of less
My fastest 5k in 2012 was 29:37.  I don't know what happened to my speed this year.  Well, that's not exactly true - I know what happened to it - I didn't train for it.  I focused on distance, and it slowed me down.  I spent the spring training for a half marathon, the summer training for a 60 mile walk, and the fall training for another half.  Speed got put on the back burner.  So as the year progressed, my goal changed from 27 minutes or less to 30 minutes or less.  I may not be fast, but I got out there, I showed up 8 times, and I ran. 
 
Goal #3 - Run a half marathon in 2:10 or less
I ran 2 halfs in 2012.  One in April (2:26:55), and one in November (2:29:07).  I didn't come close to 2:10.  In all honesty, I didn't really think I would, not this year.  But I was still hoping to finish faster than I had before and to run the whole distance.  But I didn't get any faster and I didn't run the whole way. But I did finish. Twice. And that's saying something. 
 
 
So there it is. 2012.  On paper, it sucked.  But dig a little deeper and scratch below the surface, it wasn't quite so bad after all. 

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