Enjoying the New Year

Here is a photo of our New Year's Day run. We had a lot of fun, ran about seven miles and then toasted the New Year with champagne at 10:00am!! I have never drank alcohol that early in my life. I am not much of a drinker and it was pretty funny. We met at the high school, so we were actually drinking on school grounds. First time for that too. I really was quite a nerd/goody-goody or maybe I was just a scardy-scardy of getting caughty-caughty!

On January 8th, three of our running crazies ran in a 5K road race. It was a beautiful day, about 35-40 degrees with bright sunshine and lots of good runners. One of my resolutions is to enjoy my racing, regardless of my time or place. I approached this race with those two pieces in mind. I only paid attention to my race performance. I did not look at the women passing me trying to decide if they were in their thirties. I did not care about where I was in relation to other people at all. I ran to my potential and focused on my form and breathing. I was thinking about the time a little, c'mon it's not called a race for nothing, people!! I finished feeling very strong and happy. My time was average for me; 24:40. I did not place in my age group, but that was okay with me, because I felt so great about my performance. I stretched and warmed up and down which also felt really good. So for January, I am still on par as far as resolutions are concerned!

I did not run as many miles this week as I would like though. I only ran 14 miles this week. My excuses are being lazy and it was freezing rain and snow this morning therefore I couldn't run the six I would need to fulfill the twenty miles I want to run weekly! I guess another excuse would be procrastination too. While I am complaining and whining, I could also blame my kids because I had to bring them to a puppet ministry performance today at 8:00am and I was the chaperone, so that pretty blew half the day. I have to do laundry the other half of the day! Another person I could blame other than myself is my husband because he keeps my up too late talking to me about his day. I wouldn't mind being kept up for other more fun reasons, but for blabbing, no. Let's see anyone else I could blame? No, I think that is good.

I am reading a very insightful and entertaining book entitled Dry, it's an autobiography about a man who had a crazy childhood and how he is trying take control over his adulthood, in particular his alcoholism. I was raised up with AA as part of my family, so reading his account of getting sober brings me back to my own childhood. The book evokes a lot of emotions for me. The first being gratitude that I am not an alcoholic. I do not struggle with substances, but have had my fair share of issues around food. I guess eating disorders are the good-girls' substance abuse. My issues about food have gotten a lot better with maturity and an increasing self-awareness about what I think is important. My relationship with a higher power or God or whatever you want to call it has helped to heal and grow up as well. The other emotion the book brings up for me is happiness which probably seems weird. But the author, Augusten Burroughs, has done such a great job spinning his tale. He tells about his crazy life with such brutal honesty and responsibility that it actually refreshing. I reccommend this book and his first book, Running With Scissors to anyone. (I know you are supposed to underline book titles, but I can't figure out how to underline in this blog thing, I only see bold and italic. Sorry! Now I can't get the freakin' italic to get off. Aww, just Great!) All for now, see on the roads!