Saturday, January 12, 2013

Wait, what? It's January 12th?

When did it get to be January 12th? Buh? 

So, I, like many people, have a list of goals that I want to accomplish in 2013. Or, rather by January 31, 2014, because I always make my birthday my end date for goals like this. I figure, it's the beginning of my year, and it's not like it's all that far off from January 1st anyway. These aren't resolutions, per se- they're goals, yes, but they're specific and they're realistic and they are easy to plan to do. Well, okay, there's a stretch goal in there, but as Robert Browning said, “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?” The rest of them are pretty realistic. 

2013 Goals: 

  1. Finish the triathlon- this is the primary goal and the one that's getting the most focus until it happens in April
  2. Develop a daily yoga practice- This will be easier once I figure out when the best time for this is. 
  3. Be deliberate about Intuitive Eating or Normal Eating- They're very similar philosophies with different methods and I'm not sure which methods I'm more comfortable with yet. I will say that Ellyn Satter's book Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family is a must read, no matter how your family is configured. 
  4. Try a new class or activity. I'm eyeing Zumba at the moment. Or cardio kickboxing. But that will come after the tri
  5. Run a mile without stopping- this will probably occur as part of the tri training, but I wanted to emphasize it, so I made it a separate goal
  6. Run for 30 minutes without stopping- this will probably also occur as part of the tri training
  7. Improve my 50 time to 1:00- this is the stretch goal. I'm pretty comfortable pacing 1:30 right now and I was making 50s in about 1:20 pretty easily this week, but getting to the point where I'm comfortable at a minute (as in, I'm not sprinting) is going to take awhile and may or may not be possible. But I think it's worth trying. This is also a post-tri goal. 
  8. Try to lower my resting heart rate- This may not be possible, due to my asthma medication which tends to increase my heart rate. And there's also the fact that since I've been tracking it over the past 2 weeks, my average RHR has been roughly 70, with a number of 60's in there, and that's already the low end of normal. 
  9. Track progress on my goals daily- I have a notebook that I'm using to do this. I made myself up a little form to fill in at night and so far, that's going well. And it will help with goal 10, which is...
  10. Post to the blog at least once a week. I'm still mostly going to be talking about the tri, but other things may filter in from time to time. 
So, that's the plan for the year. So far, things are going relatively well. Tri training has been a little shaky this past week because I'm having some issues with an irregular heartbeat and so I'm being really gentle, even though I don't technically have any activity restrictions. It's likely being caused by some chemical issue, not a structural issue and there's probably no blockage, so exertion is probably not going to make a difference one way or another. I did do my swimming this week, because I knew it wouldn't be super-strenuous because we were coming off a 2 week break. And being in the water tends to keep my heart-rate from getting very high most of the time (unless I'm doing a lot of sprinting), so I figured that was pretty safe, even with my inhaler. I should have bloodwork results soon (probably Monday, I think) and that'll give more information (the leading candidates are anemia or a thyroid issue, both of which would be unsurprising). I'm going to see how I feel next week about running, or at least walking. So, we'll see. I'm not extremely worried about the impact on training yet, because there's no evidence that I'm going to need to curtail my activity level (I am perhaps being overprotective of myself, but it's been a little freaky and I was also dealing with sinus ickiness last weekend, so I was on the tired side anyway). But at this point, there's nothing to really worry about- my doctor was not terribly concerned and this may wind up on the list of "annoying, but not dangerous" things that I put up with.