100 Miles

Greetings, Tribe!

As 2018 came to a close, I took some time to reflect and to look ahead. In doing so, I developed my theme for 2019: Strength.

This year I am committing to increasing strength in myself. With my most recent marathon training, I found I was most successful by improving one element at a time. This year, I plan to do the same.

For January, I decided to run more. After looking back at my running log for the last few months of 2018, I realized I was only running 60-70miles a month! By focusing on maintaining my run streak, I got into the rut of only running one mile a day (most days) and that does not add up to much. My goal for January was to run 100 miles and as of yesterday I have run 100 miles (mostly on the treadmill, darned work schedule and Polar Vortex!). It took a lot of mental strength to force myself to run a 5k some days when I was exhausted from a long day at work, but by the end of the month I felt stronger both mentally and physically. Now it’s just a part of my day, no question.

I’ve also decided to strengthen my culinary skills. Most of my meals are cooked at home, but it’s hard to stay motivated to be healthy when you make the same recipes over and over again. My current goal is to make one new meal a week. So far this year I have made salmon tacos with mango and avocado salsa, baked chicken drumsticks (nice fried chicken alternative), pad Thai, and salmon and smoked mozzarella pizza. So far, all have been winners! (Unfortunate, none of my food photos have been winners. Maybe next month.)

February brings similar running goals. 100 miles was tough. Doable, but tough. With February being a short month, 100 miles still seems a reasonable goal. I have other goals to increase my strength, but we’ll discuss those later.

Happy trails, my friends!