2012 Goals

I hate making New Year's resolutions. I am one of those people who never follows through with them. Instead, I find setting specific goals to be more successful. I also do a better job of setting goals for myself each month than just at the beginning of the year. With that being said, I do have a few goals that I am setting for myself now.

Train for and race a triathlon or two. Or three. 2011 was a year of figuring out what I wanted to do sport-wise now that I am done swimming competitively. I ran a half marathon in October and plan to keep running but 2012 is going to be the year of the triathlon for me. But not only do I want to start doing triathlons, I want to start training for them. And I want to train smartly. I want to go into the tri season feeling confident and ready to race.

Break two hours in the half marathon distance. I ran my first half marathon with little training and finished in 2:23:03. I am confident that with proper training and some long runs I can break two hours. I know that would mean a 23 minute PR but I barely trained for Baltimore and my speed has really been improving lately.

Complete a bike race/ride. My boyfriend is a biker. Last year he did his first century ride, which I volunteered at. I was really inspired watching so many people out there biking 100 miles. It is pretty safe to say I will not be biking 100 miles this year, but a 50 miler or metric century (63.5) ride is definitely on my radar.

Spend less time watching TV and on the computer. Ever since I started blogging back in the spring I have spent so much more time on the computer. Don't get me wrong, I love blogging and being a part of such an amazing community. But lately I have spending too much unnecessary time on the computer that would be much better spent doing something productive.

Learn to love my body and feel confident about myself. I have always struggled with having low self-esteem and I am sick of it. When I am training for a race I feel unstoppable and I want to transfer that feeling to every day. I know this is something that will take longer than one year to complete but I think now is the perfect time to start.

Get back to eating healthy. I have been really neglecting this part of my life. I used to be so good about eating healthy wholesome foods but lately I haven't been the best. I'm not going to lie here, having a boyfriend has made it pretty difficult to create healthy meals. But that should not be an excuse.

Do those things that absolutely terrify me but will be so worth it. Sometimes all it takes it twenty seconds of intense bravery to do something amazing. I hate missing out on things because I am scared of failure. I want to look back and be so proud of the courage I had.

Be a better friend and girlfriend. I have been dating my boyfriend for two and half years now so sometimes things can become routine. We rarely fight and I want to keep it that way. Sometimes I can be unsupportive, jealous, and controlling. These are all things that I really want to eliminate to continue my relationship with the most amazing person I have ever met.