Bring it on, 2011.

I began 2010 as someone who had never considered herself a runner of any kind, much less someone capable of completing 13.1 miles. Besides several years of dance classes when I was younger, I have never been involved in sports or anything athletic, really. During my sophomore year of college, I lost about 25 pounds, but very little of that weight loss came from exercise. As many females do, I still sometimes (often) struggle with my self-esteem and find myself all too often linking it to the number I see on the scale or the size written on the label of my jeans.

In early January 2010, a friend casually suggested that she was planning on running the ING Georgia Half-Marathon that March, and asked if I would be interested in joining her. On what must have been an impulse, I agreed, and began one of the most challenging and rewarding endeavors of my life so far. When I stepped onto a treadmill on my first day of training, my trusty Hal Higdon schedule dictated a two-mile run, and I barely managed a 1.5 mile run/walk combination. Somehow I dragged myself back to the gym the next day, and the next, and the next. To my own surprise, I actually enjoyed the aching muscles I earned from those first few workouts -- a sign that I was challenging my body and making progress. I will never forget how I felt the first time I was able to complete a three-mile run, and the mileage continued to grow. On March 21, 2010, I finished my first half-marathon in 2:18:34.

And here I am almost a year later. It's natural and maybe even cliched to use the last few weeks of December to reflect on the months that have passed and look ahead to the coming year... but after much introspection, I've decided that I want to make 2011 a year of positive, lasting changes. After completing the half, I ran two 5K races (each one with a PR), but did not keep up with my running routine as regularly as I would have liked to. I also admittedly haven't been making smart decisions about what, when, and how much I eat. The combination of these two things has caused me to gain back about 10 pounds of what I have kept off for the past few years. With all of this in mind, my goals for 2011 are:

• Revise my diet. This means planning (and actually buying the ingredients for) creative, healthy meals that will give me fuel for my daily activities, including running. I'm not interested in depriving myself, severely restricting calories, or eating processed diet foods, but educating myself about nutrition while still having an outlet for my love of cooking.
• Plan and carry out a regular running routine. This year, I definitely learned that I benefit from accountability (my teammates for the half were amazing) and a predictable schedule. I am also motivated by having a race on my calendar to train for. Luckily, I can combine all of this with the first two races I have scheduled, since Jess is also running them both.
• Realize that my best and only competition is myself. I am guilty of being hard on myself when my endurance, speed, or mileage doesn't measure up to somebody else's. Here's to focusing on the P in PR (that's personal record).