New Years Resolutions

Blogging twice in one week! I know, crazy, but that is what a taper will do. I figure I should go ahead and put up my resolutions because pretty soon I am going to have to start thinking about what I will do for Lent, and I can only do one set of resolutions at a time. So here goes:
1) Suck it up through the hard workouts. I am a big wimp when it comes to pain, so 2012 I plan to be better at that and actually make my body work harder. This includes waking up when the alarm goes off and not hitting snooze through a morning workout.
2) Do my PT/strength exercises at least 3x a week
3) Do more group rides. I am a slow biker and don't feel comfortable riding with people a lot because I feel I hold them back. This year I plan on stepping out of my comfort zone because I know it will only make me faster
4) Take a honeymoon - we haven't had one yet so the goal is to have one in 2012. This is actually a resolution I think I will keep!
5) Eat healthier - I eat pretty healthy now and we Chris cooks a healthy meal almost every night, but there is always room for improvement, especially when I live in the land of TexMex.
6) And finally, be thankful every day for what I have starting with my health and my family's health. Over the holidays three pretty scary accidents/illnesses happened to friends and I want to be sure I remember how lucky I am to be able to do what I do every day.

New Year, New Blog Image

Chris was sick of looking at my blog with no header image, so he took it upon himself to make one for me again. I think he is still making some tweaks, but at least I got something up there now. Next weekend in Houston is the Marathon Olympic Trials that run right by our house, so we are going to get up early and watch some really fast runners run by three different times to get me motivated for the Houston Marathon the next day. The marathon is going to be a training run for me to prepare for IMTX. I haven't had the time to ramp up enough to go after a PR, but I did get in a few long runs and hope that I can finish without an embarrassing time. I love the course and will know lots of people along the way, but I still secretly wish that I were going to be running the half instead of the full. I PRed a half about two weeks ago and think I have a faster time in me, but I am going to put on my big girl pants and run/shuffle the whole thing. At least I will get to wear a cute outfit so the peeps can pick me out of the crowd. I did have a minor setback this past week that may cause some problems for the run, but I hope I caught it in time. I tried to copy my brother and go vegetarian right after Thanksgiving. For no other reason except that if he can do it, so can I. Well apparently I can't. After about 3 weeks my recovery time tripled, my times were sucking and I felt like crap all day every day. I had tried this before and had the same problems, but apparently I thought doing it again would be different. Isn't that the definition of insanity? I talked to my coach and doc and they both told me to immediately go eat burgers for three days in a row. My iron levels dropped, and I guess that isn't good. They also both said not to try something that drastic until after IM. I don't want to try it again. All I could think about was how much I wanted whatever meat Chris was eating, and I will just let the vegetarian habits stay with my little bro.
Here are the pups earlier after one of my long runs. They don't run long runs with me, but they both have the recovery side down and take naps with me.


And here is a photo of my niece just because she is cuter than any other photo I have. She just turned 6 months.