A New Year!

Wow, 2013 - How'd that happen?  I look back on last year - all these plans I had.  Very few of them accomplished.  But the main thing is, I have now survived and been in remission from cancer for more than 10 years.  That fact alone trumps anything else, even though I didn't accomplish most of my racing goals for 2012.

Looking ahead, I am not making resolutions.  I do have some fitness and "racing for a cure" goals for 2013, however.  I also have some hiking goals, and you can view them here on my other blog.

I own three pairs of blue jeans.  One of them fits fairly comfortably, but not as well as they did before, say, Thanksgiving.  The other two fit about as comfortably as a hippopotamus trying to squeeze into a phone booth.  Just a few years ago, I could wear all three.  So here is one goal for the year - fit in all three pairs again.

A second major goal is to at the least continue with walking and hiking, if not running.  If you keep up with my other - and in the last year or so, more active - blog, Oh, To Be Hiking, you know that I have done pretty well keeping hiking alive in my life.  So I will set a tangible and measurable goal - average at least 13,000 steps a day.  Bonus points if I exceed an average of 14,000 steps.  Whipped cream and a cherry on the top if I reach an average of 15,000 steps daily.

Here is a very worthy third goal for the year - figure out once and for all what is going on with my left knee.  I see two major steps: (1) get back to my physical therapy routine religiously and see if that makes a difference and (2) if there is no change in a couple of months, see a new doctor and maybe get an MRI to figure out what is going on.

A fourth goal - determine, based on the knee issues, if I can do Team in Training in 2013 after skipping it for the past two years (although in 2011, I did walk 60 miles in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure, so it is not like I sat on a couch full-time.)  For example, I bet I could at the least walk a half marathon.  My preference would be to run, but walking for a cure beats sitting on my butt for no cure.

A fifth goal for 2013 - get back in an upper body routine.  I should be doing upper body workouts 2-3 days a week, but never seem to find the time.  When I do for a while, I feel better and then slack off.  Of course, the last time I was really working out a lot was about four months ago, and my left elbow hurt like hell.  I think it was tendinitis.  I stopped entirely for several months and the pain slowly receded.  Time to try again.

Finally, I'd like to update this blog every week even if it is just me musing about something.  I rarely get comments and I am not sure if anyone reads it or not, but writing more often would be good for me, if not for the world at large.

Hmmm, these are starting to sound like resolutions.  Uh-oh!