Hello 2013!

Happy New Year, everyone!  Hope you all had a fantastic holiday season and are ready to welcome 2013.  Our Christmas so far has been busybusybusy, hence the lack of posts...my BIL is getting married on New Year's Day, so it's been like Grand Central Station around here with houseguests, dinners, family get togethers...seriously, working out has been a total saving grace to keep me sane amidst an extremely crazy December.  That and stealing a few quiet moments (like right now!) where I have the house to myself...aaaaaaah.

So, how was my 2012?  Well, if I'm looking at how I did on my goals from last year, I pretty much didn't accomplish any of it.  Read 15 books?  I read 5.  Achieve a 1:50 half marathon?  Well, I was on track before I crashed and burned out one kilometre from the finish line.  A vision board?  Swimming lessons?  Volunteer more?  Epic fail on all those goals.  The year has been tinged with some unhappy events and difficult times, but in all of it, I'd have to say that 2012 has been a year of being grateful for the life we have even when things aren't going great and has been an impetus to make some real changes.  And of course, with change comes goals!  For 2013, I've cut my goal list from the usual 10 to a shorter list of 5 things that I've really wanted to achieve, so without further ado,  here they are:

1.  Volunteer
I know, I know...this one has been on my goal list for years, but this year I'm gonna do it!  I've been keeping my eyes open for volunteer opportunities (particularly food related causes like food banks, breakfast clubs, etc.) and already have a few local races in mind that I want to volunteer for.  After my "little problem" that I had at the Goodlife Half, it made me realize how many good people there are out there who are so willing to help strangers and it's really given me the push to donate my time as well as money to things that I hold close to my heart.

2.  Do One Chin Up
Ack!  I can't believe I actually wrote that publicly.  Hah!  I'm actually superdupercrazy excited about this goal.  I've been going to the Pacific Institute of Sport Excellence (PISE) for a HIIT/tabata style class with my coworker M, and have been looooving it.  It's a fabulous facility - this is the place where the Canadian Olympic mens rowing team trains, so that gives you an idea of how great the place is.  PISE offers a "build it yourself" bootcamp that M was thinking about joining, where you get a small group of 6 or so people together and you work on what you want.  Apparently the trainer is a huge proponent of strength training and was wanting to work with us for an extended period to really get our strength up, watch our progress and teach us proper form.  SOLD!  I've been dying to work on strength training for ages, but feel like I need someone to show me what to do, so this is perfect.  The classes are Monday and Wednesday (the other ladies are doing Friday as well) from Jan 18 to Apr 24 and I'm totally psyched!  And you can bet I'll be blogging about this journey along the way so you'll hear all about my foibles in the weight room. Josh (the trainer) has also asked us to send along goals so I've been ruminating throughout the holiday season as to what I want my goals to be.  I went back to my bucket list and one of my goals was to be able to do chin ups, so I thought what better goal to put down!  I don't really have a good idea of what I can lift or how strong I am since at bootcamp we usually do strength work with our body weight, so I think overall if I can lift 50% more than I could at the beginning of the session, I would be ecstatic.  I'm happy with where my cardio is from the running and bootcamps, but really want to build more muscle.

Oh...and I'm not picky on the chin up.  It doesn't have to be perfect, and if it's assisted, that's fine too...girl's gotta start somewhere, right?  As long as I can do one, I'd be happy.

3.  Eat Mindfully
This goal has a couple of conponents in it.  A few years ago, Hubs and I started doing Meatless Mondays, and we've been really enjoying it...it's helped me expand my cooking repertoire, and more veggies = good!   After watching a documentary on W5 on how horribly factory farms treat the animals, I decided that if I'm going to eat meat, I need to do it responsibly and not support factory farming.  My first step towards this goal was to sign up for a class called the "The Ethical Carnivore", where the chef will discuss the best places on the island to buy locally sourced, ethically raised and antibiotic/hormone free meat. From there I plan on trying to use ethically raised meat as much as possible in our meals. Hubs is fully on board with this change - after I told him about what they do to piglets, he's 100% behind me in this...what a guy.

The second component of this goal is where my beloved Vitamix (blowing kiss at my precious across the room) comes in.  I've been loving, loving, loving the smoothies we've been making, so we're going to be smoothy-ing it up 2013 and packing in lots of fruits and veggies into our days...goal is to hit 7 servings of fruits and veggies every day!  I tease Hubs all the time and tell him our skin is going to be green from all the smoothies we'll be drinking.  Tee hee.

4.  Yoga More
I love yoga...it gives me a sense of zen and relaxation that I just can't get doing anything else, and I barely yoga'd at all in 2012 which makes me terribly sad.  In between clinics and classes, it was hard to find the time to fit yoga in.  Well, no more!  The exercise plan for next year is:

Sunday:             rest
Monday:            bootcamp/strength
Tuesday:            yoga
Wednesday:       bootcamp/strength
Thursday:           rest
Friday:                bootcamp
Saturday:            long run

5.  Try One New Recipe Per Week
I've said before that I have a lot of cookbooks...well over 200, probably inching closer to 250 and I gots to start using them!  Sometimes it's easier to just make the usual, but I'm branching out and really going to flex my culinary muscle this year.  Aaaand it gives me a reason to "freshen up" my cookbook collection every so often, right?  Hah!

Happy New Year!  Be safe and be happy.