“Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”

~Oprah Winfrey

I hope everyone had a great New Year’s Eve!  I -for one- am looking forward to saying goodbye to the old and in with the new!  Last year was really tough for me, but I also had a lot of great breakthroughs including running my first 10 K, 15 K, Tough Mudder, half marathon, and full marathon.  I also started this blog,  joined CT-Alive and, did fundraising for both the Wounded Warrior Project and victims of domestics violence through the Running for the Color Purple Campaign.  Oh, and I joined Boot Camp and made the commitment to get my butt kicked on a regular basis!

Despite my mixed feelings about 2011, I have to admit that I met a lot of AMAZING new people- especially the Arch Angels and Boot Camp crew.  There was plenty of good to go with the bad, and the best part is a lot of it is documented here for me to go back and read. 🙂

I had a low key New Year.  I threw a holiday leftover pot luck dinner party with my mom for our immediate family and then headed to bed early.   Of course, the rest of the neighborhood had other plans and decided to set of fireworks at 3 am- leaving as sleep deprived as I would have been if I had partied the night away. lol  It also didn’t help that boot camp left me so sore that every time I moved in my sleep it woke me up.  (Thanks Mike)

In terms of crazy workouts, boot camp yesterday consisted of stations at the gym including bench press, box jumps, decline sit-ups (with a twist to make them even harder), sand bag push, burpees, ball to wall, jump rope, pull ups, and a host of other “fun” stuff.  I still struggle with jump rope and box jumps, but pushed as hard as I could.  The large box was up to my waist and I made it up 5 times on the first round before I missed and landed on my shin.  I switched to the medium box and got called out by the trainer!  The next round I did the tall box the whole time without falling.  The highlight of the workout was beating Adam (yup the marine who is twice my size) on his reps at many (most) of the stations (even doing the same weight on some of them).  That DEFINITELY made me feel like I’ve made HUGE progress. lol 

Thanks to all the new winter running gear I got for Christmas (Yea! new workout clothes!!!!) I have been keeping up on my running too.  I have been logging much in the double digits, but I have been getting out consistently, despite the cold.  My chilliest run to date was 23 degrees. 

I hope everyone has an amazing New Year!!!! I’m sure the universe has many great things in store for all of us.  🙂