Goodbye, Decade!

Wow, I've only blogged once in December. And I completely missed Christmas. Woops. Well, Merry belated Christmas everyone! (Training loot I scored: running shorts, 2 water bottles, a hat, 2 pair of running socks, and a gift card towards aero bars!)

December is over... and with that, 2009 is over, along with this wacky decade.

Miles Run in 2009: 183.6
Miles Biked in 2009: 217.4
Miles Swam in 2009: 3.9 miles

Total Number of Workouts in 2009: 112

Notes: I passed my goal in miles run by 13.6 miles. Phew, that was close! However, I passed 2008's total by a whopping 85 miles. Hurray! I biked 80 fewer miles this year than last, and I only swam half as far as last year. Ouch. But it's okay, because I was really concentrating on improving my running this year... which I definitely feel I did!

How did I do on the rest of my goals? Technically, I DID get my sprint time below 1:35, but mainly because the bike course was 2 or 3 miles shorter than a typical course. I did NOT get my 5K time below 27 minutes, but I only ran 1 of them (without much training, mind you). And lastly, do I weigh less now than at the beginning of the year....?

HA! In fact, I weigh ELEVEN pounds more, which brings me to my next bit...

Ryan and I are engaging in a friendly weight loss wager. This is how it's going down:

• On Saturday, January 2nd, he and I will conduct our official weigh-in.
• We then have 8 consecutive weeks to lose as much weight as possible.
• We are allowed to weigh ourselves during the process, but we may not share our progress with each other.
  
• After 4 weeks (the halfway point), we will have one official weigh-in to gauge how it's going.
• Then, on Saturday, February 27th, we will conduct the final weigh-in.
• The person who has lost the largest percentage of weight wins.

The Prize: The person who loses has to cook dinner from scratch for the winner. They also will be in charge of taking Maggie out for an entire week. I'm sure there will be other prizes added as the competition grows, but this is it for now.

My goal for the competition is to lose at least 8 lbs. Bring it, Ryan!

But it doesn't end there. Because THIS is the year that I cut the crap... figuratively, and literally cut the CRAP out of my diet. Plus, I'm going to try to make working out a routine. It shouldn't just be for when I'm training for a race... it should be ALWAYS. At least 4 days a week. So my ultimate goal for 2010 is to lose 20 pounds. Do you think I can do it?

Other goals for 2010:

• Run more than 210 miles.
• Complete an olympic-distance triathlon.
• Run a 10K in under 58 minutes.
• Average 17.5 mph biking in a race.

And I don't want to put this one on the goal list, because I'm not sure it's really possible right now... but I MAY possibly consider trying for a half marathon this year. SHHH! You didn't hear that from me!

So Happy New Year everyone! Drink a lot, eat a lot, take a cab, then sleep a lot. It all starts in 2010!