Setting New Goals and Starting New Journey's

I can’t believe I have been back in Calgary for a week. It has been a week since I ran my very first marathon in San Francisco. With no goal in mind in the near future my life has seemed a little empty.

Even thought my Journey to the Nike Women’s Marathon is over it doesn't mean that my Running journey is over, I believe it has just started and NWM just made me even more excited to run and fueled my love for the sport.

I actually spent my first two days home sleeping. After a weekend of not getting very good sleep and running a marathon I needed a lot of sleep. My first day home I slept for 9 hours and the next day I slept close to 11 hours, crazy. Even this weekend I ended up getting a lot of sleep. I guess my body is still kind of recovering.

I have finally gotten over the fact that I didn't even come close to making my Boston Qualifying time. For a few days there every time someone asked me how I did I would get really sad.  Now I realize that I accomplished something really great and I am ready to take on a new challenge.

I have decided that I will be running the BMO Vancouver Marathon in May of 2013. It is a Boston Qualifying course and doesn't have the same crazy hills as San Fran. With my first marathon out of the way I can focus more on my speed rather than just on finishing. I honestly think I put too much pressure on myself to qualify during my first marathon. I plan on focusing a lot on hills and speed this time around. Of course I will still have a distance focus and my Saturdays will still be my long run days but my goal is to get through all my long runs without having to take any walk breaks. My only challenge this time is the fact that I will be running through winter and winter in Calgary can get very cold. Hopefully we won’t have a cold winter and I won’t have too many treadmill runs.

For right now I have set some mini goals for myself. In the month of November I plan on running 100 miles and doing 1,440 NTC minutes. That works out to 5 runs at 4 miles each week and 90 minutes of NTC 4 times a week. I am totally game for this challenge. I have also made November a no sugar month and I am starting that today. I am determined to get myself down to 18% body fat by Christmas. I want abs for Christmas. If you want to join me in either these challenges or just one let me know in the comments. We can keep each other motivated.

I just celebrated my 27^th birthday. I really can’t believe it and what a week I had. It kicked off with running the Nike Women’s Marathon and ended with having supper with Meho’s dad and step-mom. I got some amazing gifts one of them being a “Yonana’s” ice cream maker. This thing is cool!! All you put in it is frozen fruit. You stick it in the machine and it makes it into ice cream. It’s super healthy and only requires frozen fruit. I am super excited to use it especially with No Sugar November coming up.