New Years Resolutions

With the year coming to a close come the countless New Years resolutions proclaimed between gulps of champagne and mumbled renditions of "Auld Lang Syne" echoing through dives, clubs, and sports bars the world over. More often than not I hear the announcement of, "Ugh... I'm never drinking again..." the morning after, but other resolutions come to mind, like getting in better shape, saving money, reading more books, and so on, with varying outcomes for the lot of them. This past year marked the first that I actually followed through with a resolution, being "have more adventures and not waste so many weekends complaining about having nothing to do" which lead to me doing a lot, including taking up running.

I really need to run more. Thanksgiving started the holidays, and with the holidays came food comas, cold weather, a lot of time spent in the car, and even more time spent indoors. While the Yuletide feasting has been great and snuggling up under electric blankets has been cozy, it hasn't been conducive to being active and not being a lazy ass. The weather outside is frightful, yes, and the fire is delightful, sure, but my running shoes have been collecting dust for weeks now and I want to get back at it. Working up the moxie to get out of the house when it's below freezing and windy is hard, and it hurts a lot when I start heavily breathing in the cold air. I need to suck it up, though, because there are a few races I want to do in 2015 that won't be easy to do if I continue on my path of doughiness.

I don't want to jinx it or anything, but I think running more races is going to be my resolution. I like having adventures every weekend, so I want to keep up that resolution from this past year and tack on more miles of hiking, running, and stumbling from exhaustion after hiking and running in the next. There are a lot of trails I haven't hiked yet, and a lot of places I haven't run around in yet either, so I have incentive to keep on the sweaty, painful track that I picked up (again) earlier this year.

"Continue doing stuff on the weekends" and "run more than usual" are pretty open-ended goals, I know, but the vague goal of "do stuff" helped me have a stellar year without so many wasted weekends. "Run more" might yield some good results too.

Have a safe New Years Eve and a happy 2015! Stay warm and don't drive drunk!