New Year's Resolutions

I'm sure your first thought after reading the title of this post was, "What is Emily thinking? It is most certainly not New Year's!" And you're right - it is most definitely not January (it is, after all, 88 degrees outside!). However, as September draws to a close I'm starting to look back over the year, evaluating my successes (giving birth) and looking for areas of improvement (not wasting so much time online, ahem) and I'm forced to evaluate whether or not I will meet some or all of my New Year's Resolutions. Unfortunately, it is looking like I will NOT be meeting my one professional resolution, which is to read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which incidentally was an '04 resolution as well (*sigh*). I am "iffy" on one of my big personal resolutions...to run 3 5K races by the end of '06. I made this resolution when I was 6 months pregnant and I thought that by committing myself to these 3 races, I would somehow become inspired to become the recreational runner that I am not and get back into shape while I was at it. So fast-forward to today (actually to about 3 weeks ago when I first started thinking about 5Ks), 6 months post-partum, realizing that if I am going to even come close to meeting this resolution, I'd better get on the ball!

So I started the Couch to 5K Running Plan. My new treadmill makes this running plan very easy since it has one-touch speed control (I press the "6" and I'm suddenly running. I press the "8" and I am full-on sprinting, I press "4" and I can breathe again, you get the point). Now I am not my friend Maryanne who still runs daily in her 8th month of pregnancy. Nor am I my friend Amy Claire who decided to train for a triathalon while nursing a 9 month old AND growing Baby Number Two but so far, so good. I'm on Week 3 and am running more than walking for the 25 minute workout so that's good. And I'm not pushing myself to maximum levels of exertion during the workout, which is also encouraging. So after realizing that I could indeed run again, I began searching for 5K races. Given the fact that I've waited until October, I did not find very many options...so I-dum da dum dum dum-signed up for the Savannah River Bridge Run (picture above) on December 2. Now the curvature of this bridge may not be visible to the naked eye but this 5K run includes 1.4 miles of 5.5% grade. Yikes. So the plan is to finish the a Couch to 5K Running Plan, which is 6 weeks long, and then start to work on hills. This is going to be interesting...wish me luck! And if anyone out there wants to run with me, I'm looking for a partner! :)