2010 in Review: Running

n familyI decided to do a series of posts all about 2010. Since I love running (and most everyone else seems to hate it) I thought I'd get it over with first.

2010 was a great year for running. I felt like I really made some great strides (pun intentional) as a runner. I'm faster and more confident and also quite a bit leaner. I really enjoy the sport and I'm never sorry I went for a run, even when they start before 5am.

Miles Run: since I started logging miles on Daily Mile back in May, I've run almost 400 miles, averaging 55/month. I will probably run 50 more before the end of the year. I'm guessing I probably logged between 150 and 200 miles the first 4 months of the year (I was training for my 1st Half Marathon), so I put my estimated mileage for 2011 at 600.
Races Run:
Nashville Half Marathon (13.1 miles, 2:48:33)
Title 9k (acutally 9.9k or 6.1 miles, 1:14:34)
Bolder Boulder (6.2 miles, 1:15:09)
Apex Father's Day 5K (3.1 miles, 33:10)
Heart and Sole 10k (10K/6.2 miles, 1:15:05)
Disneyland Half Marathon (13.1 miles, 2:31:00)
Denver Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon (13.1 Miles, 2:29:00)
Turkey Trot (4 miles, 42:00)
Best (Running) Moment of 2010: finishing my SECOND half marathon and realizing I'd run virtually the whole thing.
Worst (Running) Moment of 2011: the day I found out they were closing my gym
Favorite Race: hard … a toss up between Disneyland Half and Denver Half. Disneyland was a great setting and Denver was too … and I had lots of friends and pre-race fun in Denver.
Best Swag: Heart and Sole Half had the best swag, especially for the $$ … hat, t'shirt, awesome water bottle, even socks! Their post race event was great too – no stale bagels here!
Best Running Gear: no slip elastic headbands!
Favorite running tech: I dearly love my Garmin watch, but I never would have run nearly as much with out my treadmill + Tivo combo
Best Running Buddies: I logged a ton of great miles with my darling hubby as well as with my girlfriends, K&J … they all kept me going through long miles
Running Inspiration: I'm blessed with loads of great inspiration: my family, particularly my darling kids, my great friends, especially my running buddies, and awesome running blogs like RLAM and Racing with Babes and of course other bloggers who run, like Liz and Kristi!
Favorite Workout Tunes: California Gurls, Party in the USA
Favorite Running Website: Can't pick. Aside from the aforementioned blogs, I love Daily Mile, Garmin Connect and EarndIt (I just won a Free Road ID from them!!!).
Goals/Plans for 2011: I want to improve my speed and my stamina on hills. I would also like to drop a few more pounds and work more on my core and strength. I'd like to log 800 miles next year. I don't know for sure which races I'll run next year, though I anticipate running most if not all of the local ones I ran last year.

The Advent of Christmas

I'm here to talk to you today about Advent. Of course, as a proper nerd, I could not write a post about Advent before properly researching my topic and by that I mean reading a couple of Wikipedia entries. I love Wikipedia. *sigh* Anyhow, in reading these articles, I found that religious advent starts anywhere between Nov 27 and Dec 3 (4 sundays before Christmas) and is the liturgical start of the year for most western Christmas churches.

Since we're not big church-goers, we put meaning in our advent the same way we put meaning in the Christmas season. Christmas to us is all about family and service. Since my kids are so little. I wanted neither an advent that was wholly about candy or filled with so many activities that my kids would be exhausted …. so we came up with a nice mixture. We'll do activities about half to 2/3 of the time and on the other days, the kids will just get a hershey kiss each.

The planned advent activities so far are:
• make more paper snowflakes (one window is bare)
• go for a walk in our 'hood to check out the Christmas lights
• go shopping as a family
• watch a Christmas movie (will probably do this one twice)
• pick out a Christmas tree with Grammy and Papa
• wrap gifts
• shop for our Angel Tree kids
• go out for Fish & Chips
• make a dutch apple pancake
• write/decorate letters to Santa
• decorate cookies
• Feliz Navidad festival – i.e. we pick up tamales from our favorite tamale vendor and make guacamole and have margaritas (Christmas Eve)
• discuss family donations
• decoupage candle holders

How about you … do you plan to celebrate Advent?