7 in 2017

One of my favorite (fitness? sport?) bloggers also happens to be an old zine friend of mine – back in the day we both self-published these little photocopied things that we'd mail out to people before we had things like Facebook and blogs to connect with the world. Her name is Caitlyn and she's very inspiring to me. Her blog, Fit and Feminist, is a great read and she has been racking up accomplishment after accomplishment in the past few years.

Anyway, I decided to follow suit by her latest post called 7 in 2017 and come up with my own list of things that I would like to accomplish in the coming year, specific to my health, fitness, and well-being. These are in no particular order – just however they came to mind.

1. Complete a half marathon. 
This one is especially important to me, because it is something I was supposed to do in 2016! I had signed up for the Wineglass half in Corning, NY (October) with a few friends early in the year thinking I'd have no problem training up to that distance. But somewhere along the way, training got derailed and I just lost my will. The race didn't happen for me, and I lost a lot of my fitness.

Once again, I've signed up for an October half – I registered before the new year, even – and no matter what, I WILL do it. For one thing, this race, the Queen City Women's Half, is right here in Buffalo so travel and accommodations won't be an issue. (Corning is about 3 hours away, just far enough to be more a pain to plan for.)

2. Run a sub-45 minute 5K – maybe even less!
I just want to get back to the level of running fitness I had built up to earlier last year, which enabled me to run a 44:26 5K in April.

3. Continue working on weight lifting.
I feel like I don't know quite enough about lifting and what would be reasonable for me to expect I can do in the coming year, but I want to continue working on deadlifting and see how heavy I can go!

4. Weigh below 250 pounds.
This is another goal that should have, could have happened last year. These days I feel like I have different and better reasons for wanting to lose weight, but it really needs to be done. I suppose 250 pounds seems like a random number, but it is a reasonable one and it would put me in a way more comfortable state for all the athletic things I want to continue pursuing.

5. Feel more free to "treat yo'self" as a regular thing.
This means a lot of different things to me, and they are mostly little things that add up to something much bigger: My overall well-being. I'm talking using moisturizer on my face every morning and washing my face every night before I go to bed; taking long, luxurious baths with yummy stuff from places like LUSH and Illume and moisturizing my body; spritzing myself with yummy-smelling things; lighting yummy-smelling candles more often. Obviously the senses of smell and touch are in big play here. Having treats like these make me feel SO much better in general.

6. Make room for meditation.
Our whole upstairs (we live in a one-and-a-half story) has more or less turned into a storage space, which is good on one hand, but on the other a shame – there is a small but lovely finished room up there that has been totally unused for a couple years now. It has served as a studio/office, a guest bedroom, and a smoking room. But now I am turning it into a space I can really make my own and where I can meditate without interruption. Along with that, I want to use it as a yoga practice space. We have a TV up there so I'd be able to follow along with my fave online yoga peeps. I already started cleaning up and clearing out up there, but still need to finish and get a little altar set up (I love personal altars!), hopefully in the coming week.

7. Come spring, go on more hikes and play more tennis.
My partner and I had a pretty active season last year, mostly playing tennis, and I'm looking forward to continuing that and doing more exploring – new hiking adventures and travel to public clay tennis courts in places like Pittsburgh, PA and Albany, NY!