2005 a year in review

2005 was a great year for me. At the beginning of the year I made three resolutions...

#1 Run a marathon before Nov. 25th (my 25th birthday) - hopefully New York, but may not get it in the lottery
check - not new york, but I did do niagara

#2 Keep a food diary and try not to eat as much crap
kind of check - did this on and off throughout the year

#3 Love my body. I think I'll have to lose a bit of weight to really be able to do this, but if a) I'm running a marathon and b) keeping a food diary to keep my food in check, this one shouldn't be too hard (fingers crossed!)
Getting better, we'll call this one a work in progress

So January and February were a whir of work induced stress. I was working hard on my school work trying to get my paper done for my first conference. I got it done at the beginning of march only 2 weeks late ;) In february I went out west and had a wonderful (albeit short) visit with NC, KB, AL and the Vancouver family.

March was much of the same working hard on my school work, my TA, and running lots. April, more of the same. It saw me run my first half marathon in 3 years with an 8 minute personal best to boot :) End of April and beginning of may were what I like to refer to as the three weeks of Hell. AKA Feild school. Busy Busy Busy. Definitely not the most fun I've had in University.

After feild school it was a bit of a catch up game getting on top of my duties for my TA and preparing for the confence in Toronto. I ran my second half on the hottest day of the year to that point and still beat my ottawa time from a few years ago. June was the Toronto Conference, my fastest 5K time (25:45, a little under 2 minutes off) and trying to finish up my school work.

By the end of the July I was one sprint triathlon faster, All my grad courses complete and preparing to do my first adventure race which I completed in August before a) seeing Green day live (wow!) b) being the Maid of Honour in D's wedding and c) heading off for a trip of a lifetime to visit biggest sis in Africa and rafting on the nile. So much fun, I think it is fair to say I got bit by the travelling bug.

The fall was busy trying to start writting my thesis and of course modelling for my conference in chicago. The beginning of October saw my peak mileage week for my marathon (48.5 miles :O) and after that it was the taper from hell as I got sick and stressed out from my conference preparation. Luckily I still managed to complete my marathon and only 9 minutes off of my number 1 goal. Next time I know I'll get it.

November was time to relax after the conference and I was able to take it pretty easily. I had my 25th birthday, visited with biggest sis as she was home for the month and decided to give Online dating a try. In December I went on my first date in well over 5 years and realized that the whole dating thing is kind of fun. Skiboy ended up being a dead end, but we'll have to wait and see with MCB. I'm pretty sure he's as interested as I am, but he's said that he can be shy so one of us will have to get over that if anything is going to happen. Oh yes, and lets not forget my even faster 5K time... 24:4x... almost 3 minutes off my time from last year :)

So my 2005 accomplishments
1) Return to my physical fitness. It's been a long road to recovery since my knee surgery 3 years ago, but I can honestly say now that I've surpassed where I used to be. I got personal bests in every distance I ran this year, and actually every race save one. I also completed two new things that I've never done before, an adventure race and a marathon.
2) Presented at my first two conferences and got excepted to a third (where all the bigwigs will be)
3) Returned succesfully to the dating scene
4) Finished the first two chapters of my thesis in rough draft. Wahoo, a whole 20 pages :O

New years resolutions for 2006. Well, I'm going to call them more of goals.
1) Fitness wise - < 1:20 in peterborough sprint, < 2 hours in a half marathon, finish an olympic tri
2) Go to Batelle in May and completely redeem myself after being unprepared for ORTs.
3) Finish writting my thesis in rough draft by the end of July leaving August for revisions.
4) Travel a bit before fall convocation and finish school for good!
5) Get a job that I love in a city that I adore (aka not the loo!)

Happy new year world!