Goals for 2015

I've been thinking about goals for 2015 for awhile now, before 2015 even started...and now we're 25 days in! Natallie and I ran together on January 2nd and she shared her goals with me, divided into the categories like personal/relationship, work, and running. I liked that so I'm making my goals in a similar fashion.

Family 

• Get pregnant. Obviously there's only so much I can actually do to make that goal a reality but I'm going to do whatever I can. The first step is having a hysterosalpingogram this week. If everything is OK with that, we'll have to see a fertility specialist and see what happens next.

• Continue to grow my relationship with John. I think he's awesome (most of the time) and I want to make sure he knows that. He has some potentially big changes coming up with his job situation and I want him to know I'm with him no matter what decisions he makes.

Work

• Work less. Last summer, my coworker and I put together a proposal to move from two full-time nurse practitioners to three part-time nurse practitioners. It was a slow process but the third position finally got approved. Now our boss is starting interviews. Hopefully we'll find a good match for the third NP position soon!
• Don't sweat the small stuff. I often get irritated by little things that my boss or students say and do. I'm going to really try not to let it get to me!

Exercise

• Run three times a week. It's so hard to set running goals while trying to conceive. For now, I'm going to stick to running three times a week and only signing up for races less than half marathon distance.
• Do a pull up! In order to achieve this I need to continue going to the gym with John and doing yoga weekly.

Personal

• Read books. Reading before bed has helped my sleep so much! It's great to have a bedtime routine.
• Stay involved with Chicago Scholars. It's a great organization and I thoroughly enjoy being involved both as a mentor and as an Associate Board member. There are a lot of changes happening now but I think they're going to be great! 

*Bonus Goals (for when I'm working part-time)

• Catch up and stay current with Sports Illustrated and Mental Floss magazines.
• Keep apartment clean and organized.
• Start sewing.

Race Report: Santa Hustle 5k

John, Natallie and I ran the Santa Hustle 5k on December 6th. Natallie ran it last year and thought it was a fun race so when the Finish MS Team emailed me with a $5 off coupon code, I decided to register...and talked John into running it with us.

Natallie with the perfect photo bomb in our selfie

We treated it as a fun run, not running for time at all. We enjoyed the funny signs along the course as well as other runners' costumes. But, in the sea of red, we lost John.

Loved the girls in the chimneys!

I felt terrible when I finally found him after the finish. He was so upset that I didn't run with him. In the future, I will absolutely clarify whether we're running the entire race next to each other or not!

Distance: 5k
Time: 30:32
Cost: ~$42 including fees
Pros: Fun run, good on course support, funny signs on course, nice tech sweatshirts (though the women's ran super small so I got a men's XS)
Cons: Hard to pick out other runners with everyone wearing red
Would I run it again?: Probably

Race Report: Festival Foods Turkey Trot

Way back on Thanksgiving Day, John and I ran the Festival Foods Turkey Trot in Oshkosh, WI. Festival Foods puts on Turkey Trots all over the state of Wisconsin on Thanksgiving Day which I think is pretty awesome. It's also pretty awesome that there's one in Oshkosh so we don't have to travel far to get there. I joked with John that if we spent Thanksgiving in Cochrane with my parents, we'd have to drive all the way to LaCrosse, an hour away, to do the Turkey Trot!

The race started at 8am so we planned to leave about 7:10am. We drove the 10 minutes to the free parking lot, walked across the street to the Oshkosh Convention Center to pick up our packets, hung out inside where it was warm until it was time to start, and then walked a few blocks to the start lines. There are two start lines and two routes, one for the 5 mile run and one for the 2 mile untimed run/walk.

A quick pic before we went off to our separate start lines

This year it was cold and snowing but I felt great! My first and second miles were way faster than I thought but I felt awesome. Then towards the end of the third mile, the roads weren't as clear and my legs were getting tired of running in the snow so I slowed down a bit until the roads cleared up again for the fifth mile. I finished at 41:08, 1:44 faster than last year!

Since it was so cold, we didn't stick around for the post-race festivities, just grabbed our pumpkin pies and met back at the car. This was our third year doing this race. I love our new Thanksgiving Day tradition!

Distance: 5 miles
Time: 41:08
Cost: $20
Pros: Small race, inexpensive, plenty of parking, start/finish line close to parking, easy packet pickup, flat course, pumpkin pie at finish
Cons: Quiet areas along course (which I actually enjoy but could be a drawback for others who need cheering)
Would I run it again?: Absolutely!

Final 2014 Resolutions Update

I wrote this post last Tuesday but then had a formatting issue that I tried to fix without my dear HTML-literate husband's help. Whatever I did made the problem even worse and eventually deleted the entire post, after nearly an hour of work. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy...and just finally have the time and patience to try again.

1. Keep exercising. I ran 51.8 miles in November and 34.53 miles in December. I did strength training 4 times in November and twice in December. We started swimming to mix up our cardio exercise and did that once in November and once in December. I practiced yoga twice in both November and December. John and I also did 3 races, the Hot Chocolate 15k (me) and 5k (John), the Festival Foods Turkey Trot in Oshkosh (5 miles for me, 2 miles for John), and the Santa Hustle 5k. While I was home, I also went cross-country skiing with Mom twice. Overall, I ran 595.57 miles in 2014! That's the distance between Chicago and Washington DC!

   

   Hot Chocolate 15k/5k finishers!

   

   Santa Hustle 5k

   

   Cross-country skiing in Cochrane WI

2. Eat more veggies. I'm still not tracking and I don't think I'm ever going to start tracking because it's obviously just not that important to me. I feel like I'm (well, both John and I are actually) doing a great job with eating more veggies though!
3. Enjoy the moment. I'm definitely doing better at this than I have in the past. Life is good.
4. Make a baby. Well, this one didn't happen in 2014 but we're still working on it...and working with our health care providers to figure out our next steps.
5. Read for pleasure. I finished Kushiel's Mercy, the sixth and final book of the series I was reading by Jacqueline Carey. The end of that series hit me harder than any I've read in a very long time. I didn't want it to be over! It took me a long time to want to read another book but John finally convinced me to start Cordelia's Honor of the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. It's taken me awhile to get into it but I'm finally hooked. Now, I just need to find the time to read my Sports Illustrated and Mental Floss magazines!

   

   My birthday present from Natalie!

6. Give thanks every day. I made it through a whole year of these, even if they weren't always on time. This really helped me with my "enjoy the moment" resolution too. There were really only a handful of days when it was actually hard to think of something I was thankful for that day. I definitely think doing this daily exercise made me appreciate the little things. In the future, I might try to incorporate being thankful into a weekly post instead of a daily one.
   
7. Explore (more of) Chicago. We went to two new restaurants, Bandera and Mercadito (twice!). I also went to Bella Bacino's, a new-to-me pizza place in the loop, with friends. We also saw Pixar in Concert at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and went to the Museum of Science and Industry for the first time since we moved here. I also saw some pretty fancy apartments in the Gold Coast area for Chicago Scholars events. It's pretty surreal when it takes a few seconds to even realize you're in an elevator!

We're already 19 days into 2015. I have my goals in my head but I'm not quite ready to put them into the written word yet. Soon!

Day 358-365

Day 358 - I was thankful for a fun morning with Jamine, Brandon, Cade and Blake, safe travels to Wisconsin, and a relaxing Christmas Eve with John, Mom, Dad, and Grandma. It was quite a change from the nearly 20 person Lenz Christmas Eve of years past but it was still fun.

Day 359 - I was thankful for a wonderful day with my parents. Dad stayed home all afternoon and evening and the four of us played four-handed sheepshead.

Day 360 - I was thankful to spend the evening with some of my high school friends. I can't believe I forgot to take pictures though! I was also thankful for snow. It was too late for the white Christmas I was hoping for but appreciated nonetheless.

Day 361 - I was thankful to get out cross country skiing with Mom. It was quite slippery but absolutely beautiful!

I was also thankful to see more high school friends that evening. It's fun to see how everyone is doing now.

Day 362 - I was thankful to go out to breakfast with Mom and Grandma, watch the first part of the Packer game in a packed Cochrane Inn with Mom and Dad, and then catch the end of the game and dinner with friends and their precious little girl.

Day 363 - I was thankful to spend the night with my aunt, uncle, and cousin. It was great to see them again! We used to spend every holiday together but now we're lucky if we get together a few times a year.

Day 364 - I was thankful for safe travels back to Chicago. I was also thankful for an absolutely amazing performance of Cinderella which made for a great date night. I just might have a new favorite show!

 

Day 365 - I was thankful that John's treadmill stress test went really well, that I was able to have lunch with old friends/colleagues, and that we had two awesome couples to celebrate New Year's Eve with.

Keith and John preparing the main course.

So much food!

I'm also super thankful that this is my last "daily" thankful post. I made it one whole year! Whew! Thanks for reading along...maybe I'll turn this into a weekly post at some point...Thankful Thursdays has a nice ring to it.