Looking back at this week I have so much to be thankful for.  I had a great 4 days in a row of running (3 miles each day!)  My last run was on Thursday and since the roads were pretty icy, I decided to play it safe and run on the treadmill. 

The run itself was pretty boring, but it went relatively well, so as always, that’s a plus these days! 

Later on Thursday, Tim and I had a good appointment with my baby doctor.  Heart rate was a low 132 and the doc said she seems to be staying in the head down position.  All great things!

I took Friday off of running and am planning to run later this morning after I get my fluids in to cushion my bladder.  I did ask my doctor about my follow up urine test and she said everything was normal so they were stumped as to what had caused the bleeding.  Her guess was as good as mine, that the force of the baby bouncing on top of my bladder had caused some sort of trauma.  She seemed to think I was safe to keep running so long as I keep some fluid in there as a cushion.  Great news!

As the year comes to a close, I think about all the great things that happened for us in 2012 and all the wonderful things I look forward to in 2013.  Setting resolutions for the new year is a good way to motivate yourself towards changes for the better.  I usually end up aiming pretty high, and don’t always accomplish every goal I write for myself, but I guess I’d rather miss a few than not live up to my potential.  So here’s a quick recap of some of my goals for 2012 and how I came out:

Family

1.)  Start a family (very thrilled that this is one of the goals we are currently in the process of)

Home

2.) Home improvements- we got a lot of these done in 2012, yet there are still plenty that we have to work on in 2013

Running

3.) Run a sub 3 hour marathon-completed in February 2012!

4.)Break 17 minutes in the 5K-didn’t happen, in fact, not even close.  After the Myrtle Beach Marathon I trained through an IT band injury for 2 months and ran/walked the Boston Marathon.  After that I took 8 weeks completely off and then as I started running again found out the wonderful news that I was pregnant.

Some of my other goals were to improve my strength training and flexibility exercise and get 7-8 hours of sleep every night.  The strength training was great at the begining of the year and then after the pregnancy I kept doing less and less until I stopped completely after all of my back problems.  I know I should be doing better at this, but I admit that I am slightly terrified of getting injured.  At this point in the pregnancy I’m so happy to be able to run 3 miles that I’m afraid to even mess that up.  I am doing some pregnancy specific exercises that are supposed to help with labor and delivery and plan to get back into a regular strength routine after I have Alexandra.  As for the 7 to 8 hours of sleep…well, this morning I woke up before 7 am again and just couldn’t get back to sleep.  I think at this point I’ll just have to be happy with what I can get!

So for 2013, my goals are:

Family

1.) Deliver a healthy baby!  This is obviously the most important goal for me in 2013

2.) Provide Alexandra with a loving, nuturing home and work with Tim to be a great team and become the best parents we can be for her.

Running

1.) After Alexandra is born and I’m cleared to start running again, gradually follow a slow build up plan.

2.) Start participating in races in late spring/early summer

3.) By the end of the summer, run a sub 18 5K

4.) Run a fall marathon

5.) Lose all the baby weight

Some of these goals are not as specific as I usually go with the running.  I love stating specific goals that are hard to achieve and then mercilessly going after them.  However, I’ve never had a baby before and I don’t want to set myself up for injury by not taking the proper time and listening to my body and giving it what it can handle.  For my marathon in the fall, I’d really like to run under 3 hours again and that will be what I work towards.  However, I know just how much work that was last year without having a newborn and just don’t know how long it will take me to get back into that level of fitness.  By the time I trained to run that marathon, I was already at a pretty high fitness level.  I have no idea what that level will be come March since I won’t have tested it in over a year at that point!  Who knows, maybe it will be stronger after having a baby–I can only hope!