See Jackie Runn: New Year, New Goals

I honestly cannot believe that another year has come and gone. There are so many things about this year that have been incredibly amazing. The obvious being the birth of my daughter Ryleigh. It has been an amazing journey watching her learn and grow and an amazing journey for us on this ride called parenting.

Health-wise this year has been a bit of a struggle. Due to the complications of pregnancy I suffered a lot of health issues which made running and working out extremely difficult for me. I've only started running in the past week or so, and that has been very slowly.

I've decided to set some goals for myself, mostly to get back to being healthy and active. I've decided to start of the year with a list of them to give myself some accountability. I feel like writing down goals and declaring them publicly helps me to actually achieve them.

I'm usually really bad about drinking water. I don't really like it. Does that make me weird? Most people say it's tasteless, but I find that to be untrue. I've been doing pretty good at drinking at least a liter while at work. I buy a liter bottle instead of an iced tea when I'm thirsty. I need to increase that to 2 bottles and work on hydrating on my days off.

I find that being registered for races helps keep me in the mindset to actually get out and run during the week. Especially now, with life being so busy, I know it's going to get hard for me to get out and run some days. I'm hoping this will help keep me motivated.

Considering that my 5k goal used to be sub-30 this doesn't sound too hard but I'm basing it on the 5k distance I tried out the other day. It took me a little over 48 minutes. Eight minutes is a huge time to shave off of a 5k. I need to build my endurance back up so I think sub 40 is a much more attainable goal to strive for than sub-30.

This also doesn't sound like much considering I used to run one almost every weekend, but I have barely run in over a year and my endurance right now is close to zero. Plus there's always that pesky knee problem. Building back up the endurance to run at least one half by year's end sounds good to me.

My right leg is super weak and the joint in the knee is loose. I need to keep the muscles in my leg strong in order to support my knee. After I'm done with physical therapy I plan on continuing to focus on those muscles to make sure I don't re-injury myself.

I've never actually attempted a run while pushing Ryleigh in the jogger. My husband has pushed her along side me and I've taken multiple walks. I've never actually tried to run and I know it will make running harder. I plan on taking her out with me on more training runs and stop using pushing her in the stroller as an excuse not to get out there.

Those goals will help me get healthy again and I plan on striving to be the healthiest I can for my family. I want to be able to run after my baby and play, with her and not be out of breath. I also need to make sure I continue to eat healthy to protect my heart.

My other three goals aren't health related, but I'm listing them here anyway.

This past year I would think of blog posts and then put off writing them until it was too late. I stopped blogging as much as I liked and plan on getting back in the groove this year.

We had to rearrange a lot to make room for Ryleigh and I couldn't really do much of the organizing while I was pregnant due to my health. A lot of it has gotten done by now, but I just want to finish organizing the house.

Having a baby is expensive and medical bills are no joke. I plan on budgeting better this year and getting those outstanding bills paid off.

Hopefully when this year comes to a close these goals will have all been met.