Banking the Miles & Goals for 2016 – Fall Update!

Wow, it’s been a while since I updated my “Banking the Miles” for 2016! For those of you who don’t know what this is all about… for the past couple of years I have been making it a goal to try to beat my mileage from the previous year each month. 2016 has been a HUGE year for running for me and so far I have beat my miles from 2015 every single month. December may be a bit of a struggle with my current injury (strained hamstring) but here’s hoping I can get at least 41.6 miles ;)

• January 2015: 17.48 miles / January 2016: 55.13 miles
• February 2015: 18.09 miles / February 2016: 45.57 miles
• March 2015: 19.08 miles / March 2016: 41.39 miles
• April 2015: 10.51 miles / April 2016: 61.39 miles
• May 2015: 33.52 miles / May 2016: 57.14 miles
• June 2015: 51.10 miles / June 2016: 51.5 miles
• July 2015: 43.91 miles / July 2016: 52.08 miles
• August 2015: 60.8 miles / August 2016: 96.27 miles (so close to 100!)
• September 2015: 44.29 miles / September 2016: 82.63 miles
• October 2015: 19.15 miles / October 2016: 68.17 miles
• November 2015: 36.98 miles / November 2016: 52.0 miles
• December 2015: 41.59 miles
• TOTAL 2015: 416 miles / TOTAL 2016: 663 miles so far…

As far as my goals for 2016:

Improve My Health

1. Exceed my run/walk mileage for 9/12 months from 2015, even if it is just by a tenth of a mile. My ultimate goal is to make 2016 a 500 mile year! The more I run, the more my running will improve.  I exceeded my run/walk mileage every single month so far this year. We’ll see how December goes!
2. Reach a goal of running/walking 60 miles in one month. Last year I hit a goal of 50 – I can definitely push to 10 more in a month! When I made this goal, I obviously did not know that I would run a half marathon, or a second half marathon, OR A FULL MARATHON.
3. Complete a half marathon. This has been a goal of mine for several years. I know I can do it, I just have to put one foot in front of the other and go! Did it. 2x. If you want to get technically, I did it 4x cuz I ran a full marathon, too. :)
4. Complete one race (of any type) each month. Racing really helps to improve my running by having goals to hit. Can’t OFFICIALLY say I did this yet because we still have December, but so far, so good!
5. Reach my goal of a “normal” BMI by my 29th birthday. Increased activity and better eating has really helped my running. I felt my absolute best not at my lowest weight as an adult, but when my BMI was considered “normal” – it was more maintainable than my lowest weight. I know that this will also help with my running. Didn’t hit this goal, but I maintained my weight loss of about 16lbs and I even dropped a size or so in my clothes! Training for my marathon helped me lose a few inches.

Expand my Brain

1. Do some continuing education every month – whether it is reading a nutrition related article, attending a webinar, or going to a training/conference. This is important not only to keep me up to date in nutrition, but also to maintain my RDN status. Uhhh.. not so much.
2. Read a book every month – new or re-visit one I haven’t read in a long time. I am now a part of a book club that I think will really help with this goal. Reading is so relaxing and I need some more “me time” that doesn’t involve a screen! Also not so much. I did pretty well with this at the beginning of the year thanks to my book club, but haven’t bee keeping up with it lately.

Home Improvement

1. Clean up and organize our office. This room has been a mess since the day we moved in and my husband has begged me for the last two years to clean it up. I’m crossing this off, even though it isn’t TOTALLY finished, it is greatly improved!
2. Clean up and organize our basement. We have an awesome basement that could really be utilized for more things. We need to de-clutter our lives and this is a good place to start. Haven’t gotten to the basement yet.
3. Set up a workout room in our basement. We’ve been talking about this for months now because we both want to be able to workout at home more, but don’t have the greatest space. See above.
4. Paint our bedroom. We painted the two additional bedrooms when we moved in – they were kids rooms and were pretty gnarly looking! Our bedroom wasn’t bad (purple) so we left it. I’d like a little more calming color in there, though. Nope. Probably not this year.
5. Paint our fireplace living room. This room is currently dark brown and my husband complains about it all of the time. We need a brighter space. YAY! It’s not dark brown anymore! It’s a very nice green color now.
6. Re-purpose our fireplace living room. I don’t know what we are going to do with this yet, but a couple of ideas are to move the couch and table out, put a nicer desk in, and have it be more of a peaceful gathering space. My husband also thinks that if our desk is out in the open I will be less likely to let it get cluttered! Another option that I have considered is putting our dining room table here and getting a smaller table for the kitchen, or getting a small, bar-height table to put in there for people to gather, chat, play cards, etc. We got rid of the coffee table and couch that was in that room and now we have our dining room table in there. We plan to get a smaller table for our kitchen.

Have Some Fun & Build Relationships

1. See 311 in concert. My favorite band and I usually see them with some of my favorite people. It’s a tradition! YUP! Unfortunately though the concert got cut off early. Sad!
2. Attend at least 3 concerts in 2016. I love music and I love going to see live concerts. I already plan on going to see Blue October in May and 311 when they tour in the summer. Again can’t cross this off officially yet – saw Blue October in May and 311 in July, will be seeing Blue October again in a couple of weeks!
3. Play Cards Against Humanity. I can’t believe I still have not played this game! YEAH! Finally played this with some of my girlfriends from work!
4. Get away somewhere for a weekend with Ken. We actually have not done something just the two of us away from home in a long time. Those trips are wonderful for relationship building. Didn’t do this yet and probably won’t. :(
5. Convalidate our marriage or make plans to in the near future. I know that this is something that both of us want, we just have not figured out the best way to go about doing it. I hope that this year we can at least decide some of the details, even if we don’t go through with it yet. I think we have decided that we aren’t going to do this.
6. Visit my out of town friends at least 6 times. What this really should say is – visit my friends at least 6 times! Because all of them are out of town now. :( I’m pretty sure that I did this. Does going to races count??? ;)
7. Visit my parents at least 6 times. I hope to make this happen more often because life is not guaranteed and we never know how much longer we have with our parents. While we didn’t go visit my parents that much this year, they did come to visit us and supported me at a lot of races this year.
8. Go somewhere that I have never been to before. I did this in 2015 and I’m so glad I did! Although it hurt the pocket book a bit to travel, it was well worth the memories and seeing new places. I don’t have to go far, either – there are some amazing places in Michigan that I have never been to! I don’t think I really officially did this.
9. Post 50 blogs this year. I really miss blogging. I remember in high school that I used to blog almost daily. Granted, it was a LOT more personal than I ever care to be on this blog, but it is awesome to look back on those posts and remember my life back then. Well, I’ve posted 35 so far this year (including this update) sooooo… I highly doubt I’m going to go blog crazy and post 15 blogs in December, but hey! You never know!
10. Complete an Instagram Project 366. I also really miss taking pictures. I love using Instagram, and I was pretty successful with a “Photo a Day” challenge in December 2015. I’d really like to capture moments of my life, even if it is completely mundane, every day. So far, so good!!!
11. Get together with the Fab Four at least once. We have plans made right now to visit Kendra in February – hopefully it works out! Yeah! We all met up at Kendra’s house this past February!
12. Get together with Kyle at least once. I would love for him to come and visit our new house and check out what Saginaw has to offer! ;) He visited me in Saginaw this year! But we seriously need to hang out more.
13. Watch all of the seasons of “Lost”. I love binge-watching TV shows and this is one that I really would like to see. Not yet, but I doubt it.
14. Visit Kendra in her new home in Ohio. Right now we have a possible Fab Four trip planned to see her new home! Fab four get together, we went to see her new place in Ohio!
15. Visit Lorraine and JD in Philly. My other niece Haley and I really want to do this, and this could also be my “visit somewhere I’ve never been before”. Ahhh it didn’t work out… although there are still some weeks left in the year… but I highly doubt that we’ll get out there.
16. Go to Cedar Point. I am hoping to run the Cedar Point 5k again this year – what an awesome experience! Did it! Heather and I ran the Cedar Point 5k this year.