It is always fun to look back on a year in terms of the word I chose as my theme verb. This year is especially exciting because of how poorly my word went! 😂

I’ll start this post with the really pessimistic view of the year: I started out in January great. I worked really hard to make running a priority and got many miles in–something like 23. February got a little worse, March a little worse than that, and so on through the year. There were times throughout the year that I would try to recommit myself to running and it would last for a week or two and then fall apart again. And my grand finale of the year is that I have run a total of ZERO times in the month of December. All of this is totally true. And there are times in my life where I would have looked at this year as a remarkable failure.

But even during the down times this year, I feel like I learned a lot of things. I’m going to do some bullet points to kind of explain this.

• I learned that I probably chose this as my year’s verb too soon in my life. I still have little children at home during the day, and not so little children home in the afternoon and all day during the summer. So I’m probably not as free as I was feeling I might be at the beginning of the year.
• I learned from the fact that sometimes I wanted to do something good for myself, but didn’t feel up to running, and since running was what I was “supposed” to be doing I wouldn’t do any exercise at all. I’m proud to say that when I recognized that pattern, I tried to change it.
• And on that note, there were MANY times this year that I saw that something wasn’t working and I decided to lower my expectations and/or change my definition of success. That was probably the best thing I could have done, because it was doing that which gave me the motivation to try again all those times during the year. I would recommend that practice to everyone!
• I didn’t listen to myself in my beginning of the year post. You may or may not recall that I mentioned there was NO WAY I ever would have been able to successfully run that marathon back in college without my running buddy (thanks again, Asael). Well, I didn’t have a solid running buddy this time. Sometimes I ran with Josh (which was great! He’s a better runner than me); but a lot of times he and I find ourselves exhausted and unmotivated at the same time because of the same (5) things, so we had a hard time being a complementary force for running to each other.

Because of these things I learned I feel like this year can still be called a success. Plus here are some other ways I succeeded this year.

• I ran approximately 90 miles this year. I know that’s nothing close to what I set as my goal this past January; but it is also nothing close to 0; so I still feel pretty good about it.
• I DID run a race this year. I had considered training for and running a half-marathon with my brother and that obviously didn’t happen. But I DID run a 5K on Thanksgiving morning and it was super fun! I’m glad I did it!
• My running efforts rubbed off on others. Josh ran with me, Carter ran with me, Portia scootered with me on a run, Helen biked with me on a run. Those were all fun activities with people I love that were good for our bodies and minds and spirits!

So that is how my year looked. At least concerning my Run2024 initiative. I have also had some AMAZING spiritual experiences this year that have changed my life (hopefully forever)! But I really don’t see much of how they could connect with the running theme; so I’ll pass on sharing them.

I have already selected my verb for next year, and I can tell you right now that it’s going to be life changing! I’m so excited!