I hate the New Year New Me montra. This implies that there was something wrong with the “old” me and I don’t think that’s true. I personally like the New Year Better Me mantra. This is more an accure description of what I’m going for this year.

I’m going for heathier eating habits. I’m going for a weight that will not cause me foot issues when running. I’m going for balance. I thought that I would go for closing my apple watch rings every day, but then got sick and a new puppy which made me give that one up fairly quickly. Besides that was more pressure than I wanted.

In order to know if I’m achieving my goals on the last day of 2019 I did a weight and more importantly a measurement check. I care more about the inches around the belly than the number on the scale. Although I will say that in order for the inches to go down, so does the scale. I will also say that little by little I have allowed the number on the scale to get to a number that I once would have found unacceptable.

I will further say that I may have been a little shocked by the tape measurer. Unlike a scale, it is hard to say that the number is wrong because my hair is wet, my shirt weighs 10 pounds, it’s wrong time to get weighed and all the other little lies we tell ourselves.. I’m not going to get obsessive with these numbers either but use them as a way to check progress.

I also started the New Year off with a fun local 5K on the cold first day of the year. I went into it knowing that I have not run since completing the NYC Marathon. I further more have not done any type of real exercise since then either. So I was not expecting much. My goal was to just go have fun. Get some miles in and kick start the year reminding myself that I can do this.

I started in the back of the pack as I wanted to make sure that I didn’t do something stupid and try to run at a pace that I could not maintain and would have no business trying to do. As the race started, I ended up being next to a friend. We ran it together. We walked when need be. We chatted the few miles. We made sure to pass and finish in front of the lady who was rude to us near the finish line. Most importantly we had fun. We also finished in a very respectable time of 37 minutes.

One thing that jumped out at me front and center yesterday is how much I miss the running community. I have both intentionally and unintentionally backed away from it and kept to myself with my running. I don’t want to feel like I’m holding people back. Don’t want to slow anyone down. Don’t want to “embarrass myself” with how slow, out of shape, and just everything else. Then their is the logistical side where I am just so bad at planning and just kind of do what I can when I can.

It was good to be back. It was good to see so many smiling faces. Faces that I’ve missed. The only judgment their that day was my own self inflicted judgement on myself. It was just a good day. I need more days like that. I need more days where I get out of my own head. I need more days with people. I’ve always been a person to be on the outside looking in if I don’t force myself to be in the mix. There are many reasons for it that will have to wait for the non existent book to delve into. Anyway, I realize that my slow exile from my running community has also been a bit of slowly turning into myself leaving me alone. I need to be better.

So here is to starting January off right and seeing where it takes me. I’m doing some plotting. I’m doing some planning. Most of all I’m still trying.

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