image from Tiffany Han I've been a little off lately. Nothing really major, just little things. Recovering from my ankle injury and getting back on track with my marathon training (Only 39 days from now! Yikes!). Running behind on numerous things like Halloween decorations, birthday planning, and blog writing, etc.. Falling victim to a seemingly insatiable sweet tooth (emotional eating at it's finest). I've been feeling a bit out of sorts. And then yesterday, I happened upon a blog post by my friend/life coach, Tiffany. She shared a list of 13 things she'd like to accomplish before 2013. With so much starting to swirl around in my head, making a list was just what I needed. So I made a list: Keep running 1. Continue my marathon training. I have one more half marathon this Sunday . I also plan on doing strength training at least twice/week (whether its at the gym or at home--no excuses) until the big day. 2. Run my first marathon on December 2nd ( CIM )! C...

I know I missed Marathon Monday this week and I promise I'll get back to the story where I left off last week . But today I am going to skip ahead to tell another story in my marathon training saga. A long story. This past weekend I ran a half marathon at the Nike Women's Marathon (NWM) in San Francisco which was my second half marathon. It was an incredible experience, both the race and the process it took to get there. The NWM is a huge race (25,000 runners) with a huge reputation for a beautiful course, San Francsico hills, and Tiffany's & Co finisher's necklaces handed out by fireman dressed in tuxedos. As big as it is, it can take some work to enter the race. For many of the spots, there's a lottery held early in the year. And I'll be honest, I didn't know this race existed when the lottery occurred. But as I learned more about running, I learned about more races and this one popped up. At first, I was far too intimidated by the thought...

As I've mentioned before, I joined Weight Watchers this past January which led me to finally lose the weight I had struggled with since college. In fact, I lost 42 lbs total and this week I achieved Lifetime status . Before joining Weight Watchers, I had tried countless combinations of diets and workout routines, but I had little long-term success. Nothing seemed to stick. Even doing the Couch to 5K program and running several 5Ks last year didn't help me lose weight. But running did break my previous pattern, since I actually enjoyed it and wanted to continue. But something more would need to happen for me to successfully lose weight. And this year I finally figured out what the extra something was: I needed help. Seems simple enough, right? Well it's taken me years, practically my lifetime, to come to this "simple" realization. Being raised strong and independent, I'm often most comfortable being in control and solving my own problems. But trying to do it...

It's Marathon Monday (continued from here ) Last week's Marathon Monday left off with my decision to join Weight Watchers. Now joining Weight Watchers is a story all it's own and I'll share that, too, but today I'm going to concentrate on the running part of my story. So the new year came and I joined Weight Watchers. With my renewed commitment to losing weight and getting healthy, I started running again. Since it had been awhile, I started the Couch to 5K program again. I progressed through the program more quickly and before I knew it, I was calling myself a runner again. And I was happy to be running, so I shared. I loved sharing my running experience even though, up until this point, I had pretty much been a runner in isolation. I'd share my runs in conversation or on Facebook, but I didn't really know any runners. But sometime in March that started to change. I started meeting other runners. For instance, I remember a chance meeting with an ol...

It's Marathon Monday again and it's time to get back to my story after last week's interruption . You may remember I left off with the Couch to 5K program and getting "hooked" on running. While completing the nine week program, I actually started enjoying running for the sake of running which helped me complete the program and then continue running. After I completed the program at the end of June last year, I decided I should actually find a 5K to run. It had never been my goal in the beginning, but it seemed a natural next step in my journey. So I found a local 5K for a cause near and dear to my heart: my first 5K was the Race for the Arts . It was a wonderful experience, so I decided to run two more, one being a 5K marking the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 and the other a 5K to raise money for ovarian cancer (a cause dear to a friend).The races were fun and rewarding, and I really could have done more, but with the holidays approaching we just didn't have t...