New Mom Old Mom

One thousand sixty-seven miles is the approximate distance from my home in St. Louis, MO to Sarasota, Florida. It’s a little further from my home to New York City and it’s just under the distance from my home to Ontario, Canada. It’s also exactly the number of miles I ran/jogged in 2008.

I run/jog for exercise and I do it almost every day. In fact, I ran/jogged all but 72 days in 2008.  (I say run/jog because sometimes I’m running and sometimes I’m jogging – it just depends on the day). As you can probably tell, I kept a rather detailed exercise log in 2008. And I love running/jogging. It’s easily my favorite form of exercise. If I’m not training for a distance event, I run between three miles and six miles each day. You get that feeling of “cardio accomplishment” faster with running or jogging than you do with most other forms of exercise, and I feel like I get more bang for my buck, so to speak. I can run for 30 minutes and really feel like I’ve done something, but I have to do other things, like aerobics or walking, a lot longer to get the same feeling. I’m not what you would call a patient person.

So here’s the problem: although I was very committed to my exercise routine in 2008, and although I lost all my “baby” weight (via Weight Watchers) and am back into all my clothes, I’m probably flabbier than I’ve ever been except when pregnant. I’m at least less toned than I’ve ever been. Running/jogging is just not a toning type of exercise. It takes and helps keep the weight off, but it doesn’t keep the back-fat away, nor does it tone the arms or abs.  And as I get older, I find myself limping to the bathroom in the morning and becoming less and less flexible. Thus, my New Year’s resolutions:

• Incorporate strength training into my exercise routine 2-3 times per week
• Incorporate yoga and/or pilates into my exercise routine once per week
• Continue running and train for the 2009 Chicago marathon
• Keep my new (used, but new to me) Honda Odyssey clean by vacuuming and wiping down the inside every Friday and washing the outside every other time I fill up. (I know - this has nothing to do with exercise, but it is a resolution of mine).

I wanted to write this post and have it up by New Year’s Day, but I’m actually glad I didn’t because my friend, former co-worker and fellow blogger Marijean of STLWorkingMom.com wrote a great post about making SMART goals versus resolutions. Smart is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Reasonable and Time-bound. After reading her post on SMART goals, I tried to write my resolutions like SMART goals. I think I did so.

There. Now it’s all in writing and it’s way more public than any of my resolutions have been in previous years. So far, I’ve kept to all four of them (the yoga class starts this Thursday). But, it’s only Jan. 3. 

On another note: I’m secretly, selfishly hoping most of the “newbies” at my YMCA start falling off their resolution wagons soon because the crowds at MY Y are a pain and I expect they will be even worse this week. And I KNOW that’s a bad thing for me to wish for, because the increased numbers are good for the Y, and exercise is good for everyone, but I can’t help it.