Living

First post of 2020! You may notice that I haven’t posted anything since June. I don’t know where the time went! I had to take some time to focus on me, and I was stretching myself too thin. I spent New Year’s Eve at the beach in Florida with my in-laws. Now I’m back rested and recharged. I will hopefully post a little bit more going forward.Gotta love a sunset over the oceanFirst things first, some updates. One of my last posts before my hiatus was about my decision to train for my first half marathon. Well, I did it! I started a 16 week training plan in June, and ran in a half marathon during the Lake Tahoe Marathon weekend in October. This was one of the hardest things things I’ve ever done. The training went pretty smoothly, and I didn’t run into many issues with injuries. Luckily, I have a supportive group of friends and a husband who helped encourage me. The race itself was a doozy. My only real goals were to finish the race and to not be the last person over the finish line. I accomplished both of these goals, but it wasn’t easy, and I almost gave up a couple of times.First of all, Lake Tahoe is in the mountains, so my body was not ready for the thinner air. Also, it was a lot hillier than I trained for, because again…mountains. In the end, I finished the run about 15 minutes slower than I thought I would. And, there were still plenty of people that finished after me.Made it over the finish line!My finishers medalNow that you’re up to speed on that, let’s talk 2020. I have a couple of exciting trips planned for this year. First, I will be going to Alaska to look for the Northern Lights in March. Then, this summer I’m going to Africa for a safari and gorilla trekking. These are both bucket list trips for me, so I’m pretty freaking excited. On top of that, I’ve set a couple of (hopefully) attainable new year resolutions: I will focus on my physical and mental health. I try to go to yoga at least once a week, and do workouts at home in between. I am also trying out Noom. I know a couple of other people trying it and I kept seeing adds, so I finally gave in and signed up for a 14-day trial. I’m hoping it will help me develop healthier eating habits, and help me mend my complicated relationship with food and yo-yo dieting. I’ll keep you posted.I will try to learn Spanish again. I took Spanish classes in middle and high school, but since then I have basically forgotten almost everything, not that I was ever that good to start. It’s embarrassing how bad Americans are at foreign languages when other people all over the world are at least bilingual, if not more. I’m using Duolingo and watching shows that I’m already familiar with dubbed over in Spanish. Hopefully I can retain something. I’m open to tips and suggestions! That’s probably enough for this first post back. Until next time!