#Reverb13, Day 1: At the Start

Throughout the month of December, I’ll be participating in #reverb13: Reverb is a way to reflect on the past year and project into the next year with a prompt a day for 31 days.

Better late than never I suppose.  The weather is bad in Dallas so they cancelled all the flights and I'm stuck solo in Philadelphia.  I am really hating life right now.  The only comfort is that the Christmas party we had planned to attend tonight was cancelled due to weather.  I'm trying not to remind myself that the cancelled party would have meant a snuggly night on the couch, but instead I'm sitting in a hotel suite and wanting to cry.  But one benefit to a bunch of unplanned free time is that I can finally get caught up on this month's Reverb posts.  I loved doing this series a couple years ago. Now here we go again! 

Day 1 – At the start
Where did you start 2013? Give us some background on this year.

I started 2013 feeling content in general with my life, but my overwhelming goal was to push myself for a new marathon goal time this year.  It was the only aspect of my life where I felt like I really wanted more. 

Running and my running buddies have been a huge part of my life and it's always interesting to see how people evolve in their running over the years.  There is a small core group that I've run with 3 days a week for many, many years now.  And over the last couple years, it seems like we've been spreading out more and more on "race pace" runs.  I figured this would be a good year for me to step up my efforts and see if I could hit my ultimate goal. 

I did not.  I don't think I ever did an official race recap -- if I didn't, I should, there were several interesting points -- but I had a great race until about mile 16.  Then I felt myself mentally giving up.  I think my pace held for about 2 more miles, but then I slowed down some.  I was still content with my finish time because I managed to run my fastest yet by a couple minutes, but it definitely wasn't the time I wanted...

Oh well.  Obviously, I gained a lot from the training.  I had fun, stayed healthy, did good things for my body, and ended up with a PR that is better than nothing!