Happy New Year! Yes, I am still here!

Greetings fellow bloggers! I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday. My Christmas holiday was fantastic! As much as I enjoyed Christmas, I am honestly looking forward to my life getting back to normal. The last few weeks have been nuts! I have been a huge slacker and a very bad blogger. Both running and blogging have been put on the back burner due to the busy holiday season. The good news is that is going to change starting January 1st:)

I did receive my secret Santa gift in the mail a few weeks ago! Thank you Adam!! Adam sent me the movie, Spirit Of The Marathon. I love my gift and have watched it twice! Thank you to Jill for setting up the blogger gift exchange....it was an awesome idea and a wonderful way to share some blogger love:)

Good news! I have a race on January 1st called the Polar Dash. It is in the Team Ortho series of races and I ran this one last year. It was cold but fun:) Beth, I hope to see you there! Hopefully we will not get another snow storm like they are predicting...like we need more snow:)

I have one more bit of news to share! I am pretty excited....I have decided to run a spring marathon! I am going to do the Lake Wobegon Trail Marathon in May! One thing that I should mention is that Wobegon is not a true trail race. It is a ten foot wide asphalt bike trail. The course is flat and fast. Last year I was a volunteer for this marathon and know that several of the runners came from out of state hoping to BQ. Training will start in January. I have taken almost a month off from running and know that I have lost fitness. I am so not looking forward to those first few weeks of training! Can we say sore muscles and massive sucking air attacks!?! God, I can't wait:) I would really love to run this next marathon in four hours or less. I need to shave nine minutes off of my Twin Cities marathon time. Hopefully with proper training and a few more longer runs I will be able to pull it off. Wobegon is a smaller marathon and there will not be pacers. I am so fortunate to have found a personal pacer:) Thank you Mark! Mark is a St. Cloud River runner who has qualified for Boston and is using Wobegon as a longer training run for another marathon. My four hour goal will seem like a walk in the park for him:)

My next post will be the Polar Dash race report! Yay! It has been so long since I have posted a race report. I promise to take tons of pictures....keep your fingers crossed that Minnesota will not be blasted with another winter snow storm! I want to run:)

Happy running, biking, swimming, lifting and surfing! Cheers to you all! May you all have a fantastic New Year!