its been so long, i don't even know what to write.

i have been thinking about my goals this year but its a little hard because i kind of feel like my wife and i are still figuring our mid-week routines. she wasn't fully moved out of her apartment until the end of november, and then in december we had house guests (or were out of town) at least half the month. now here we are in early january, and things have thankfully settled down.

i guess that doesn't make sense but i feel like i've had a big life-change take place (a good one), and i'm still trying to figure it out a little bit. comprende? its weird to put a stake in the ground and set an annual goal for yourself when you don't even know what your wife typically does on a tuesday night. heh. we don't even know what we spend on groceries in a month. the list goes on and on...lots of figuring crap out, which is fun.

i will say this: i want to get stronger. i want bigger muscles. i want to lift 3x per week at least through the spring. i've picked tuesday/thursday/sunday as my lifting days. its been going well so far! like i said, i like my new gym so that obviously helps.

i haven't settled on my running goals yet. i ran 20% less miles in '08 vs. '07 (around 1,600 in '08...i'll look that up soon), and i ended up gaining about 10% of my bodyweight, mostly due to the impacts of stress at the end of the year. i'll get it back.

on a positive note though, i ran my first sub-4 marathon in '08 which might be my proudest athletic moment! maybe that's pathetic and a bit dramatic, but man i had been working hard toward achieving that goal for a long time.

oh hey, my mom challenged me to drink 1 pop/soda per day in the new year. i blew it on one day (i had 2) but otherwise i have been meeting that goal! which means i have been drinking a ton of water. i can feel the difference, its great. i'm not kidding when i say i had been drinking the equivalent of about 7 or 8 cans a day since the marathon. every day. holy smokes!

another random note, on monday this week i ran 12.75 miles outside which marked my longest run since the marathon in early october. it was horrible! i felt really dehydrated and barely made it back home. plus my ipod ran out of juice at the halfway point. it took forever: 2 hours 8 minutes. obviously the footing is not good and the temp was in the high teens/low 20's but i still feel like it should have gone better than it did. i ran 9:30 miles for the first 5 or 6 miles which felt very comfortable, and ended the run with splits in the 10s and the last bit was 11-something. ugh!

well there you have it! my first, rambling post of '09. i will do some more thinking and analyzing over the next week or two before setting some running and bodycomposition goals.