2012 Goals: How did it go?

Well, it was a mixed bag.  I shot some of these out of the park, whereas others were non-starters. Let's take a look.
1. Run my first marathon. Done. I ran the Fox Valley Marathon, then helped Jenny reach her goals at the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon.

2. Complete my first triathlon. Done! Not only did I finish the Leaning Tower Tri in Niles, I won my age group.

3. Set a personal record for the 5K. Done! I ran a 24:10 5K in training, and finished the Karhu 5K in 25:53, winning my age group.

Holy pasty skin

4. Volunteer at a race. Done. I volunteered at a community race and the Soldier Field 10 miler.

5. Take a swim class. Done. My swim lesson was some of the best money I spent on myself in 2012 (along with my IUD and laser hair removal, if I'm going to get really honest).

6. Try vegetarianism for a month. Done. While it wasn't difficult to be a vegetarian and I stuck with it for longer than a month, I eventually decided it wasn't really working for me. I could go without meat indefinitely, but I feel better when I'm eating meat.

7. Read a few books. Eh. I guess I read more this year than I did last year, but I could have done better. Now that I have a Kindle, I anticipate reading even more in the next year.

8. Achieve my goal weight of 124 by March 31. Ha, nope. I totally didn't reach my goal weight. In fact, I'm further from my goal weight now than I was this time last year.  Like lots of people, I gained weight while training for the marathon. I'm working on getting rid of it, and being OK with the weight gain in the mean time.

9. Try one new recipe per month. I could have done better at this. But, the recipes I did get together were pretty awesome. My dark chocolate amaranth cookie recipe is still one of my highest-rated posts, and I also found the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. My vegetarian black bean and sweet potato soup is also a hearty meal that I love.

10. Send out holiday cards. Fail. We got a family photo taken for said cards, but I never got this together. I'm going to blame this on the fact that we went on vacation right before Christmas. Better luck next year ... 

11. Grow the Fort2Base ambassador program. Done! This year, I worked with nine amazing ambassadors who helped spread the word about this kick-ass race. I am, however, looking for more ambassadors for 2013. E-mail me if you're interested!

12. Save more money. Sure, I suppose I did this, sort of. I should have been more specific about this.  

So I didn't get it all done this year, and that's OK.  Goal setting is a great exercise, even if I'm not achieving everything.  I feel it's important to stretch myself. I am annoyed that I've moved further from my goal weight, but life's too short to have fruit for dessert. There's always 2013 ...