January:

This month brought me a new job.  I started my new position at my bank as a credit analyst.  January also brought my CrossFit.  Ry got me into the CrossFit bootcamp for Christmas last year.  It was the gift that kept on giving because now I consider all of those folks my family.

February:

Ry and I spent a lot of time during the month of February traveling with our alma mater’s basketball team, the Southwest Baptist Bearcats.

March:

Not much happened in March.  We had Ryan’s 29th birthday at the end of the month and this month also brought me the first of many medication changes.

April:

This month I ran a 50K relay with a group of 4 other girls.  It was the Frisco 50K and we won!  It’s the first race I’ve ever won.    The girls I ran with were so awesome; they saved us, but still.  I had a great time.

May:

God gave me Ashley this month.  We met at sprint class on the Kickapoo track.  It was the best thing to happen to me.  It was in this month that I started running off and on with her group in the mornings.  Later I was able to call me “my” group too.  Ashley was a long awaited gift.  She has become my exclusive running buddy and good friend.  I am thankful for May!

June:

Ry and I traveled to Nashville this month and went to a Coldplay concert.  It was so awesome!!!  By far it was the best concert I’ve ever been to in my life.  We stayed with our friends Todd and Laura and had a super time.

July:

Ry had shoulder surgery this month to repair a torn rotator cuff.  It was a tough and painful surgery but he came through it with flying colors.  He had several long months of therapy and is now on the flip side.

August:

This month brought me something precious.  August brought me Carson Bradley W, a beautiful sweet baby that I get the pleasure of loving.  He is adorable and growing like a weed.  I will always remember the moment of his birth (although probably not as much as his mom remembers) and how precious it was to me.  I will always love this baby like my own and I’m so blessed to have him and his parents in my life.

September:

Bad memory in September- a root canal.  Ugh, I don’t care for that one bit and definitely do not want another one.  Even though my dentist is amazing and caused me very little discomfort (during the procedure anyway) it is not something I want to do every day.  I now have a dead tooth on my bottom right side that will have to be crowned in 2010.  More joy to come!

October:

Birthday month!  I had another great year.  My 29th year.  I celebrated the day with Ashley by running 20-miles.  She sang happy birthday to me every 5-miles.  It was hysterical and lovely.  One time even in Spanish!  This month was also hard because it brought me lots of heart problems.  It was a year for me in passing out and dizziness (who knows how much time I lost being dizzy) but we spent lots of time changing medications this month.

November:

This was a big month.  In running events I ran the Bass Pro Half Marathon and got a new PR of 1:56.  I also ran the Tulsa Marathon and did not PR.  I ran it in 5 hours and it was a struggle.  It was memorable to me because I got past all the tough heart issues and finished.  I persevered.  That is key to me.  November had some bad things too.  Ryan lost his Grandpa at the beginning of the month.  That was hard.

December:

I ran another marathon in December, the St. Jude Memphis Marathon to celebrate my friend Melinda’s birthday.  This was run 12 days after I ran Tulsa.  This race qualified me to be a Marathon Maniac!  We had a great time over the holidays.

Ry and I bought tickets to a KU game for our brother and sister-in-law for Christmas.  The game was on the 29th and we went with them.  It was so much fun!

As you can see, 2009 was quite the year.  I have really high hopes for 2010 being even better.  Tomorrow I will enlighten you on my plans for the next year.

Thank you all for being so, so important in my life.  I hope we can all look forward to a new year of new friends, new experiences, better and faster races, better health, and lots of love.

So, that being said, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Love,
Sarah

First of all, I owe you a race report from Memphis.
Sorry to say that you’re not getting that today. I just don’t have time to really do that trip justice. It requires lurid details of
our fantastically horrid motel room, getting lost in a shady part of Memphis,
eating some authentic Italian, running a marathon, celebrating a birthday,
enjoying BBQ and crepes on Beale Street (not in the same meal), and
Graceland. See, how can I make that
short? I have pictures too. Does that entice you? Patience, friends. It will come this week.

After the marathon in Memphis
my body was a tiny bit trashed.
Completing two marathons, two weeks apart is hard on a girl. I can now speak from experience. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change at
thing. I now feel like the super-est of
Super Women. However, in an effort to
become friends with my body again I decided to let the old gal have a week
off. From everything. No exercise and no diet restrictions. Whoa.
In my life that is the equivalent of saying I decided to do drugs and
live off the street. It’s huge. It is strange to admit though, for all the
shock I actually enjoyed it for a while; the rest I mean. Every part of my body liked it, including my
butt and thighs which now have ample padding to make it through the
winter. Who knew you could get “fluffy”
that fast?! The only part of me that
didn’t like it was my heart. It has been
dizzy central. Poor Ry has been
petrified every morning that he leaves for work before I get out of the shower. I thought he was going to call the police on
me one day because I didn’t hear my phone ring when he called and he just knew
I was out cold in the shower floor.
Anyway, this was good proof for me, real proof not just someone telling
me so, that my diet and exercise DOES matter.
It matters for so many things.

Today it is back to my life.
I am so, so happy. Like I said, I
liked the rest for a while, but now I’m ready to feel good again. I’m ready to have muscle soreness from a
killer CrossFit workout, I’m ready for the happy endorphins that my body gets
from a good run, and I’m ready to feel good from putting good fuel in my
body. I had every intention of going to
my 5am CrossFit group this morning but alas, the old gal isn’t used to getting
up at 4am anymore. When I reached over
to smack the snooze I turned the alarm off instead. That is a bad thing! Because of this ill-timed smack, I won’t be
able to go to CF today. I will, however,
do a CF workout quickly at home before I leave for a dinner meeting
tonight. I will get something done on
this body today. Even though I missed my
workout today, I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am to have my life
back post-marathon. My next race isn’t
until February 28 so I can regularly attend CF again and do long runs and still
be a happy Sarah. I will post the CF
workout I choose to do tonight on tomorrow’s post.

Before I leave you today I will tell you some of the things
I learned when taking a week off from your regularly scheduled life:

1) Like
a plant, my body likes water. Sweet tea
and soda taste pretty good but your skin dries out like an old raisin when you
don’t get enough water.

2) Getting
to sleep in only makes you late to work.

3) Godfather’s
Pizza is pretty yummy.

4) You
have lots of time to think about your life and its direction. I might be changing mine from what I thought
I wanted. I think it might be what I
wanted and not what God wants. We’ll
see.

5) Things
get fluffy.

6) Even
with all the time I was NOT working out, I still didn’t get my Christmas
shopping done. I had an extra 11+ hours
this week that is usually allotted to exercise and I did nothing with it but
sleep and clean carpets. Wasting time
much?

7) OH! I did learn how to work my Droid a little
better. I heart that phone. It’s quite amazing.

Like
a soap opera, you become fascinated in other people lives. NOT Tiger Woods because personally I don’t
think his infidelity should be considered top news on the Today Show, but
fascinated with people that you know. My
runner friends, my online friends…I was living vicariously through them.

9) You
talk to your pets even more than normal.

10) You watch
videos on YouTube and get all sappy and emotional. Those darned laughing babies…

Lastly, I want to extend my congratulations to all my
running peeps that knocked it out of the ballpark this weekend. Willie and Mel rocked it good at the Dallas
White Rock marathon and half marathon (respectively). Great job folks! Penny and her son, Team Planet Ynnep, ran the
Santa to the Sea half marathon relay this weekend in Cali.
Wah-hoo! Good work!

TODAY I LOVE: water, cool water and lots of it

SONG OF THE DAY: “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from the GLEE
soundtrack