After years of injuries, pregnancy complications, almost dying in child birth, the longest postpartum recovery ever and the slow, slow build to get some of my running endurance back, I am finally training for a half marathon. 

I haven't run one since 2021 -- nearly 4.5 years.

It's hard to believe it's been that long.

I spent most of 2022 dealing with hip and hamstring stuff. I graduated from PT in the early days of my pregnancy. 

And I ran until my 20-week appointment when they found a serious complication, and I was forbidden from anything strenuous. 

I thought I'd get back to running fairly quickly after my child was born. I spent enough time researching how to heal from C-sections and did a million core stabilizing exercises in the early days to rebuild strength. 

But then more complications, more surgeries, more recovery time and suddenly we're deep in 2024 before I'm physically able to run, and I'm back at work and still nursing and juggling all that.  Trying to train for anything was a big no for me. 

And that brings us to the end of last year.  I ran 3 races in October -- two 5Ks and a 10K -- none of which I managed to blog about. I felt like I was finally coming out of some of the fog and trauma that 2025 unleashed, and had found some of my running endurance again. 

It was the longest rebuild ever, but I finally felt ready to dive into half marathon training. 

So here we are, two weeks in and still feeling good about my decision to sign up. I'm following the same training plan I followed for the races I ran in 2021. It's a plan based on heart rate, which I found last time really helped me focus on keeping easy runs easy and hard runs hard. It also helped me recover better and keep most injuries at bay. 

I do four runs and a couple of strength sessions each week. 

Week 1 Recap

Week 1 was a little bit of a mess because it was the week between Christmas and New Years, and I had travel at both ends of the week. 

I had to get real creative with the workouts and shifted things around a lot. 

The first two runs were at my parents' house on their treadmill because there was ice on the ground. The first workout was a hard hill run, which honestly the treadmill is great for. The second was an easy steady state run. 

When I got back home, I took a rest day and then had another hard workout and my "long run" for the week on back to back days. This worked only because my long run was only 40 minutes. So I squished a week's worth of running into five days instead of seven with my travel. 

Not ideal, but I was proud that I fit all the workouts in. It felt important to set that kind of tone the first week. 

Week 2 Recap

The second week was a little bit better. I largely followed the training program as it was laid out. 

Sunday was a hard tempo run, which I did with the running stroller for an extra challenge (and because taking my kid was the only way the run was going to happen).

Monday was a steady state run and some strength training. 

Tuesday was a rest day, which was so needed because I could definitely tell I was getting sore.

Wednesday was a killer hill workout. I hate hill workouts so much. But I'm trying to keep it together and not start skipping them yet, like I know I likely will as motivation wanes during later training weeks. Conveniently there is a pretty steep and long hill close to my house, so I did an easy warm up and then did 90 second sprints up the hill with a two-minute recovery in between. I was sucking wind by the end.

Thursday was more rest and Friday was a my long run because my husband had to work the weekend, and I didn't want to have to do a stroller run for a long, slow, easy run. Nothing about running with the stroller is easy. 

Overall the first two weeks of training were really solid. As I look ahead, I can already tell I'm going to have to keep getting creative with my schedule to accommodate some more weekends that my husband has to work and some random appointments and other commitments we already have on the calendar. I'm super glad for the running stroller. I suspect there will be plenty of times I'll need to use it to ensure my runs get done. 

Flexibility is also key to any training plan, but I think this time more than ever, I'm going to have to be adaptable, shift workouts, and find a true love for the pitch black, very cold early mornings to make sure I can fit everything in. 

2025 was a rough year, and my reading took a major hit as a result.

With all the anxiety, stress and uncertainty this year brought, it was hard to sit down and focus on a book -- let alone have one hold my attention.

I didn't finish many books that I started, and it was hard to truly tell if I didn't like a book or I just wasn't in a mental space for it at the time.

I also got really far behind on tracking what I read, so I'm not sure my Goodreads even fully captures everything I read this year.

All that to say, this favorite books list is a strange assortment of things that managed to hold my attention during this dumpster fire of a year.

I'm hoping 2026 will be better, maybe a tiny bit more stable. One of my goals for the new year is to get back on track with my reading. We'll see how it goes.

But for now, here are the books I'll remember and recommend from 2025.

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book. Cried big tears at the end. The space story, the relationships, it was all so good. My favorite relationship was between the main character and her niece, but man I love a story about space, and this one about women going to space, it was just so good.

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A whodunit where the house is a main character and each chapter makes you think the victim or the killer could be them. The Briar House is a woman's boarding house in DC and the grouchy landlady has strict rules all her guests must follow. But a new and mysterious arrival rocks the boat a little bit, introducing weekly dinners in her tiny room and building relationships with each person.

I loved this book. Each chapter introduces you to one of the women, and the other people in there lives. And each time you meet and understand someone new, you learn a bit more about who could be the victim and the killer. So good, a true Kate Quinn classic.

Yours for the Season by Uzma Jalaluddin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was delightful. I love a fake romance to real romance trope, and this delivered. It was cute and fun, and the perfect book to read in the lead up to the holidays -- meaning it didn't make me think too much. I was really sad to put this down when I finished because I so enjoyed the characters!

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've spent the last few months in the world of the Inheritance Games, and they were the most fun books I've read in a long time. Compelling characters, fun puzzles and lots of good twists and turns. Can't recommend these books enough, but be forewarned, they end in cliff-hangers, so have the next book in the series ready to go if you're impatient to know what happens next like me.

We debated what to do on our last day in Madrid. We originally had thought about doing a short day trip outside the city, but after a couple long day trips and knowing the next day we'd have a very long travel day, we opted to stay in the city.

It was the coldest and windiest day of our trip, but we still hoped to get outside, hit up some of our favorite playgrounds and try to make it an active day.

We talked over to a playground in front of the Royal Palace and were surprised to see it roped off. Puzzled, we walked about 10 minutes to one of the other playgrounds. It was also roped off.

We couldn't figure out quite what was going on, but we backtracked one more time to a playground we'd passed on the walk. It was smaller and didn't have much equipment, but it wasn't closed. It also wasn't very exciting for our kiddo, so after ten minutes, we hopped a city bus to take us back to Retiro Park.

Even though all the playgrounds were closed there too, we at least had lots of wide open space to run explore and run around.

I was curious about the playground closure thing and tried to find an answer. Reddit told me that sometimes the city closes the playgrounds in certain weather conditions so tree branches don't fall on kids. I don't know how true that is, but it's the only thing close to an answer I found.

The highlight was for sure getting to pet the police horses patrolling near the lake.

Or maybe it was chasing more pigeons. We did a lot of that too.

We also got to see a pretty rose garden that we hadn't made it to the day before, and I was surprised for late November, how many flowers were still in bloom.

After burning off some energy, we left the park to do one last daytime stroll through the city, admiring the Christmas decorations and stopping for some more churros.

We ended the day with dinner at our friends' house, a perfectly fitting way to wrap up a great trip. I'm so glad we got the chance to visit them and spend time exploring Madrid and some of the surrounding areas.