As we get ready to close out 2013, I thought I'd do one more recap post. Here's a look back at my past year in pictures. While my running year may have been a bit on the rocky side, the rest of the year wasn't so bad.

January
In January I was super happy to be out of the air cast from stress fracture #1 that I spent a lot of time running and doing CrossFit. I was so excited to throw myself back into activity. I earned my first CrossFit calluses...



...and spent lots of time running the monuments at night with my running buddy



February
February was much of the same. Lots of running and CrossFit with some teaching at UMD thrown in. The big excitement in February was the last Duke vs Maryland game in the Comcast Center. The Terps pulled out the win and College Park threw one hell of a party.







March
In March we got a bit of a break from the freezing cold so I got to experience my first outdoor WOD in CrossFit. We pushed a lot of sleds.



April
April was a fun month. We had Sarah's bridal shower and bachelorette party at the beginning of the month. Baseball came back. I cheered for Ryan at the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler, and at the end of the month my mom and I ran the Nike Half in DC where I completely destroyed my PR.


Bridal shower with the Terp girls


Bachelorette party


Cherry Blossom spectating


Baseball


Nike Women's half with my mom

May
In May, I wrapped up my first semester teaching at UMD. Softball started, and I ran my first 10K in ages.


Empty classroom





June
The highlight of this month was definitely Jon and Sarah's wedding. The runner up was puppy sitting the cutest puppy ever. The low point was the start of my second foot saga.










Unbeknownst to anyone, this ended up being another stress fracture.

July
I spectated for Emily in a race we were supposed to run together. I got the heck of out DC and spent time in Baltimore, PA and Delaware, where I ate a bunch of ice cream and was lazy on the beach.







August
August was a big and busy month. A break finally showed up on my foot during a CT scan so my doctor got me a bone stimulator to help speed the healing. I turned 27. I moved into my own apartment in a building with a rooftop pool. My baby cousin was born. Not in that order at all.







September
Tailgate season returned, and I spectated for Emily and Aila at a race we were supposed to run together.







October
I got furloughed. More football and tailgating. We celebrated my cousin Laura's twins at her baby shower. My foot was slowly healing and I was able to start doing some activity again.









November
I slowly started rebuilding my running base. It didn't go great, but it happened. I went to my first NFL game. I got to hang out with my new baby cousin and catch up with old high school friends when I was home for Thanksgiving.









December
Laura's twins were born (early, but healthy). They're still hanging out in the NICU, but they are getting cuter by the minute. I spent Christmas at home with my family, where I got to hang out with my other baby cousin again. (This was the year of babies I swear). The Eagles won the NFC East last night and are going to the playoffs for the first time in three years.


The twins!





What was the highlight of your 2013?

I did this fun little running wrap up last year, and thought it was a good way to capture my 2012 running year so I thought I'd do it again this year:

Best race experience? The Nike Women's half marathon in DC in April. I was barely able to train for this race because I was balancing CrossFit and teaching at Maryland with my full-time job, but I still managed to shave nearly three minutes off my half marathon PR. Plus my mom came to town for the weekend to run it too and we got to hang out.



Best run? Probably my first run back after I was able to take off my aircast back in January. (After the first time I had a stress fracture.) It was short and not the best run ever, but I was so, so happy to be back to running again.



Best new piece of gear? Being injured so much this year, I don't know that I actually bought any new gear except new running shoes. Is it a cop-out to say my Mizuno Wave Inspires?

Best piece of running advice you received? Stop running. No seriously, my CrossFit coaches told me this multiple times this year, and after my bazillion injuries, I'm starting to think maybe they have a point.

Don't worry, I'm not going to actually stop running (I'm signed up for a half marathon in March after all), I'm maybe going to scale back the intensity and perhaps after the half, the distance.

Most inspirational runner? Meghann and Theodora both inspired the crap out of me this year. Meghann trained for and totally rocked an Ironman, and Theodora broke 4 hours in the NYC marathon. While I was laid up with injuries this fall, I was super inspired by both of these ladies with what they were accomplishing on the athletic front.

If you could sum up your year in a couple of words, what would they be? Hard and full of injury. Two stress fractures knocked me out of running for most of the year. I think I had more DNS races this year than actual races I ran. And since the last stress fracture, I have struggled to get my running mojo back. I'm annoyed at running, I'm sick of getting injured and I hate how long it's taking me to get any of my endurance back.



So running and I are not in a good spot after this year. Here's hoping 2014 holds better things on the running front.

I'm back home in PA to celebrate Christmas with my family this week. And after the stressful and miserable week I had at work last week, I'm so glad to be relaxing at home and not thinking about work projects for a full 12 days.

Speaking of 12 days, my mom's fitness center at work has been sharing a 12 days of Christmas workout. Each weekday morning, the director of the fitness center sends out the next round of workouts. My mom forwarded me one of the emails the other day and I think the workout was kind of cool, so I figured I'd share.

Here's the Day Nine Workout:

9 chair/bench dips, 8 squats, 7 mountain climbers, 6 pushups, 5 star jumps, 4 burpees, 3 minutes jogging/walking, 2 minute wall squat, & 1 minute plank.

The workout is meant to be an add-on to whatever you're normally doing that day. It's short and sweet and kind of fun.

In other news, this weekend we celebrated Christmas early with my mom's side of the family. On Saturday, my aunts and uncles and cousins all met at my uncle's place for dinner. We had a great time, and my baby cousin Landon was clearly the star of the show.



Babies definitely make the holidays more fun.

Landon's about 17 weeks old now, and he's just the happiest most content little baby in the world. He got a little overwhelmed when he first got there because he had about five million people and a dog all up in his face. But he calmed down and let everyone pass him around and play with him.


Harper (the dog) trying to figure out who this little person is

The day was a lot of fun and I have several more family holiday celebrations coming up this week. Should be a really fun week of family and fun!

I'm bad at balance. And I don't mean the stand-on-one-foot kind.

I mean the balancing everything I've got going on in my life and trying to make time for it all.

It's especially come to a head this week -- the week before I'm off 10 days for Christmas.

Work has gone absolutely crazy. A few of my projects are all blowing up at once, and I'm also trying to put out some unnecessary work fires. I've lost count of how many balls I'm trying to keep in the air, and I'm sure any minute now they are going to come crashing down on me.

The stress has kept me up at night, tossing and turning as I try to fall asleep, which of course means when my alarm goes off, I'm dragging in the mornings.

Yesterday was especially dreadful. Didn't fall asleep until 1 a.m., woke up at 6 for work, spent the day pinching myself to stay awake and focused and of course crashed into a hard food coma after our holiday potluck.

I had every good intention of coming home and doing my workout at the gym, but as you can probably imagine that didn't happen. Instead I curled up in a ball on the sofa and went to bed around 9:30. (At least I finally got some sleep!)

Finding the time and energy to hit the gym this week has been a definite struggle for me, and it's left me feeling a little guilty. I'm really enjoying the personal training program I'm on right now and I've felt so bad this week about not having the energy to get myself to the gym.

I know rough weeks happen, and that some things are just out of my control, but it's still frustrating to not have the energy to do things I want to do because I've wasted it on other things.

In attempts to end this post on a positive note, I am working from home today, which gives me a little bit more control over my schedule, which means I should be able to find some time for the gym today in between meetings and work projects.

And I might even get to hit the gym at off-peak hours so I won't have to wait for any of the equipment!

Man I'm a little late in getting today's post up (like 13 hours) but it was just a crazy, crazy busy day at work. We had an emergency come up on one of our contracts and I spent the day dealing with that.

Luckily I managed to not pull all my hair out. Probably because I was able to distract myself with pictures of my new baby cousins!

On Saturday my cousin Laura had her twins -- two handsome and healthy baby boys!



She texted me on Friday night to let me know they were probably coming the following day, and at first I was kind of nervous because that was kind of early, but as long as everyone was healthy, that was all the really mattered.

The boys were delivered Saturday as promised and, they are perfect and wonderful and ok I've only seen pictures, so far, but they are too cute for words. For now they're hanging out in the NICU getting bigger and stronger so they can go home with mom and dad.

And then I will spoil them with hugs and kisses and lots of love.

I mentioned briefly in yesterday's post that I started working out with a virtual personal trainer a few weeks ago.

So I thought it would be fun to tell you a little bit about what I'm doing, how it all works and why the heck I decided this would be a fun idea.

We'll start with a little bit of back story:

When I was in college I was a group fitness instructor. It was hands down one of the most fun part-time jobs I've ever had because I got paid to work out and I met some really cool people...like my friend Virginia.


I'm second from the left, Virginia is third from the left

I would say Virginia was one of the most well-liked instructors because she would kick your butt in class, but do it with a smile on her face and make sure that you were having fun at the same time.

Fast forward a few years and Virginia had made health and fitness training and coaching her full-time gig working with a variety of clients at gyms in the DC area.


Shamelessly borrowed from Facebook

But earlier this year, she and her business partner Kris -- a trainer and coach with years of experience under his belt -- decided they wanted to expand their services to help people outside of the DC-area reach their health and fitness goals.

So they launched EP Fitness Prep -- a virtual training and coaching program.

In the past, Virginia and Kris have worked with clients to help prepare them for a variety of fitness competitions (figure competitions, bikini competitions, etc.).


Virginia with a client at a competition

I have no dreams of being a figure competitor, but I reached out to Virginia because I wanted a dedicated program to help me get back in shape after lots of time off for injuries. I wanted something that would build fundamental strength to help me get back to where I was pre-injury.

In full disclosure, Virginia and Kris offered to work with me in exchange for blogging about my experience working with them.

So now that we've got the back story out of the way, let's talk a little bit about how this whole virtual training thing works.

To get started, Virginia and Kris had me answer a bunch of questions about my goals, the amount of time each week I could dedicate to a fitness program and how I would measure success.

I wanted a fitness plan that let me keep running, while rebuilding strength I lost. In response to my answers, that's what Virginia and Kris gave me.

My current plan has me doing strength work in the gym four days per week with the flexibility to throw in runs where I want.



They also provided me with a diet plan, which I was a little leery about. I'm not doing this to lose weight or massively overhaul the way I eat, and normally I find diet plans restrictive and annoying. If you tell me I can't eat something, it's pretty much all I'm going to want to shove into my mouth.

But Virginia assured me that the diet plan was more a guide that gave me flexibility to eat most of the things I wanted, but was structured to ensure I was refueling on necessary macro-nutrients to rebuild and recover from workouts.

I told her I'd give it the old college try, and in the two weeks I've been doing the program, I've found my diet hasn't actually changed all that much other than to increase the amount of protein I was eating, but I haven't felt like there aren't certain foods I can't eat.

So each week, I do the workouts, record the weight I use and track my food Monday through Wednesday and report back to Kris and Virginia. By Friday, they provide guidance on where I can perhaps increase weight and suggestions on how to improve in the upcoming week.



I'm only two weeks in, but I'm liking it so far. It's definitely different than working with a coach in person, but I like the flexibility of being able to do my workouts when my schedule allows, and I really love getting the feedback from Kris and Virginia each week.

If you want to learn more about EP Fitness Prep, you can check them out online: website, Facebook and Instagram.