2012 -- What a Year!

I started writing this blog at the end of 2011 to chronicle my journey to my Ironman Lake Placid race.   I wasn't very comfortable writing because doing so ultimately meant that I was putting a part of myself on display.  Some of my friends and family may argue that I like to be the centre of attention.  Not so, really.  (That's my husband).  Although, truth be told, I like to be a ham when I'm surrounded by the people I love and with whom I'm comfortable.

Like most people, I only want others to see the best parts of me.  Reality is, the beginning of 2012 was a very difficult year for me and I went to many dark and unhappy places.  Writing about it would have been very dismal.   Thank goodness for friends who like to laugh because they took me out of my funks.

The most important thing I learned this year is that some of the bad stuff that happened ultimately turned out to be the best thing that could have ever happened to me.  It's still an evolving situation, but one that I am learning to embrace this year with less fear and more happiness.

I knew 2012 would be a rollercoaster year, and it didn't disappoint.  These are some of the things that happened.  I came up with 12 to commemorate the year 2012.

1.   End of a business (and, sadly, a friendship).  This was where the darkness came from.  I had a fitness testing facility/triathlon and running coaching business that I was very passionate about, but when my partner/friend pulled out of the busines out of the blue, I couldn't carry on by myself and had to close the business.  It was also the end of our friendship.

2.   End of a career and on to a new chapter which is yet to be determined.  In my previous life, I was a court stenographer for over 20 years.  I primarily covered criminal trials so I've heard just about everything there is to hear when it comes to crimes.  Very exciting at times, and much more interesting to everyone else who has morbid fascinations with death and criminals.  I have lots of stories.  This past March, I decided I needed a career change.  I'm still working on that, but I have been lucky that I've had many transcripts to work on to keep me preoccupied and to maintain some sort of cash flow in the process.   Lawyers do not like to pay on time so that's been challenging at times.


3.   Working from home.  See above with respect to transcripts.  I love working from home.  I hated commuting to Toronto.  Three hours of my day was spent in my car and sitting on a train.  I also managed to keep some of my previous athletes and am coaching them in their future goals.

4.   Great success in my own training.  It's amazing how much more selfish I can be with my own training when I'm not focused on everyone else's.  This isn't a complaint.  I loved/love coaching but my own took a backseat for many years.  This year, I managed to win my age group in a 5K race back in April.  Okay, that's because it was a small race and the woman who actually won my age group won the Masters division so that bumped me up to first. 

5.   Friendships strengthened.  As I said above, some amazing things came out of 2012 and one of the best things is that certain friendships that I hadn't expected became stronger. 

6.   Ironman Lake Placid accomplished.    Best experience ever.  My race report was finally completed in November.  Bad blogger, I know.

7.   Old bike/new bike.  Hated the old bike and LOVE my new bike.  I wasn't looking for a new bike, but when I discovered a six-inch crack in the frame, I NEEDED a new bike.  Afterall, I was doing Ironman about three months after this discovery.  I fell in love with my new Cervelo right away.  Again, some wonderful things happening. 

8.  Training myself = I need some mental toughness.  Since there was no one else I knew doing Lake Placid, this necessitated some long solo bike rides and many, many solo long runs.

9.  Girl nights are important.  I have some amazingly supportive friends and these nights were a blast!

10.  Wills signed.  Not a real exciting thing, but one of the resolutions for my husband and I was to do this in 2012.  So it only took us to December to finally get it done, but we did it.

11.  Nutcracker - first time ever seeing it was in December.  It wasn't the spectacle that I'm sure the ballet puts on in Toronto, but we're going to see it in Toronto this year.  (Again, girl nights are important).

12.  Writing more blog posts near the end of the year.  I finally got pro-active and began posting more.  I became more motivated and inspired by reading and following so many amazing bloggers. 

I'm going to give a shout out to Janae who wrote a great post on tips on starting your own blog and one thing she said was to write about things that you're passionate about.  There are lots of things that I'm passionate about, other than running and triathlons, so I will be writing more about that in the future.  Unfortunately, you may also learn more about me, too, warts and all :)

Hope your 2013 is shaping up to be the year you want it to be and deserve it to be.