Skip to main content

New Year's resolution

Nine days into 2012 and a day before entering into a new age group is an opportune time to nail down some New Year's resolutions. 2011 was a good year, one that filled with transitions and norming --  be it moving from California to Charlotte, from being a student back to an architect, or starting fresh in a new territory to establishing roots and relationships. My new running and swimming communities had made the transition easy and welcoming, and partly because of that, much of my attention in the past year was on either sports, like running my first 50k and participating in my first swim meet. Having just graduated from seminary was probably the other half of the reason why I had been keeping a distance from structured studies / reading in 2011. With that said, my 2012 focus will be on balanced growth. While I still have a long list of goals in swimming and running, I need to make sure I allocate enough time and attention to spiritual and intellectual growth. Here are my five resolutions:
  1. Read a book on a different subject every month on top of other readings. 
  2. A personal/spiritual retreat every three months.
  3. Dedicate a couple (unplugged) hours of quiet/prayer time every Saturday/Sunday.
  4. Swimming: Improve strokes to be able to swim Level 2 in all four strokes; Nationals
  5. Running: Training for TransRockies; BQ (secondary)
This is obviously not a exhaustive list of things which I need to work on, that'd just take too long...

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." Ephesians 2:10

2012.01.17 p.s.: How could I forget about Jonathan Edward's resolutions


Comments

  1. We are installing an Factory Direct Pools
    in the very near future. Our first decision is to go with a fiberglass pool or a Factory Direct Pools? Advice from all you pool owners would be greatly appreciated. If you have had both types, please indicate in your reply. Thanks!

    Factory Direct Pools

    ReplyDelete
  2. Awesome, Phyllis! Its always great to recalibrate and breath in the expectations of the new year and figure out how to actualize those ideals. Enjoy it all and look forward to seeing you in the Asheville area again sometime!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WV Trilogy - Part 2

(If you haven't read Part 1, it's here .) (Sat) Oct 13 -  Sunrise at Spruce Knob 6 a.m. start in the dark. My legs surprised me by being happier than yesterday. My heart is in better place as well. The first 6.7 mile goes up to Spruce Knob, the highest point in West Virginia. Part of this section was on fire road and I welcomed the faster miles. Steady progress was made in the first 20 miles or so until the long, long descent into Aid Station 3. As I have decided yesterday, I'd start the race, go from aid station to aid station, and re-evaluate my condition at each. I left Aid station 2 feeling good but then the long descent once again put doubts in my mind. Running reduced to little steps on jello-legs. Compression socks helped to contain the injury and pain, but the strength to support the pounding was still lacking. Soon, my knees started to hurt as well. At aid station 3, they told me I had 2:45 to make it to the next aid station before the cut-off. At the pace I...

Blue Ridge Marathon

Bill Rodgers After reading so many people's blog on their experience of America's toughest road marathon, the Blue Ridge Marathon, I'm starting to lose my own chain of thought/memory. Bottom line is I had a lot of fun and surprised myself with a sub-4 finish. My estimate was around five hours, or maybe even 5:30 if condition was tough like last year's monsoon. Here's my account of it: Three and a half hour drive from Charlotte straight to packet pickup at Roanoke's Taubman Museum of Art, a modern and iconic building in contrast with the rest of the historical railroad downtown. It was Friday evening and the streets were lively. People were on the patio and on the street with live music playing. I strolled around a little but not too much since I wanted to save my legs. My hotel was only about a mile away. I contemplated on just walking there from the hotel, but ended up driving half a mile or so to park at the Civic Center. Half a mile could be a haul af...

Leatherwood 50k

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing (James 1:2-4 ESV). Leatherwood HQ (Photo credit: Stephanie Moore) I’ve always known that running requires not only physical fitness, but also mental power. What I did not realize till this weekend was mental power did not just mean “toughing it out” or “sucking it up” during the race, but it also meant changing our attitude before and during a difficult race. Last year while running the Leatherwood 10-miler, I was very glad that I wasn’t running the 50k/mile; but this year, I was going to be that person running the 50k. The weather forecast leading up to the race didn’t look good and it had gotten progressively worse. Knowing the slightest rain would turn the horse trails into mud pits, I was not looking forward to it. Just a...