Missing you!

Well, it has been a hot second since I last posted. I have been incredibly busy with school work,  catching up on sleep, and watching an embarrassingly ridiculous amount of Gossip Girl (Sorry I am SO not sorry). Confession: I like to pretend I am Serena and am living it up on the Upper East Side. I took about 4 weeks off from full on training after Half Full, it was so awesome and so necessary.

I fully enjoyed my few weekends as a "college" kid. I will always remember Hallohomecoming weekend of my junior year. A few pictures:

Meghan decided to be Courtney for Halloween and I was a
traffic cone! I am wearing a black skirt which makes it even
better! I am famous for my "duckface" and peace sign pictures
so I am trying to teach Meghan how to duckface... its a work in progress.

Just us being best friends! I <3 her! 

Oh! I forgot to add, we had a snow/hurricane day last Monday! We were right on the edge of a blizzard and a little bit of Hurricane Sandy. Thankfully, it wasn't nearly as bad as they thought it would be. And we got a day off! I slept for twelve hours that Sunday night! And my teachers didn't make the following Saturday a makeup day! Thank goodness!

Post-snow day mountain picture. I went on a ride specifically to
look at the mountains in West Virginia. I am so lucky to go to
school in an area that is so beautiful.

Needless to say, it was an incredible weekend and had an amazing time with my friends, but I am so ready to start training again! How I have missed working my butt off.

However, I am now back on that training grind. The focus of this winter is on strength. I actually typed up my goals and sent them to Connie. I have always been big into having goals, in case you couldn't tell, but I had never really taken the time to create SMART goals. It is SUPER cheesy, but I learned about SMART goals in my health and wellness class freshman year. SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound. The reason you use this method is to make sure you aren't setting yourself up for failure by either setting goals that are unattainable or setting goals that aren't challenging enough. In addition to sharing with my coach, I would like to post my goals on the blog. I will follow up at least once a week! I think sharing the goals will hold me accountable to post and actually doing what I need to do to get faster!

1. Get my running back to where I was freshman year. Confession: I was absolutely obsessed and in love with running my freshman year of college. I would just go out on these runs and be totally in love with the new terrain. Also, I had no idea how fast I was running or how far. I did a half marathon in March and ran 6:40 splits. I can do that again. I know I can. So, my goal for the upcoming season is to run low 43 off the bike.

2. The bike, now this is where its easy. My leg strength is what holds me back on the bike. My legs tire out way before my heart does. In regard to time goals, I don't have any. Time and paces are too hard to gauge with wind and terrain variances. So, its going to be allot of hill repeats and time spent on the bike... and trainer.... 

3. Swimming wise, my goal is to just be fast! I dropped a lot of time this summer in the pool. I would like to be able to really drop those times even more! I am also working on keeping a high elbow throughout the whole stroke. 

4. Nutrition and core are also going to be a huge focus this winter. I'm really going to try and go to yoga at least once a week. And if yoga isn't a possibility, being diligent about my functional strength training and stretching! 

I cannot wait to see where next season goes! I have a really good feeling about it, as long as I don't get myself injured! 

As always, thanks for reading and thank you so much for your support!!