December 29, 2014

My Annual Non-New Year’s Resolution Post: 2015 Goals

runliftyoga Fitness, Life, Yoga 16 Comments

Unlike last year’s annual non-New Year’s resolutions post, this year I can actually say I accomplished the three goals I set for myself at the end of last year: get my CSCS designation, get published in a print magazine, and qualify for the Boston Marathon. This is one of the reasons why I love having this blog — I can publicly announce things I want to accomplish and hold myself accountable to them, no matter how lofty they may be.

And lofty they were this past year.

 

CSCS Designation

I wrote the CSCS exam in May, and it wasn’t easy. I crammed for six months in between my 9-to-5 day job and freelance editing gig. Coming from a fine arts background, I had to bury myself in the NSCA’s 20-pound Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning textbook pretty much every day for 10 months to understand the concepts and pass the exam. After missing the passing score (70%) for the second part of the five-hour-long exam (I missed it by THREE MARKS) the first time around in May of this year, I had the option to rewrite that part of it 90 days later to hopefully pass and get certified before the end of the summer. I had to go to Seattle to write it since it wasn’t offered here until December, which was super frustrating because I had no money.

Even though I only had to study half of the textbook for those 90 days, I was still worried about the exam because the NSCA changed the exam format and content in July, adding in a bunch of concepts and exercise techniques that aren’t in the textbook. I would say about 30-40% of the exam was stuff I didn’t read about in the textbook, but I knew enough just from reading journals and keeping on top of the latest research published on the net to  pass the test with 85%!

I was so relieved and thrilled, and less than a month later started my own personal training business. This was not on the agenda for 2014, but an opportunity came up to have my own space so I had to rally and get something going quick.

 

 

Getting a print byline

Did you know you can workout at home with just four piece of exercises equipment? No? Well let me show you how in my first published piece in a fitness magazine! I was so excited to finally achieve this goal and to finally add freelance fitness magazine writer to my resume. And fitness model, apparently. I wasn’t expecting such a huge picture of my face in a magazine.

This piece was in IMPACT Magazine’s 2014 November/December issue. And yes I picked up 10 copies.

Qualifying for the Boston Marathon

Somehow, despite an ambiguous foot injury and a head cold that made life miserable during the last week of taper leading up the the Goodlife Fitness Victoria Marathon on October 12, I managed to squeak under the Boston Marathon qualifying time for my age group by a minute.

I finished the race in 3:33:57 without breaking my foot, vomiting, or going down in a blaze of glory and ending up in the medical tent. Yes I felt horrible, yes I felt like vomiting, and yes my legs felt like they could give out at any minute. But I wasn’t going to give up; I had already made up my mind I’d be running as hard as I could and finishing the race, injury or sick or whatever. There was no way I wasn’t going to try. Not with a BQ that close. Plus, it was my third and final goal for 2014. I publicly announced it. I was going to do it.

This was probably the most awesome goal to achieve in 2014, because I didn’t even think it was a possibility for me until I was at least 35 years old and the qualifying standards were lower. This just goes to show what hard work and determination can do — if I can go from non-athlete who hated running seven years ago to qualifying for the Boston Marathon, so can you. I hate to sound cliche, but if you truly give it your all, you can do anything.

Lots of other amazing things happened this year, too, like starting Koru Personal Training and helping my first client; rebranding and revamping my blog from briwifit.com (because what does that even mean, anyway?) to runliftyoga.com; becoming a Sweat Pink, Fitfluential, Girls Gone Sporty and IDEA Inspired Blogger ambassador; and going on vacation to Cabo, going camping and seeing concerts with Matt.

So what will 2015 hold and what are my three non-New Year’s resolutions goals?

Since I have no control whether or not I will actually make it in to run Boston in 2016, my fitness goal for 2015 will be to improve my flexibility and deepen my yoga practice. Since that’s a bit general, I’m going to say master some variation of the scorpion pose and hold it for 10 seconds. I’ve already made decent progress on my forearm headstand, so I think this may be a doable goal for this year. Also, I’d like to be able to do three chin-ups in a row (I can do two!) and two pull-ups (I got one the other day!). Body weight strength FTW!

For professional goals, I’d obviously like to grow my client base at Koru Personal Training, so I will keep plugging away at that in 2015. I’m finding that nutrition coaching is the most popular plan I offer right now, so I’m planning to take the Precision Nutrition Level 1 program in March to better serve my clients. Aside from going back to school to get a diploma, this program looks to be the next best thing in nutrition coaching. If anyone has taken it or has some feedback about it, I would love to hear it.

For personal goals, I would love to get a consistent meditation practice going, which I’m hoping a deepened yoga practice will help with. I would like to work on being more present and in the moment, which was kind of lost on me this past year as I put my head down and got to work on those 2014 goals.

So that’s it. Those are my goals for 2015! Did you achieve the goals you set out to accomplish in 2014? How did it go? What are your goals for 2015?