Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011!

Joy here...It's about 2 hours away from the start of our New Year's Eve party in our new house, and I figured that I'd share some photos from our new home gym in our basement.

I figure that if I'm going to turn over a proverbial leaf and throw my hat over the proverbial fence all in the effort to take my running to the proverbial next level, then I might as well take advantage of the room offered by our very first home and make a dedicated workout space.

Our bikes set up on the trainers in front of the TV for indoor fitness.

In our old apartment, we had to pull out our workout equipment and set it up any time we wanted to use it.  And, well, if you're anything like me, then I don't have to spell out the rest of this here.  But in case you don't see the problem with this arrangement, here it is:  If I have to pull out and put back equipment each time just to work out, then it's very unlikely that I'll work out at all.  But when the space is set up right there in my own house...well, that's one less excuse that I can use to sit around and be lazy.  And trust me, the fewer excuses I have, the better.

Our miscellaneous work out paraphernalia!

So to close out 2010 I did two circuits of our own personal gym - which included lunges, squats, crunches, and pushups - and also went for a run. It wasn't the best work out of all time, and it sure wasn't the best run of all time, but I have to admit that just being in our own home gym made me feel like I'm making a bit of progress.

Here are my run stats:
Ran for a total of 55:20:53 for a distance of 8.9km with an average pace of 6:13min/km.

I'm still running a lot more slowly than I was back in October when I ran the half marathon, but for now I'm just trying to build base and endurance, and I'll think about strength and speed sometime in the new year.  I'm not going to worry about that right now.  What I am going to worry about is getting myself up to being able to run 30kms.  Ugh.  That still seems like such a long, long way away.

The view from beside the TV into our home gym.
(Notice the dorky bookshelf with all our athletics-related books!)

And in addition to wanting to build up some endurance for that 30km race that is looming large on the horizon ahead of me, I also want to make sure that I'm able to have a good half marathon in May with Nomi and Lulu.  The three of us all convinced each other to run a half marathon in 2010, but we all ran separate races.  I ran the Toronto Goodlife Half Marathon (Oct. 17); Nomi ran the Penang Bridge International Half Marathon (Nov. 21); and Lulu ran the Standard Chartered Singapore Half Marathon (Dec. 5).  So I was in Canada, Nomi in Malaysia, and Lulu in Singapore.  But in 2011 we're lucky enough that we've all signed up for the same half marathon, on the same day, in the same country!  Watch out Singapore!  We're all showing up on May 28, 2011 and you better be ready for us!!!

So here's to a new year, to good friends, and to running the good race, no matter what that race might be!  Have a happy new year!

See ya in 2011,

Joy