Looking Ahead to 2012

There's a mean virus making the rounds and it caught up with me earlier this week. I don't know if chicken soup really helps with colds but I have to say there's something about the overly salty broth that holds a special appeal when I'm under the weather.

Still working on my 2012 schedule but tentatively, it's looking like:

• February - Rock N Roll Half Marathon, St. Petersburg, Florida
• This was a bittersweet choice. For the past five years I have run in the Gasparilla Half Marathon in Tampa around the same time. It's become a tradition to get some girls together, fly down and run the race, then hang out at our friend Karen's house for a couple of days.
• This year the marathon was eliminated. The course changed. Still a beautiful course, but the long out-and-back along Bayshore Boulevard was now even longer. Like you were running and running and would never get to the turnaround. Expo felt kind of picked over and the energy just wasn't there for me. It seemed like time for a change.  I love this race and hope to make it back there another year.
• April - Sprint Triathlon either Petersburg, IL or Sullivan, IL.
• May - Lake Carlyle Olympic. Armed with proper asthma medicine, I need to go back and do that race the right way.
• June - June 2 - Tri Shark, Bloomington, IL.
• June 9-10 - Midwest Women's Mountain Bike Clinic, Brown County, Indiana
• July - Probably the Evergreen Triathlon in Bloomington, IL
• August - Rev3 Wisconsin Dells 70.3. Should be a blast. Reindeer Mary is doing this race with me, and her husband Troy is making his debut at the Olympic distance. 
• Also in August is the Xterra Illinois Wilds Triathlon in Peoria, Illinois.

Not one to make a lot of New Years resolutions, but I do plan to drop the Diet Pepsi habit. That's going to be a rough one.  I drink one can per day, every day, and have done so for years. But there seems to be a lot of evidence that drinking diet soda actually contributes to weight gain. I'm anticipating some nasty headaches for a while.

The other thing to work on is dropping 8-10 pounds by the time the Dells 70.3 rolls around. It stands to reason that reducing or eliminating the spare tire should help with aerodynamics in the water and on the bike, not to mention it would be nice to not cringe in horror at race pictures.