This was meant to be a post Houston Half Marathon blog, but unfortunately I got the flu the week of the race and wasn’t able to run.  So I guess it’s just my January blog.  But in accordance with my New Year’s Resolutions I’m going to be flexible, roll with it, and not gripe about bad luck.  My other New Year’s Resolutions are to eat more organic food, watch less MTV, read more, write letters to some people I’ve lost touch with, and stretch at least 30 minutes a day.  I’m not usually a big resolution person because I think people make themselves do too many things they don’t want to do already, but for some reason I felt like making resolutions this year.  I didn’t include things like making the Olympic Team or running fast because those are goals, not resolutions.

The holidays or Christmas or whatever you want to call it was good.  I spent some time with my Dad’s side of the family for Christmas and then headed down to San Diego where my mom’s side is and where Kylie lives.  I was going to head back up here to Mammoth right after New Year’s, but there was a big storm in the mountains and I decided to run Houston so it made more sense to stay down there where the weather was good.  So now, after changing my plans every three or four days for like two weeks, I’m back up at home in Mammoth.  I’ve spent enough time in San Diego now that it’s starting to feel like home which is good because it makes the transition between training here in Mammoth and down there easy.  It’s nice to be feeling familiar with the city and with all the different places to run in the area.

So my plan now is to run a couple races indoors, maybe even world indoors if things are going well, and then just figure out what schedule of races in the spring sets me up best to run fast at the trials.  I’d like to run the 8k championships in New York and I’d like to run a fast 5k at Stanford, but at this point I want to just keep an open mind and stay flexible with the schedule.  I think I’ve gotten in trouble in the past from planning way out to do a race and then doing it no matter what even if I wasn’t really ready to go.  So this year I’m going to make sure I’m ready to run fast every time out even if it means skipping races that sound fun.

Not much else is going on right now, but after a few years of being totally disinterested in politics I’m actually getting pretty excited about this fall’s presidential election.  I’m not sure why my attitude towards politics is changing, but I think it’s partly because of my experiences traveling the last few years.  Everywhere I go it seems like people expect to not like Americans.  I’m sick of feeling so self-conscious about being an American, like I have to prove that I don’t think I can just do whatever I want.  I’m not naïve enough to think the new president will totally change the world’s perception of us, but hopefully we’ll elect someone who isn’t just interested in proving our power and taking advantage of other countries and people.  We have a great opportunity to prove to ourselves and to the rest of the world that we’re not dumb enough to be jerked around by corporate interests and that we really are concerned about the future and the rest of the world.  Happy New Year!