I hadn’t really thought much about the start to 2012 but today it occurred to me that my year is off to a very busy…. active and fun start and there is more to come in the next few weeks… 2012 began for me with a Polar Plunge at Smith Mountain Lake… they were doing “dock starts” for people but I’ve never done that.. needless to say my first attempt failed and I plopped into the 51 degree water while I waited for the boat to come back around to grab the rope… normally a “water start” is no problem but in the short time it took for the boat to circle my legs and hands had gotten so stiff from the cold that I didn’t know if I would make it up.. I knew I could not deal with another wait for the boat to come around again.. so the fear of failure fueled my grip on the rope… once I was up it was pure fun… I was wake-boarding on January first… which was a first for me and depending on future weather conditions might also be my last… we’ll see…

Now I am preparing to fly to Orlando on Thursday.. to run the Walt Disney Half Marathon on Saturday… 13.1 miles of fun though an amusement park I have heard plenty about but never seen in person… my husband is going with me.. we will pick up my race packet on Thursday and then have Friday to see what kind of fun Orlando has to offer before getting to bed early because my race starts at 5:30am on Saturday… I would love to get a PR (personal record) but my Half Marathon PR is 1:47 which is an 8:11 pace and I am not sure I have trained enough for that… I keep telling myself to just have fun and enjoy it but my competitive nature sometimes gets the best of me… we’ll see…

We fly back from Florida early Sunday morning.. I work a full week and then I have a three day weekend for a fabulous ski trip with my husband and several other couples to Snowshoe Ski Resort in West Virginia… I went there for the first time last year and had a great time up until my husband breaking his collarbone when his snowboard hit a patch of ice on our “last run” of the day… I don’t snowboard.. it is not the same on snow as it is on water… I ski and I use that term loosely.. my husband is a great skier.. so I am hoping we will have an injury free weekend of fun.. we’ll see…

Snowshoe is so beautiful with all of the snow and the village atmosphere… but when we get home on Sunday January 22nd I feel certain I will feel like I have had my fill of winter and cold weather… I pretty much feel that way now and we have only had one or two really cold days…

Perhaps I should think about staying in Florida… we’ll see :)