First post!

Hi, everyone! My name is Courtney and I'm new to the world of blogging :).

A few quick facts about myself:

• I'm a junior in college, majoring in Clinical Lab Science
• I'm 20 years old
• I live in the snowy state of Michigan, so most of my workouts are indoors this time of year
• Telemark skiing is my sport of choice
• I used to run every single day in junior high, but became discouraged after joining track and field and realizing my teammates were much faster than I was

I hope to use this blog to document my achievements (and many, many struggles) that come with developing a healthy lifestyle. I'm specifically interested in running, so most of my workouts will be centered around that. I do try to eat a healthy and balanced diet; however, my main focus at the moment is maintaining a regular workout schedule. Hopefully I can incorporate healthier foods into my lifestyle more regularly at a later point.

Developing a regular exercise schedule the past few weeks has been a challenge. I haven't been doing the exercise thing long enough to form a habit of working out a set amount of times each week, but I'm working on it. I seem to be able to manage at least four days a week, so I'm definitely off to a decent start. Last week, I did a turkey trot 5k with my sister, Krista.


                                          (source)
The main reason I started to run again was for this race. I didn't want to feel completely unprepared for it (as I did last year) so I started "training" for it about two weeks before the race. I use the term training very loosely because I didn't actually follow a plan, and there really wasn't any rhyme or reason to my running other than trying to increase my endurance and speed. However, it seemed to pay off because I ran the best turkey trot this year out of the three years I've done it. I'm not going to lie, it was still pretty slow (42:04). Even though there's a lot of room for improvement, I'm proud I was able to do that with the little amount of preparing I did.

I hope everyone enjoys this blog; I will update as frequently as finals allow in the next few weeks ;). Please feel free to link your blogs to me. I would be happy to check them out!