My 100 Happy Day Project

If you remember back in January, I posted my resolutions for the year. As expected, most of those have kind of fallen by the wayside, but that’s okay. I’m still working on more than half of them and that’s still a win in my book.

Today’s post will focus on one resolution in particular – my 100 happy day project. You may or may not have heard of it, but it’s a very simple project. For 100 days, you take a minute or two out of your day and reflect on something that made you happy that day. It can be something small. Something someone said. Someone opening the door for you or even just a sunset that made you feel at peace. The purpose of the project is to help you focus on the positive things in your life. Don’t dwell on the negatives, but reflect on the positives. That’s what will keep you going.

A few years ago, I did this project. I was going through a really bad break up at the time and was in a complete rut. I was going to therapy, taking medications, and nothing seemed to work. So when I came across someone else’s happy day project, I decided to try it. For those 100 days, I took photos and videos of food, friends, and activities that I did and posted them on social media. The project doesn’t require you to. You can keep it completely confidential if you choose to do so. I chose to post on social media to keep me accountable. With each photo and video that I took, I felt better about myself and my situation. I really believe I came out a stronger person after the project was over.

I haven’t been having the best outlook on life lately, so I decided it would be a good time to begin a new 100 happy day project. 🙂 This time around, I will be recording myself recapping things that made me happy that day. It’s not as exciting as pictures, but I find that if I say it out loud, I believe it more. I’m almost two weeks into my project and I definitely feel more appreciative of things I have in my life. I may or may not show the entire 100 clips on here since I think that would be too long, but I may post a few here and there for you to listen to.

I will end this post with pictures from my first 100 happy day project. Oh how much I’ve grown since then. 🙂

Left my comfort zone of staying on the ground and learned the art of Aerial Silks

Traveled alone and flew to New York

My first time cosplaying as Tifa from Final Fantasy 7 for Comic-Con

So tell me, have you heard of the 100 Happy Day project or done something similar? What was your take on it? 

Happy things – HoneyStinger, Smashrun, and BibChats galore

Last week, in the midst of my struggles, there were moments of happiness that pushed me through the rest of the week. Let’s discuss, shall we? 🙂 The biggest news from last week hands down was getting this little email below:

I’m a HoneyStinger Ambassador!

HoneyStinger is one of my favorite energy fuels and I’m estatic that they allowed me to be a part of the #HSHive. When I trained for my first marathon, every long run started out with an organic waffle. Right before my first marathon, a fellow runner I had just met offered me their HoneyStinger Energy Chews for the caffeine. How much caffeine there actually was, we still don’t know to this day. LOL. And most recently, I tried their gel during the Holiday Half Marathon and I PRed. So really, I associate HoneyStinger with all good memories.

Another thing that brought a smile to my face last week was the discovery of SmashRun. Chelsea mentioned this in one of her blog posts. I thought it was pretty interesting and gave it a shot.

SmashRun analyzes your run from STRAVA and other running apps

This is just a screen grab from my most recent run, but essentially what SmashRun does is that it takes your data from your running apps and breaks it down for you into interesting ways. It tells you what days you run the most, the least, etc. My favorite thing about SmashRun is where it tells you how many calories you burned and what that equates to food wise. I mean, who knew that 230 calories roughly equaled to an entire pineapple. SmashRun will give you something healthy like the pineapple and it will also give you something unhealthy like a tall Starbucks chai latte (which I totally appreciate). I like this aspect of the program so much that I’ve started turning it into a game. I’ll run some amount just to see what that equates to. It’s a lot more fun than googling it up. Honest. 🙂

And my last happy thing of the week is BibRave on Twitter. BibRave.com is a place where you can review races. Think Yelp, but for runners. I’ve mentioned it in passing before, but talking to fellow runners on social media is kind of awesome. If you’re having a bad day and tweet about it, you’re going to get support from them especially if it’s running related. Every Tuesday at 6pm PST on Twitter, they have a #bibchat where they ask a series of questions during the hour and you respond to them. You can see other people’s responses and comment and sometimes, you even make friends. 🙂 And with the 6+ races I’m running this year, I’m sure I’ll run into some of them in real life. 🙂

Cheers to things that make you happy!

What made you happy this week? And have you tried Smashrun? Thoughts? 

Hello 2017! I’m going to own you.

Hello 2017! 2016 was a great year so let’s make this one an even better one, okay? I decided that this year, I’d go all out and make lots of goals for myself. You never know if you can do them if you don’t try, right? That’s what 2016 taught me. Below are some of my goals for the year.

Professional goals – Like the name implies, these goals are for my work life. I’m a graduate student in my 5th year. PhDs in our program typically take around 5 – 6 years to graduate. After year 7, we lose our funding so it’s implied that you must graduate before then. My advisor and I have discussed about graduating this summer so why not make it a goal and make it more attainable? 🙂

Although it’s never stated in the guidelines, students are expected to publish 1st author papers to graduate. It’s the “Publish or Perish” mentality. I am currently working on experiments for a paper so hopefully, I get published this year.

The obvious thing to do after I graduate is to get a job. More importantly, I want to get a job that I enjoy. I’ve been holding informational interviews with various people in the biology field and hope that I will be able to find one that suits me soon. The last two goals are to help me improve my productivity. I believe that by getting to work earlier, I’ll be more productive and less stressed. I also spend more time on Facebook than I’m willing to admit so cutting down on my time spent there should also be beneficial.

Fitness goals – In the words of Elle Woods, “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands, they just don’t.” 🙂 It’s my favorite line of all time because it’s true. Exercise does make me a happier person and everyone deserves to be happy.

Last year’s goal was to just run 50 more miles than 2015. This year, I’m going to push my limits a bit more. I’m going to try and run 1000 miles. During those 1000 miles, I hope to finish my second marathon in Chicago, beat my PR in any distance, and run streak for at least 100 days. I finished the #RWRunStreak challenge on January 1st and was originally going to stop.

#RWRunSreak Challenge completed

On January 2nd, I went out for a run anyway. I didn’t feel tired. With the new year, I felt energized and decided to run streak for an additional 61 days. It will be tough, but I want to see how far I can push my limits. At 100 days, I’ll reevaluate and go from there. I do have a marathon to train for later in the year and I’ll definitely need to rest then.

My last three goals will be to strengthen my body overall. I’ve started lifting weights here and there and hope to round that out with stretching (possibly yoga) and eating healthier. Note that these goals are all miminums. If I do better than expected, then go me!

Happiness goals – I aim to be a happier version of myself and I hope the goals I’ve listed out will help me do just that. Blogging was extremely fun for me last year so I’ll continue to do it. It also helps me reorganize my thoughts and that’s always a good thing.

This year, I would like to try and give back to the community. I felt privileged growing up. I wasn’t wealthy, but my family got by just fine (with some occasional fundraising for team uniforms). I’m already scheduled to volunteer at a race later this month and I’m super excited to be the one giving out waters instead of getting them.

Last, but not least, I want to do another 100 Happy Day challenge. More often than not, we take what we have for granted and don’t appreciate the everyday things. I did this challenge a few years ago when sh*t was hitting the fan and it gave me a lot of perspective. I want to do it again sometime this year when things get too busy and I forget to just stop and enjoy what I have.

Woohoo! There you have it – my goals for 2017. What are your goals for this year? 

Marathon Monday – 20 miles conquered!

This past weekend, I ran my longest run yet – 20 MILES!

I’m extremely proud of myself since I wasn’t able to meet my 18 mile mark 4 weeks ago and then I went on vacation for 2 weeks during which I basically did little to no running. Then, there’s that frustrating 13 miler I had the week before last. Safe to say, I was extremely intimidated by a monstrous 20 miles heading into this past weekend.

BUT I DID IT

…with a little bit of flair, if I do say so myself.  I’m not one to toot my own horn, but toot toot! 🙂

Since this was my longest run before heading into the marathon, I decided to try and mimic race conditions to the best of my ability. I was visiting someone in LA this weekend and had to pack all of my running gear beforehand. The evening before my long run comes around, and I discover that I, being the forgetful person that I am, forgot to pack a sports bra. I quickly made a late night run to Target, grabbed a sports bra, and voila, disaster averted. Morning of, I had two large spoonfuls of peanut butter and a Honey Stinger’s organic waffle and out the door I went.

I started off at a comfortable pace at about a 11 min/mile. 5 miles breezed by. I thought – Easy peasy lemon squeezy. I took my first Hammer Gel – Espresso (50 mg) then and another 5 miles passed. At this point, I’m running along the gorgeous beach and having a blast. I was even practicing some of my dance moves along the route. I took another Hammer Gel – Chocolate 10 miles in and it turns out, chocolate is not my favorite flavor. It did the trick nonetheless and I powered on.

I’m so lucky to be a west coast girl

My goal was to take a Hammer Gel every 5 miles, but around mile 14, my dear boyfriend, who graciously volunteered to carry water for me in this gigantic Thermos container while on his skateboard, needed a break. I wasn’t about to carry a huge Thermos full of water while on my run so I chugged some water and took my last energy gel before we parted. Nocciola (Hazelnut – Chocolate), I found out, was delicious! It gave me an extra energy/happy boost and I was well on my way to push through to mile 18.5 where I met back up with the boyfriend. And this is where it got tough. I don’t know if I hit the infamous wall or not, but I slowed down by almost a 2 minute/mile pace. Yikes! I blame my excitement. After passing mile 17, I was running the furthest I had ever run before. I got excited and sped up because at that point, I thought I could conquer the world. LOL. Yeah, that backfired in the last mile. In the end, I toughed out that last mile and finished 20 glorious miles and I couldn’t be happier. I had to stop myself from gloating so much in front of my boyfriend. I think it kind of annoyed him. HAH.

So now that I’ve told you about my  latest running conquest, why don’t you tell me about yours? I’m all ears. 🙂