2020 Annual Review

I started this practice last year after finding out from the author of Atomic Habits that he does this annually.  I checked out my 2019 Annual Review and apparently I never went back to it because I missed several goals for this year. I said last time that I would have a better way to track this in 2020 but that didn’t happen. I really enjoyed going through this process last year so here it goes again. (I just added this to my Asana board to do on a monthly basis for 2021)

(James mentions in his last annual review that’s it’s uncomfortable to “brag” about himself and his business and to be so vulnerable by sharing some uncomfortable information.  I agree but I figure it’s part of my personal growth process and if it inspires others to do the same, then great!  So here it goes!)


2020 Personal and Professional Self Reflection
What went well this year
  • Running:
    • 1674 logged  miles on Garmin (vs 1293 from 2019)
    • Zero Injuries
    • Races: 3 live races
      • Sinister Night Runs: PRd by 4:40 minutes
      • Dam Good Run: PRd by 1:43 minutes
      • Whiskey Basin 10K
    • Races Virtual:

I didn’t used to keep track of my running miles but I may have had the highest number last year. Running was definitely a huge contributor to managing my mental health.  I did things I never thought possible with the TransRockies Virtual race (not just the mileage but it was in the middle of one of our hottest Augusts ever) and Every Damn Street (this was probably one of the biggest surprises I had in 2020 and it’s all in this blog post).
I love that this is the oldest I’ve been and I’ve run longer, faster and the most miles STILL with no injuries.  ChiRunning and ChiWalking continue to dominate my running/walking goals and my professional life.
Due to COVID, I ran more miles alone than normal and found this quite enjoyable.


  • Travel:
    • “Races”: Crown King, Flagstaff, Jerome, Prescott,
    • Professional: none
    • Personal: Heber, San Diego

  • Personal/Professional Growth:
    • Vision board: Word of the Year: Simplify
    • Certified 1 ChiRunning Instructor: Henry Walker
    • Meditated 352 times (sometimes I do it multiple times a day)-down from last year but still happy with this number
    • Toastmasters:
      • Completed Level 2 Visionary Communication 6/15/20
      • Completed 5 speeches
    • Joined The Membership Academy
    • Courses:
      • Uplevel with Asana with Louise Henry
      • The YouTube Success System with Trena Little
      • Show Up Online Challenge: 30 Days of Instagram Live/Story Videos with Louise Henry

My biggest goal this year was to Simplify my processes as much as possible so I could manage my time better. I am sure all solopreneurs can relate to this.  So many hats to wear and not enough hours in the day.  Taking the Asana course and using this platform as my project management tool was a huge game changer for me. I still have work to do in this area but this was one of my biggest wins in 2020. I am also learning a lot in the Membership Academy and I never regret spending money on personal and professional development. Meditating daily continues to be part of my morning ritual. Although we’ve had to move our Toastmaster meetings to Zoom, this continues to be a great source of self development and friendship.


  • The Running University 
    • New logos and an apparel shop on my website!
    • Certified approximately 35 ChiRunners/ChiWalkers (doesn’t include privates and didn’t have a good way to track)
    • TRU TRIBE
      • Members: 66
      • Guest Speakers: 7
      • Courses/Challenges rolled out: Align Mind and Body for an Epic 2020, 30 Day Social Distancing Game, Two Photo Challenges (one specific to Mental Health Month), Out of Comfort Zone Walk/Run Challenge, How to Pace Your Run
      • Monthly Themes: Align Mind & Body, Self Love & Compassion, Mindfulness, Renewal, Mental Health Awareness, Mental Strength, Confidence, Motivation, Resilience, Growth Mindset, Balance & Celebrate.
      • Ladies Training Programs (LTPs):
        • Spring 2020: Canceled races due to COVID: Havasu Half, Crown King, Big Pine (2x): 24 ladies
        • Fall 2020: 18 ladies (approximate as I didn’t track these well)
          • 1 First/Longest Trail and Night Race
          • 2 PRs from the year before
          • 13 First Trail Race Distance
          •  5 First 50Ks

I was not interested in growing my TRU TRIBE team last year for several reasons. My priority was to focus on my current members and keep the ladies physically and mentally healthy. Due to COVID I haven’t been teaching any workshops but did several private sessions live and on Zoom.  I beta tested a ChiRunning and ChiWalking online course that worked great but only hosted one of each earlier in the year.


Goals I completed from 2020 list:

      • Letting my gray hair grow out!  I’ve decided as I get closer to my 50th year that I want to see what it looks like.  If I don’t like it, I will dye it again. 2021 UPDATE: Loving how this is going!
      • Strength Training at least 2x a week 2021 UPDATE: while I didn’t do it consistently (I almost put this in not completed), I probably did 70% more than 2019
      • Continue my daily meditation practice as I believe this (and ChiRunning) have had a huge impact on my life and who I am today. 2021 UPDATE: although I did less meditations than 2019 I still averaged almost one a day
      • Learning more about Instagram for my business and doing more videos whether it’s facebook lives, IG stories or TV and You Tube: 2021 UPDATE: I didn’t get as far as I would’ve liked but definitely made good progress.  I completed 25 of 30 Show Up Online Challenges from Louise Henry where I did IG lives, I completed a You Tube training course, invested in some Instagram training materials
      • Continue LTPs and integrating them with TRU TRIBE Running Team. 2021 UPDATE: Even with COVID, I am grateful that my runners still wanted to keep training to say physically and mentally healthy. I tweak them almost every time with new things and I believe they are getting better and better.

I was pleasantly surprised that even with COVID, I was able to keep business moving forward.  My income was lower but my expenses were too.


What didn’t go so well this year
  • Goals I didn’t complete from 2020.  One of my issues is that I never looked back at this blog to check them. I had some written down as more serious ones. As I write this, I am creating a way to track this on my Asana board so I can tally stuff monthly rather than trying to do it all at the end of the year.
    • Races:
      •  2021 UPDATE: Elephant Mountain 50K (was my first in 2014, shooting for a PR)-dropped to the 35K because I didn’t feel ready
      • TransRockies 6 Day Stage Race, 125 miles with 20K feet of elevation gain in CO  canceled due to COVID
      • First 100 miler at ATY on 12/30-12/31 as I go into 2021 (my 50th birthday year) canceled due to COVID
    • Spend more focused time with family:
      • Greg: Monthly Day Date on calendar– 2021 UPDATE: started this but somehow fell off my recurring calendar. We spend plenty of time together but I’d like to have a specific day of the month for a Day Date to do different stuff
      • Mom and Dad: see them at least 1x a week.  2021 UPDATE: COVID effected this
    • Spend more time on self development by using the following tools: books and podcasts. 2021 UPDATE: I listened to some podcasts while running but didn’t make any concerted effort in this area
    • Need to schedule a regular health check up. I take it for granted that I am healthy but I pay too much in monthly health insurance to not use it. 2021 UPDATE: didn’t do this at all, I could blame COVID but I put no effort into this
    • Checking in on people I haven’t talked to in awhile  2021 UPDATE: little effort if any at all
    • Ten speeches in my Toastmasters club 2021 UPDATE: I did five
    • Create a system to track all of this so it’s easier next year! 2021 UPDATE: did not do and have added this to my Asana board
    • Professional:
      • Assist Danny and Katherine in May at Kripalu for a 5 Day ChiWalking/ChiRunning retreat  & ChiRunning/ChiWalking Instructor Weekend in November 2021 UPDATE: canceled due to COVID

What did I learn this year?
    • Even though I lost faith several times in humanity, I am surrounded by some pretty amazing people!  I have a fabulous group of loyal customers/friends that believe and trust in me. Words cannot express my gratitude and appreciation for them. They inspire me every day!
    • If I want to grow my business, I need to continue working on my time/project management skills. I may need to consider a Virtual Assistant this year.
    • I love that there are so many ways I can help people (and myself) take running to the next level. Everyone knows that speed is rarely a focus for me personally (and with my clients unless they want to work on it). This year, I followed a training plan for my 100K (2/13/21!) and did more of the speed workouts than I have ever done. I discovered an entire new level of learning about myself physically and mentally.  Focusing on improving it this year was surprisingly satisfying. I know what it feels like to go longer but going faster was out of my comfort zone. I don’t know if I liked the fact that I got faster this year or that I really enjoyed the process of working on it and pushing myself in a different way.
    • I work my ass off.  Recovery and self care were on my 2020 vision board. For a quarantine year, I didn’t do as much as I should’ve. There were some other circumstances that contributed to this factor but more on that for another blog.
2021 Goals
Word of the Year:  IGNITE 🔥 🧨This year I want to get clear on the future of my TRU TRIBE team. They are priority #1. The word Clarity came to mind but still didn’t feel right. I used the handy dandy thesaurus and found “shed light on”. I also wanted to have an action word to celebrate my 50th year around the sun. So ignite is shedding light with a bang!
Races/Events:
    • January: Coldwater 52K: PRd by 50:56 minutes!
    • February: Black Canyon 100K: 1 week before my 50th birthday! Goal is to PR by 1 hour (took my 19:45 last time)
    • August: TransRockies 6 Day Stage Race, 125 miles with 20K feet of elevation gain in CO  in August 2020 🤞
    • November: Susan G Komen Breast Cancer 3-Day in San Diego with Team Las Bombas I started this team in 2005 and we are about $170K away from raising $1M dollars.  Our goal is to hit it in 2021 but we need more people to join us in this epic event!
    • December: First 100 miler at ATY on 12/30-12/31
  • Professional:
    • Copy this blog and update date it monthly starting February.
    • TRU TRIBE Team: Double membership by 12/31/21 to 132. Keep growing by: adding content, increasing engagement, getting more guest speakers, creating more courses and member only events so I can keep helping more ladies reach running and life goals.
    • Ultra Ladies Training Program in Fall: at least 10 new ultra runners
    • Increase my presence on Instagram and You Tube.  I don’t have goal numbers on this yet but hope to have them as I review this blog monthly.
    • Change my newsletter platform
    • Set up a road map in the Membership Academy so I can get get clear on my TRU TRIBE goals and be accountable
    • Five Speeches in Toastmasters
  • Personal:
    • Spend more focused time with family:
      • Greg: Monthly Day Date on calendar
      • Mom and Dad: see them at least 1x a week.
    • Read 7 pages a day (I always say I want to read more but I don’t make it a priority. Following the idea of making it a daily habit rather than worrying about quantity of books)
    • Schedule a regular health check up, mammogram and other tests to be done at 50
    • Create 2021 Vision Board on 2/7/21

If you made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read through it! 🥰 This was a rigorous process that took me several hourly sessions. Now I have to make more of these goals SMART and I will have a clear direction of what needs to happen in 2021!

2020 Vision Board

2020 Vision Board

 

2019 Annual Review

I haven’t done this practice in a few years but my goal is to do this every year going forward. The monthly theme in the TRU TRIBE Running Team for December was self reflection.  After doing more research on the subject, how beneficial it is and knowing that the most successful leaders do this, I decided to take some time to do it.  While I have not read James Clears’ book yet, Atomic Habits (I should be getting it today!), I checked out his website and he does an annual review every year.  So I decided to try it out his format.

James mentions in his last annual review that’s it’s uncomfortable to “brag” about himself and his business and to be so vulnerable by sharing some uncomfortable information.  I agree but I figure it’s part of my personal growth process and if it inspires others to do the same, then great!  So here it goes!

2019  Personal and Professional Self Reflection
What went well this year?
  • Great year of races and events
    • 1293 logged  miles on Garmin/2,648 logged miles on Fitbit (I wear this 24/7 but not sure how accurate this mileage is?)
    • Zero Injuries
    • 5 ultras (Black Canyon, Crown King, Jackrabbit, Canyon De Chelly, Across The Years)
    • 10 other races
    • First Time Experiences:  First trail half (Vail), First Double Down (Big Pine) Longest Night trail race (Jackass)
    • Breast Cancer 3-Day in Boston (raised $2200)
    • TransRockies: Volunteered for 7 days
  • Travel:
    • Races: Crown King, Vail AZ, Flagstaff, Canyon De Chelly, Boston (Breast Cancer 3-Day)
    • Professional: Las Vegas (Consumer Electronic Show with ChiLiving), Denver (Assist Danny with a workshop), Asheville (assist Danny with Instructor Training)
    • CO: TransRockies 8 day volunteer gig
    • Personal: Rocky Point 2x
  • Personal/Professional Growth:
    • Certified 1 ChiRunning Instructor
    • Foot Collective Workshop
    • Meditated 424 times (sometimes I do it multiple times a day)
    • Toastmasters:  9 speeches delivered
    • Running for Brews Tempe: met 50 of 52 weeks (have only canceled 5x times in 7 years)
    • Rolled out TRU TRIBE Running Team
    • Might Networks:  Community Masterclass
    • Like A Boss 12 month Bootcamp
  • The Running University 
    • Certified approximately 59 ChiRunners (doesn’t include privates and didn’t have a good way to track)
    • First 100K finisher
    • First International Client who did her first 50K
    • 9 Ladies Training Programs (LTPs):
      • 86 participants
      • 2 100K finishes
      • 24 Ultra finishes
      • 4 first time ultras
      • 11 first time double downs
      • 19 longest race (night or day)
      • 10 first trail race
      • 13 first night trail race
      • 10 DNFs (Did Not Finishes)
What didn’t go so well this year?
  • Deadlines: TRU TRIBE Running Team roll out was delayed several months from original projection and I’m still rolling out slower than planned.
  • Strength Training: still not make this the priority it should be.
  • Toastmasters: Was going to finish my 2nd Distinguished Toastmaster but decided to stop even though I was pretty close.  Started program all over again to learn new educational path online. I figured all the work I put into the 2nd one was not wasted as I learned through the process.  I also made this decision because newer members were using the online platform and it was getting hard to mentor them without knowing the system.
  • Blog: I keep having great intentions of writing more but I only wrote 17 blog posts last year.  Eleven of these were Member Spotlights so truly only 6 were my writing material.
  • Like A Boss 12 Month Bootcamp: Started this very excited and once I started working hard on my TRU TRIBE Running Team, I stopped.
  • 10 DNFs:  While I don’t consider these failures because many of these decisions are necessary. It’s always a smart idea to stop before pushing your body to a point of potential danger due to injury or hydration/nutrition issues. Crown King had a 54% DNF rate.  Part of this were issues with the race itself which were addressed by and with the race director.  DNFs are always a great reason to reflect on what could’ve been done differently.
What did I learn this year?
  • Need to be more realistic with deadlines.  I tried rolling out TRU TRIBE Running Team in the middle of some heavy travel times which didn’t allow me to focus on it the way I wanted to.
  • As I started this process, I realize I need to have better ways to track what I do. This process took a lot longer than I wanted to this year.
  • Blogging is not my favorite thing to do.  I need to work on spending time doing things for my business that inspire and drive me. I’ve learned it’s much better to spend time doing less things well/more often rather than trying to do too many things less often and not well.
  • Learning to let go is still hard no matter how much I meditate! 🤣:
    • I was crushed after the Crown King DNF situation. It was our last ultra of the 4 for the 212K Challenge.  Some things were out of my control but I took it personally for awhile.  I was disappointed in some of the decisions to DNF from my athletes but more disappointed in myself for so many reasons . It took me longer than I wanted to get through some emotions after this race. However, through this process I made some changes to my ultra Ladies Training Programs and I am always grateful to learn from my mistakes.
    • Growing my business is hard! Making the decision to go online and create the TRU TRIBE Running Team was easy. I’ve had this on my to do list for several years. My big learning lesson for this was/is that not all my peeps will follow me where my business takes me and not to take this personally.  I struggled with this for awhile but have been working through it and feeling a lot better about it.  Knowing that I’ve impacted so many people whether they continue to follow me or not is a huge accomplishment and I need to focus on that.
2020 Goals
(I realize not all of these are SMART goals right now but I need to get the list out)
  • Races:
    • Elephant Mountain 50K (was my first in 2014, shooting for a PR)
    • TransRockies 6 Day Stage Race, 125 miles with 20K feet of elevation gain in CO
    • First 100 miler at ATY on 12/30-12/31 as I go into 2021 (my 50th birthday year)
  • Personal:
    • Spend more focused time with family:
      • Greg: Monthly Day Date on calendar
      • Mom and Dad: see them at least 1x a week
    • Letting my gray hair grow out!  I’ve decided as I get closer to my 50th year that I want to see what it looks like.  If I don’t like it, I will dye it again.
    • Spend more time on self development by using the following tools: books and podcasts.
    • Strength Training at least 2x a week
    • Checking in on people I haven’t talked to in awhile
    • Need to schedule a regular health check up. I take it for granted that I am healthy but I pay too much in monthly health insurance to not use it.
    • Ten speeches in my Toastmasters club
    • Continue my daily meditation practice as I believe this (and ChiRunning) have had a huge impact on my life and who I am today.
    • Create a system to track all of this so it’s easier next year!
  • Professional:
    • Assist Danny and Katherine in May at Kripalu for a 5 Day ChiWalking/ChiRunning retreat (join us!)
    • ChiRunning/ChiWalking Instructor Weekend in November
    • TRU
      • Rebrand – new logos
      • TRU TRIBE Running Team: Keep building on this: adding content, increasing engagement, getting more guest speakers, creating more courses and member only events so I can keep helping more ladies reach running and life goals.
      • Continue LTPs and integrating them with TRU TRIBE Running Team.
    • Learning more about Instagram for my business and doing more videos whether it’s facebook lives, IG stories or TV and You Tube.

If you made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read through it! This was a rigorous process that took me several hourly sessions. Now I have to make my goals SMART and I will have a clear direction of what needs to happen in 2020!