A new year brings a new plan.

It is said that whatever you’re doing at midnight on New Year’s Eve is what you’ll be doing all year long. This is why the New York Road Runners host the Midnight Run in Central Park. If you’re running at midnight, you’ll be running all year. So in that spirit, I fell asleep here in Gainesville right before midnight. I think I drooled even. Uh oh.

The next nine days (and beyond for a few weeks) will be crafted to affix discipline and to overcome my aversion to being seen in broad daylight. As long as I’m concerned about what people think, I’ll never get back out on the road. Also, gotta apply for the marathon. There are a couple of things that would shut this program down. Failure to apply would be one of them.

Objectives:
• Get up on my feet and out the door every day.
• Get to the gym three times a week for core and upper body strength.
• Eat like a human.
• Apply for the New York City Marathon lottery.

Today I am a runner. For the first time since I left New York, I’m on track … literally and figuratively.

This is mostly a confession. Confession’s good for the soul. And maybe it will speak to the heart of someone who has tried and failed at something that should have been so easy. Like running.

During that week in late October, face-to-face with the finish line, I turned nearly inside out with grief and longing. As Jim and Phil have done so many times before, they enthusiastically supported my sincere pledge to get back to running. I left New York with a promise and a plan and a yellow leaf from a Ginkgo tree in Central Park pressed into my notebook to seal the deal.

But the return to my home in Gainesville, Florida plunged me right back into the routines that keep me both crazed and exhausted. Worse, the holidays reared up. I had to miss only one day of jogging in order for my entire program to fall apart again. One day became two. Two days became three. And after three days, what was the freaking point? No amount of resolve in the world stood up to the demands of creating the perfect Thanksgiving and a fa-la-la Christmas, engineering a life, and keeping work on target for the fourth quarter.

But that’s over now. It’s a new year. Ever optimistic, I’ve made a few New Year’s Resolutions for running and have begun again … again … again …

1. Find shorts that fit so that the neighbors will stop asking about the apparent new craze in workout apparel – the running moo moo. No one is deceived by the Nike swash I have penned onto the sleeve.

2. Invent a new “client” who demands the first appointment of the day. Book out an hour for her. Lie to everyone. Stay strong.

3. Get to the gym in spite of the fact that they want to take my photo for an ID. We’ll consider it less an act of humiliation and more a “before” photo that I can explain each time they try to block my entry in the future. “This isn’t you! Get out, size 4 imposter!”

4. Make up a little log so that I can keep good notes and impress Jim and Phil Wharton. Accuracy and truth are suggested, but not required … until the end when all transgressions will reveal themselves anyway.

5. Weigh myself. (I’ve been afraid that the shock would kill me. Now I consider that the galloping heart rate and hyperventilation might qualify as an aerobic workout. I’ll take it.)

6. Start dogging the New York City Marathon Web site. I’m applying for the lottery. The long, angst-filled wait until mid-March to see if I’ve been accepted will teach me patience and toughen me up for 26.2 miles of running.

7. Stop obsessing about not being accepted into the New York City Marathon. I’ll cross that Verrazano-Narrows Bridge if and when I get to it. Remember: “The value is in the months of training, not in running on the one day of the marathon.” Yeah, right.

8. Clean out the kitchen and purge it of anything that will look and taste the same when an archaeologist carbon-dates it 500 years from now. Try to find Tibetan burdock root for sale in Gainesville. If I find it, figure out how to cook it. If I figure out how to cook it, figure out how to eat it.

9. Remember that running is a series of steps. Anytime that starts to sound a little too Zen, remember that the marathon is a series of steps, only LOTS of them.

10. Hold “One More Time” in my heart. No matter what. That marathon is mine.