50 States Challenge: Year 1 Recap

As I mentioned yesterday, my birthday was this past weekend.  Outside of getting 1 year older, this marks the end of Year 1 of my 50 States Challenge.  Since year 1 has come to a close, I thought I would start a tradition of doing a recap of my progress in that year and to date around my birthday each year.

This year saw the completion of 4 states - Massachusetts, Ohio, Vermont and Connecticut.  This falls right in with the average number of states I need to complete each year in order to be done in 10 years (4.5 a year).

I started the challenge already having completed 10 states completed, so this puts me at 14 total states completed or 28% done.  I am including DC as part of the challenge (and in that percentage), so I guess it's really 50 States + the District of Columbia, but that didn't sound as good :)

Looking to the future, I already have 3 states on the calendar:
- Kentucky (Bluegrass Half Marathon)
- DC (Nike Women's Half Marathon DC)
- Oregon (Eugene Half Marathon)

Since we are talking 2014 and states, I feel like it's a good time to announce my 18th state (and 4th for 2014) - Minnesota.

As I said in my goals, I wanted to race a marathon.  I have decided to combine the two and race the Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, MN.  I have heard nothing but great things about this race and I can check Minnesota of the list (since this is my own personal challenge, I have decided that a marathon in that state counts for that state).

That makes 4 total states for 2014 and I have a 5th in my mind (it would be at the end of the year, so I have some time to decide).

Either way, I am making some serious progress towards my goal!

And for you visual people, I made a map that shows how the states completed.  Orange means the state has been completed, blue still needs to be run (and yes, I purposely made it Syracuse colors).  I'll be updating it each year, so it'll be fun to watch it grow more orange!