Woman who ate only Starbucks for 1 year will learn over 80 sports in 2014

“Everyone is talking to me about Starbucks and how I ate and drank it for a year, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’ve done it, I can tell you it didn’t hurt me at all, I’m OK. Everything’s been great this year. You can totally do it, especially if you live in Seattle because they have so many different menu options.”

Beautiful Existence has completed three year-long challenges for herself. These goals, or plans, are not quite New Year’s resolutions, even though they take her all the way from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31. They also may not be resolutions because like many of us trying to eat healthier, lose weight, or stop smoking, she follows these goals all the way through – for the entire year.

But is wasn’t until she decided to only eat and drink from Starbucks that she gained a mass audience for her personal challenges.

The Seattle-area mom has two boys, 3 and 13, and while she’d cook separate meals for her family, she was limited to the menu inside Starbucks. And people keep acting like it was a huge deal, but she says that’s nothing compared to what’s in store for this year.

She plans on learning over 80 recreational sports. The list is still evolving and she hopes to post what the over-80 sports include soon. She’s only done two of them before (snow shoeing and cross country skiing,) the rest will be brand-new experiences.

“Now that I’m on to 2014 and I’ve raised my bar for myself for my challenges, this is my year that I’m looking at it and thinking: How am I going to do this?” says Beautiful. “It’s 1 to 2 sports a week.”

But other than the sheer volume of what she intends to learn, she’s going to have to put a lot physically into this year’s challenge.

In less than three months, Beautiful will be running a half marathon, she’ll follow that with four more marathon challenges including an aquathon, a triathalon, and an ultra marathon (which in case you didn’t know is more than 26 miles.)

As she did with Starbucks and the other brands she used in conjunction with her challenges, Goodwill and Parents Magazine, this year she’ll be turning to REI for help in learning the sports as well as learning about the company’s culture.

“I’m a regular suburban mom that does these things and I want to learn about the company,” says Beautiful.

And Beautiful started looking at her challenge the way a lot of us start pondering a new activity: shopping around on the Internet.

There are team sports, and ball-based sports, but “recreational sports” aren’t an official term. So to find her new sports, “I literally just went off of the Internet and started looking at the equipment and the items that REI sold or rented, the clothing attire and started matching it up to the sport.”

She’ll be planning events to learn some of the sports and dedicating only a one or two hour class to learn the basics. If there are over 80, Beautiful will have to learn at least two sports a week. And this year she’ll be inviting the readers of her her blog to learn some of these sports alongside her and her family.

So what’s she looking forward to in 2014? Beautiful says she’ll be proud of herself for completing five marathons, and is most excited to learn how to ice climb.