We are officially past the halfway mark of the year and
as always, I wonder where has the time gone? I make plans and plans change. My
year is evolving to look a little different than I expected but mostly in a
good way. For starters, I wasn’t sure if I was going to go to 70.3 World Championships,
both because I wasn’t sure if I’d qualify and if I did, I wasn’t sure if it was
a smart decision to go. I was originally debating between doing Wisconsin 70.3
and Florida 70.3. Going to Worlds didn’t technically take those races off the
table but as more of the year gets filled in with other activities, at a minimum
I know I won’t go to Wisconsin.
I often say “stress is stress”. Your body doesn’t distinguish
between mental, physical and emotional stress. Some stress can be good like
training to make your body stronger. But piling on training on top of other
life stress can be detrimental. Now by no means do I consider my life “stressful”
right now but I’m careful not to overload my commitments. I was hoping to do a
bit more racing this year. For example, I was hoping to do the Clemson
Sprinternational (I like when we make up names for random distances) but I knew
it wasn’t smart. I was tired from training and not getting enough sleep. Nikita
randomly goes through phases of waking me up before my alarm for a few weeks
straight, sometimes as early as 3:40, and I can never fall back asleep. Generally,
the later my alarm is, the earlier she decides to wake up. I think it’s revenge
for leaving her behind on vacations. We also had just started the latest house
renovation which means weekends are precious for making some real progress. Not
to mention when you feel like you are bleeding money on renovations and booking
trips, the idea of spending even $100 on a race that you don’t think you should
do seems painful. So races are getting cut back this year. I would say it’s unfortunate
but it was my decision to do the kitchen renovation and I knew it would impact
our lives for the short term. Renovations suck up time, energy and money which
happen to be the same things that triathlons suck up.
The kitchen is the final room inside the house to be
renovated, saving the biggest project for last. We always do all the work ourselves,
and by that, I mean I am a very good assistant to my husband and his dad when
he comes over to help. Given the scale of the project and the limited time each
week to work on it, I’m starting to think the project will take a year. Years
ago, we had taken part of a load bearing wall out and took another wall down to
the 2x4s to change windows. It was nice having a head start except it meant trying
to fish the walls for new wiring. We are building the cabinets ourselves and
installing all new hardwood on the main floor which will be the most time intensive
parts of the project. I’ve been very concerned about how I was going to
function without a working kitchen for months but I think we’ve found a work
around. Given the new layout, we’ll complete the project in multiple phases so
I should have a new working sink, dishwasher and stove without having to touch
the existing kitchen. The space will just look incredibly awkward for a while. Given
I cook 95% of the meals we eat from scratch, I would severely struggle not
being able to cook like normal so I’ll happily take a wonky kitchen for a few
months. I’m a little sad this is the last project to design but it’s been a fun
excuse to pull out the old engineering paper and scale ruler.
Like many people’s schedules, the summer seems to have
filled up with plans rather quickly. Besides the renovation, it’s a wedding
here, a trip there, family visits here and there. My fall is starting to fill
up as well which I’m excited about since it involved some unexpected traveling.
Before you know it, we’ll be listening to Christmas music at Target the day
after Halloween. And given I’m already sick of the summer weather, I can’t wait
for fall. I can almost taste the pumpkin spice latte… which I had zero of last
year. In the meanwhile, I’ve tried to have a better attitude about summer
weather this year. I wouldn’t say I’ve embraced sweating through all my clothes
and my shoes feeling squishy from the pooling sweat but I’ve bitched a lot less
about it. Progress. And with the exception of the holiday season, the summer is
when I see family the most with is always nice. Well, mostly nice. Family will
be family.
Training is chugging along like normal. Because I haven’t
raced since May, I’ve been able to train consistently. I actually enjoy steady
training more than racing and the specific race prep/recovery so this makes me
happy. Along with embracing the heat and humidity, I’ve been embracing hills
more. Spending a week at my dad’s house on top of a mountain outside of
Chattanooga gave me plenty of hills. While running in the neighborhood, my pace
ranged from 7s cruising downhill to 12s chugging uphill trying to stay aerobic.
Prepping for St George might be a good excuse to visit him another time or two
before the race. Plus, you can’t complain about the views. Happy dog days of
summer!
