Category Archives: Family

June Recap – Kind of a Big Month

June! We’ve made it through half of the year. And half of that has been spent at home. It feels like forever ago that we were traveling. Now it’s a big deal if we get to go to the grocery store.

So we decided to make June one to remember and got married!

I put a ring on it.

Eric and I had plans for a small family wedding, but as COVID-19 hit and we could see those plans potentially changing, we realized we should take this as an opportunity. When we were initially planning our wedding dates, I thought it would be meaningful to get married on June 12, Loving Day. But Loving Day 2020 was coming too soon and we didn’t want to wait til 2021 to get married, so it seemed unlikely to happen.

And of course, with all the terrible things happening around the world, we also wanted to try to find the joy. So we worked with a local officiant and got married on June 12, just the two of us. And it was perfect.

And then people kept asking us where we were going on our honeymoon, and the answer was To Our House because there is no vacationing going on right now. We could have gone camping, I suppose, but it’s hot outside.

We’ll definitely have a good story for what we did during the Great Pandemic of 2020.

When it comes to training, it’s same old same old. Races continue to get cancelled, which I expected. I technically still have one triathlon on the schedule and if it doesn’t get cancelled, I don’t expect to be racing it. I haven’t been swimming since March. Pools have opened back up, and you can make a reservation for a lap lane (if you can get one), but I’m just not sure that it’s really safe. Or worth the stress. The pools I have access to are all indoors, which makes it more concerning. I will likely join a friend at a local open water swim spot later this month, but outdoors is a lot easier – plus if it looks bad, we bail. Much more annoying when you’ve paid for a pool spot.

Biking is still all indoors, and running is half indoors, half outdoors. I managed to pull something and thankfully, my PT has opened back up and I’ve been able to get some dry needling done. It’s definitely what my body needed after three months off from PT. I’m going to have to figure out a reasonable schedule for visits. Every week really isn’t necessary at this point (though I’d love to be able to swing that). Maybe every 2-3 weeks for a tune-up would work.

So it was definitely a lighter month.

June Miles
Swim – 0
Bike – 124 Miles
Run – 16 Miles

2020 Miles
Swim – 4.6 Miles
Bike – 539 Miles
Run – 210 Miles

Balancing Training and Life

Ben_Kerckx / Pixabay

Ben_Kerckx / Pixabay

Life is a balancing act.

Our days are full of the things we have to do and the things we want to do.  We’re always balancing between our wants and our needs.

For me, race training falls somewhere between the two.

Obviously, I don’t have to race.  Racing in general is a want.  But if I’m going to race, training becomes a need.  And on some level, it’s also a need because I need to stay healthy.  I’m pretty sure that with very little effort, I could weigh over 300 pounds and spend my days on the couch reading books and watching tv.  So training, and eating healthy to support my training is pretty important.

Of course, my job comes before my training.  I have to be able to pay for this fun hobby, after all.  Plus all the other expenses like housing and food.  But I’ve been able to do a good amount of balancing to ensure that I can do both.

Family also comes before my training, which meant that this weekend’s training wasn’t the best.  My parents were in town, which was awesome and so much fun, but it definitely meant I didn’t get in my 8 mile run.  I did a lot of walking though, so maybe that counts.  I also got in a two hour bike ride before they arrived.

In many ways, the balancing act is easy for me.  It’s pretty much all my time. I’m not balancing a spouse or kids.  My cats get grumpy when I get up early on the weekends to run, but they’ll get over it.  Of course, it means I just stop cleaning my house, but thankfully, the cats don’t care about that.  I’m always impressed with people who make it work while still managing to get to all their kids’ activities.  But clearly it can be done.

I think it’s all about your priorities.  What’s important to you?  Figure it out, then make those things work.

Happy Birthday Grandpa

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Christmas, 2014.  Photo credit to my dad.

Today would have been my Grandpa’s 94th birthday.  We lost him back in December after a relatively short illness (though he would tell you it was much too long).  But talk about a life well lived.

I was able to get home for his funeral and while it was, of course, terribly sad, the most amazing part was hearing all the stories about him and meeting all the people who he had touched over the years.  The visitation at the funeral home was five hours with no breaks in the crowd.  So many people stood in a long line just to pay their respects.  It was incredibly heartwarming.  This was a man who never retired, who was very involved in his church and his community and who touched many lives along the way.

My Grandpa is a big part of the reason I am where I am today.  He was an incredibly generous person and did his best to help his grandkids get ahead in life.  But he also helped shape who I am today.  He definitely led by example.  He never knew a stranger.  He loved to meet new people and he truly wanted to get to know them.  It didn’t matter if this person was a fellow business owner or the nurse at the doctor’s office.  He always had time to chat (even if the other person perhaps didn’t).

But while he was incredibly kind and generous, he also held himself and his family to high standards.  There were no excuses.  There was no slacking off.  I don’t mean that he begrudged us sitting on the couch and watching tv, but when it came to our educations, we all knew that he expected the best out of us.  And he was so proud of all of us.  He liked to say to me “Well, why do you do all those races if you aren’t going to win?”  But I think he was not so secretly impressed.  Still thought I was a bit crazy, but proud nonetheless.

He was a wonderful man who adored his wife and made sure he lived long enough to see that she was settled and would be taken care of.  He was a man of great faith who wasn’t scared of death or what came after.  And he spent nearly 94 years on this earth making such a difference in big ways and small.

He will be forever remembered and forever missed.

Happy Birthday Caitlin!

GUESS WHAT DAY IT IS?

It’s this girl’s birthday!

1910036_530292831807_4544_nThat’s right, today is my baby sister’s birthday.  So I thought I would tell the whole internet (because the whole internet reads my blog.)

princess2013See, her fashion sense has stayed pretty awesome.

Happy birthday, Caitlin.  Go do something wild today.  Wear roller skates and sunglasses in the house.

 

Back to the Grind

Christmas has ended and I’m back home and back at work.  Unlike most of the city, if traffic is any indication.

For the first time in I don’t know how long, I did my best to stick to my workout plan while at my parents’ house. I got thwarted by weather a bit, as no one should run outside when it is in the 30’s and raining.  20’s and snowing, sure, but 30’s and raining is miserable.

It was somewhat a fitness Christmas as I got a great music player to wear in the pool.  I have discovered that when I swim before work, all I do is think about work, so I’m hoping that being able to listen to some tunes will let me just zone out and focus on my form and not all of the things that I will need to do when I get to the office.  It makes my swim quite stressful.

It was awesome to be home with the family.  This was an odd Christmas, as neither of my uncles, nor their spouses came for Christmas this year and one cousin was missing.  I can’t remember the last time they weren’t there.  But they all have other family, so that’s what happens.  It was low key, but lovely.  My grandparents are both in their 90’s, and I know how lucky I am to still have them around.

It was also fun to hang out with the pack of giant dogs that lives at my parents’ house.  They’re so much fun, but man, having dogs is exhausting.  My cats are so nice and calm and easy going and unlikely to try to tackle me when I walk in the door.  Though being greeted when I get home is nice.

I’m home for about a week, then I head to Florida for Disney races.  This week, I need to get my eating straightened out and stick to my training plan.  I don’t even want to know what the scale says right now.  Ugh.