oh the places you'll go
I feel the desire to yap about my life, even if no one really cares but me. The heart and soul of blogging, indeed.
I went to California, did I mention that?
It was a while ago now, for vaguely workish reasons, and for some coachish reasons, and also to do mile repeats at sea level (THE AIR IS SO BIG)(nope, still not adjusted) with Katie my soul sister who runs almost exactly twice as fast as I do and can drink twice as much tequila as I can. But now that I know this pool exists, I'm already planning a return visit.
I'm not sure when I became such a whore for steamy outdoor swimming pools, but it got me from DC all the way to Boulder, and if I had know about the one in Santa Monica, well, we might have just kept on driving. I guess I'll just have to keep watching the sun rise from this one here, instead.
I know I mentioned at some point that I finally found a tiny scoop of MTFU and went to masters. I'm having a good time, I've met some groovy people that call me wonder woman (because of my supergirl suit, not because of my prowess in the water, obviously) and don't make me lead the lane all that often. It might be making me faster, I don't really know because I barely look at the clock especially when I'm not in charge of when we leave, but it gets my ass out of bed at 5:00am twice a week and I laugh. A lot.
At some point my parents came to visit.
I think they had actually purchased plane tickets to come out here before we even had a house to live in, but it was a blast having them here for a while (I think we're pretending to ski but I honestly have no idea what is going on)(where did you THINK I got it from?).
We did a little hiking and a little driving (and a LOT of eating). At some point I realized that the twisty steep road that my dad was driving up, so quickly that we all wanted to barf, was the ride that the work people did fairly regularly. On their bicycles. And it only took another month before I managed to drag my mismatched neon spandex-clad bicycle backside up that same climb. I don't think I cussed at the hill even one time. (For the record, I am wearing a matching kit under my many obnoxious layers).
The first few outdoor rides after a lot of trainer time are always a wild overstimulating circus of remembering how to balance and steer and that you can't stop pedaling to change the channel without falling over. Also, climbing a mountain when it's 42º out is no big deal, but descending several miles requires a full-length down jacket and a personal radiator mounted on the handlebars, neither of which I had in my bento box. But my toes eventually turned pink again, and now that we've had a single cloudy day we can go back to the endless brilliance of perfect sunshine for a while.
My lovely longish run from the other day happened in that kind of weather.
I actually have no idea how far I ran that day, but I went and found an unplowed trail and spent over an hour stomping through mud and calf-deep snow and singing Sugarland and Train and Fun songs at the absolute top of my lungs. (To scare off coyotes, no?)
Amy came to visit. We working on convincing her to transplant out here as well. I don't think it will be hard. I don't miss much about DC, but I miss my girlfriends a hell of a lot. (HINT TO THE REST: COME VISIT K THANKS).
Austin was the only thing I had planned - like really planned, buying plane tickets and all - thing being race-related event - other than IMLP - great grief that's a lot of hyphens, maybe I should fix them - out for this year. I made a big map back in November with Sonja about all the races I wanted to do this year, and now I've changed my mind. And it's okay that I've changed my mind (thank goodness I didn't register for any)(yes, I wear a lot of pink and this hoodie in particular almost every day, who cares).
The poet wants to run the Chicago Marathon, it's his dream, so that's going to happen and he managed to register in the midst of the everyone-losing-their-goddamn-mind madness. We're going back to visit family in upstate NY in a few months and maybe do a little running while we're there. I've planned out a couple of training weekends that I am really excited about, more because of the people I'm going to spend time with and the places I will go and visit on my bicycle and the fun I will have and less because of the OMG how fast I will run at what HR and how far and how many calories and JUST NEVER MIND ALREADY. And people are stacking up our weekends with visits here. Which I love, and not just because we spend our time in the historical institutions of Colorado.
I don't know that I want a theme, or a word or a thought or a mantra or anything for this year. I've been thinking about getting a second tattoo for several months now but that's a story for another day, and has really nothing to do with any of this except it involves words. I said at the beginning of the year that I needed to find my happy life again. I have good days and bad days, like anyone I have ups and downs. I think that I thought (follow that?) for a while that my life needed to be solemn and thoughtful, like everything needed to matter and I needed to stop being so ridiculous all the time. But now, today, I just want to laugh. I want to stamp a big, red, drippy "WHY SO SERIOUS?" stamp on the face of that Katie. It doesn't mean I want to be irresponsible, it doesn't mean I don't want to get shit done, but for pete's sake it doesn't need to be nuclear physics with a frowny face on either. So I think I'm figuring it out, I think I'm headed in the right direction, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be just fine.
A few months have gone by, already, in 2013, in case you haven't looked at a calendar for a while. As of a few days ago, we've been in our house two months.
Life is starting to make sense again.
