it's not you, it's me

You guys, I just don't want to.

Maybe I've worn out my welcome on the internet, maybe I'm getting old and tired, or maybe any original thoughts I once had have since dried up since we moved to Colorado.  Turned into tumbleweeds and blown away.  But I'm not going to make any sulky apologies for being absent or sweeping declarations about being done here on the internet, because if there is one goddamn thing I have learned since I started this blog, it's not to make grandiose promises in print.  Or to really say anything that I would not instead paint on my naked body and walk up and down the street shouting.

So I will say this.  Life is, simply, good.

Part of it is that I don't want to sit down and talk about my training because I feel like I have nothing to say that is new or interesting or exciting.  I ran an hour easy today.  Do you know how many times in the past year I've run an hour easy?  Conservatively, a billion.  Who wants to hear about that?  Not me.

Maybe it's because after living through six solid months of crazy hellish life stress from every direction, I want to make my circle smaller.  I want to keep my loved ones close, I want to wake up and dance through my day and then snuggle into bed at night and let it all go.  I've got a good circle this year, my support system feels solid and mighty and strong.  I know who is in my corner and who is waving from across the street while checking Twitter on their phone.  

The only reason I'm here now is because I felt like I should talk about the fantastic training weekend I had in southern CA this past week, about how awesome it was to chase Anabel's ass up and down and all over the mountains and through the water; to run alone, fifty yards from the ocean I love so dearly; to sit at dinner, three girls, and laugh when one of my old friends that joined us was straight-up horrified at the both the amount of food we ordered and the speed at which we put it down.  You three are so small, he said later in the car, where does it all go?

It goes into pushing off the wall, again and again, laughing at the guy with purple toenails and hoping that actually thinking about streamlining my arms will grab me the 4 seconds I keep dropping (it won't) and leaving 3 seconds behind instead of 5 like the dirty water cheater I am.

It goes into five hours of climbing and descending, standing out of the saddle, heart pumping hard and singing at the absolute top of my lungs, sweat rolling into my ears and butt crack just to get views like this.

It goes into groaning and sucking it up when I start counting women in the last four miles of a half marathon and realize that I CAN catch all of them but two before I hit the finish line.  If I'm willing to hurt, a little, which maybe I'm finally figuring out how to do.

I'm in love with training right now, I feel good about the work I'm doing, but all the work I am doing is all the work I can do.  Steady, day in and day out, load it up, recover it back, over and over, however much I can handle.  I'm only signed up for three more races between now and the end of the year.  All big races, sure, but big or small, a race is just a day.  And I would trade race day - even a brilliantly fun day like I had in New Orleans - for the training days I've had here in Boulder, in California, in a minute. In a second, it's not even close.  Spending all day on my bicycle, chasing Sonja (not allowed to chase her husband), chasing Mikki and Mo, chasing Anabel, chasing whoever will show up to be my carrot, sometimes chasing no one - this is my joy.

This is where my heart is happiest, and full. 

And this, for a while, is where I will be.