run this amazing day

It's been about six months since Graham was in the hospital, and I wanted to check in with an update on how he's doing. The overall answer is, pretty good.  He's still at the lean end of what a healthy weight is, despite the fact that we're feeding him more than we used to.  The vet thinks that because he lost so much intestine, his body can't hang onto as many nutrients.  So his morning and evening meals are a little bit larger, and he gets a little bit of peanut butter as a treat most days.  He isn't technically underweight, but he's still about 5lbs less than he used to be.   He isn't allowed to run, and that's sad but a fact of life.  I know that he misses it, because his eyes and ears perk up when we take the girls out.  The vet told us that he's welcome to run around in the backyard and exercise at the dog park, but extended runs we should probably avoid.  That's partially because of how easily he could become dehydrated, and part...

I don't have words right now, so this may very well be the most boring update I have ever posted.  I have nothing that I feel the need or desire to discuss, to snark about, to worry about.  Maybe I will once training ramps up a bit more, but right now my life is calm.  It's easier, here.  I said it the first day I arrived: there is peace here .  I wake up - early, because I'm still on east coast time - in the morning and go train before heading to work. Most days I bring Graham with me.  He sleeps peacefully under my desk.  If I'm going to train at lunch, sometimes I bring Molly instead, and that girl loves to run, to get muddy and worn out.  My job is good, I'm happy here.  When my day is done, it's done.  I head home to our little house, still covered in unpacked boxes and unhung pictures, and spend time with my family. I cook things, we eat things, we do laundry and build bookshelves and go to bed early.  My life is bo...

So, waaaaaaaaay back in December while I was home and at sea level and had enough red blood cells, I think I had a bit of a breakthrough.  Only a tiny one, but then I got sick and my life was crazy bananas for a while and I haven’t really even had time to sit down and try to process it.  And no one has breakthroughs in December, those should be scheduled for March when you actually might be able to make it useful.   I stopped talking about specifics of training here on the blog such a long time ago, because for the most part, the numbers don’t matter.  And it (sometimes) irritates me when other people spend so much time focusing on the numbers, so I didn’t walk to talk about this because I felt like I was being a hypocrite but something happened in the water and oh for pete's sake just type already. It was a boring Thursday afternoon (it was a dark and stormy night...).  I had a swim workout I’ve seen a few times before, broken 250s.  (Sorry, Sonja, if...

I realized recently that I have done a monthly recap post for every month that I’ve had this blog.   Which is quite a long time, if anyone is keeping track. In each of them, I walk through the goals I set - some serious, some silly - at the end of the previous month.  Then I discuss the current status of my swim, my bike, and my run - always in order.  What follows next is usually a mishmash of discussion about my personal life and what the next month will look like.  Then I round up a few goals for the next month and hit publish.  Done.  Yesterday I started writing my December recap post and thinking about January, and thinking about how I wanted to set it apart from all the 2012 recaps/2013 resolution blog posts, and it just made me feel exhausted.  Mentally, exhausted.  And I realized, I think, that it’s time to change direction.  For good. I’ve been struggling lately with my life, with the life that we are building here in Colorad...