run this amazing day

1. The first thing Thursday has got to be my mental state.  I felt completely flattened after this weekend.  I spent some of Monday morning rehashing and over-analyzing, and then suddenly I just don't want to talk about it anymore.  I'm ready for a break.  I'm ready to do things for fun again, and not be on some ridiculous and completely inflexible schedule.  I've been married to triathlon for the past few months and I feel like his shell-shocked battered wife.  I just want to hide in my sweatpants and ignore my HR monitor and let people be nice to me for a little while.  So that's what I'm going to do.  I've made a lot of important decisions over the past few days, and one of the best of them lets me go back and train with CAR for a month or so until Ironman base training gets cranked up later this winter.  I need to spend some time focusing on my running, as it is the weakest link, which helps it to all line up quite nicely. 2. That sai...

The best part of Saturday, by a long shot, was being surrounded by so many familiar faces - both on and off the race course. My family was there to cheer me on, which is always awesome. And this brand-new Ironman graced us with her presence: I knew a half-dozen people doing the race, and I met lots of blog friends along the way (Hi Caroline!  Becca!  Christina!  I hope you guys had a much better day than I did!).  The poet, very embarrassingly, told the announcer that it was my birthday, so I was getting well wishes from all directions throughout the day.   The second-best part of the day, of course, was stocking up on fresh ass shots for you guys. Don't worry, I've got your best interests in mind.

I think by now, just about everyone has heard that my day didn't turn out even close to how I planned.  Rather than walk through the day (I woke up!  Tried to poop!  Ate a power bar OMG NO ONE DOES THAT!) I thought I'd just hit some highs (yes, there were highs) and lows of the day, as well as some big takeaways as I head into the "off season." Swim (1.2 miles) The swim was my best leg of the day.  I got into the water before the race started to warm up and was surprised to not freak out even one little bit.  I swam around for a little while then hopped back out when the first wave lined up.  I got back in to get ready for my wave and was laughing and joking with the rest of the women instead of thrashing around being terrified by everything I couldn't see.  The swim was a bit slower than I expected because there was massive amounts of vegetation on the "out" and the "back" part of the square - which we hit twice, 2-loop swim fail - and I had ...

Emily shared this earlier in the week, and it finally struck the chord I needed to figure out how to close out my year.    You can read last year's letter here . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear 30-almost-31-year-old-Katie -  Girl, seriously, you need to chill.  The fuck.  Out.  You've got a lot of years in front of you and spending all day every day worrying is just not going to get it done.  Don't worry, I remember that year.  There was a lot to worry about.  Let me help you out a bit. Your first day of being 30 was a whopper.  It took you a while to come around but trust me, getting married again was a good call.  The first time around you were scared and small and it avalanched over you and tried to break you, but this time - I promise you -  the poet is the real deal.  You might think that he was crazy and trust me, he still is, but his instincts are good and he hel...