run this amazing day

Going into 70.3 World Championships, I got the idea in my head that if I didn't execute the race well because I was coughing my brains out, I might want to squash in another race before ironman.  Then WC came and went and I managed a decent day, which I thought would quiet down the let's stuff in something else  thoughts.  And it is true that i n the weeks leading up to and immediately following IM Boulder, I was feeling more than a little bit burnt out on triathlon, it took some time and space after that race before I was ready to consider if I should show up in Arizona.  Even at WC, I felt removed from the atmosphere, although that was likely because I spent most of the time in Canada asleep in our hotel room.  So I was truly perplexed to find that as things shook out in the weeks following, I had a bit of a twitch to race again before IMAZ.   When the Austin 70.3 posted one of those only ten slots are left  teaser posts on their Facebook p...

The poet and I, we don't really do gifts for special occasions.  I would much rather fill my house with people and then fill their bellies with food than ever open a present - nothing makes me happier, that is how I celebrate, surrounding myself with the warmth of relationships.  But one of my private (except for the part where I hit publish and the goddamned internet remembers it forever) celebrations is this post, piecing together a few hundred thousand million words as I sit still for a moment, reflecting.   In the past, it's often been a letter to myself, and that's where I've been struggling.  This year, I think it's fair to say that just about everything I've posted (outside of a million bicycle selfies and pictures of me running around Boulder in my underwear, for shame) has been some version of the letter I would write in this particular space.  As I've worked through the days and weeks of my life over the last twelve months, I've spent less ti...

Other than describing my incredible meltdown on the side of a mountain in the Alps, I haven't really mentioned my trip to France.  I posted cheese, wine, and gelato selfies all over the Instagram, I spent two days endurance eating in Italy and I lost my shit on a good friend.  But I also decided, somewhere in there and not just because people kept dragging me out of bed after midnight to eat chocolate and drink wine, that I needed change. Ironman Boulder came and went, a bookend on how I've done things the past few years.  It had to be, it was long overdue, I saw that in the bricks the universe zinged at me all spring.   Aim, fire, bullseye .  I had no idea what was going to happen once August 3rd had passed, but I did know that at some point in the days that followed, I would wake up and I would know.  Whether or not I still wanted to chase big ironman goals - and I was convinced that I would not - if I wanted to only participate in the distance, ...

So I spent the week before this race in bed.   Once or perhaps twice I dragged myself to the gym, swam about two hundred yards and then said well that was a terrible idea  and crawled back under the covers.  I rode my bike to make sure I could handle the deep wheels I had borrowed and I jogged with my running group but for the most part I tried to hunker down and let my body heal.   Traveling was a reasonable amount of a pain in the ass, flights got screwed up and I ended up sitting in the back of my parents car alone with my bike box while the poet took a tour of the east coast instead of joining me on the flights he was actually booked to travel on (thanks, United).  We arrived in Mont Tremblant, I checked in by the skin of my teeth, built my bike, and then climbed into the soft squishy quiet hotel room bed and slept for over 13 hours.   When I woke up Saturday morning I felt awful, the worst I had felt all week.  I hopped in the lake ...