Just riding the crazy roller coaster that is my life for the moment. If you've read my blog for any length of time, then you probably know my husband works in the media. It's kind of like being married to a doctor without the paycheck; you never know when the phone will ring and he'll be off somewhere for who knows how long. When I plan out my race schedule it's usually with my fingers crossed behind my back and a toss of salt over my shoulder. This year (yes, this very short year) has already been quite newsworthy. For me this means holding down the fort and rearranging my priorities at a moment's notice (read: scramble to find a sitter so I can train.....or race). I do not begrudge him this, he has the hard part, but it is just frustrating at times.
As it happens, this past week the public schools were closed for Winter Break, I no longer have a sitter and the lovely girl I use downstairs in a pinch, was away on vacation. In fact, we were babysitting her fish, for which my son earned $5 (I thought that was very sweet of her to pay him for his fish sitting services, being a novice fish sitter and all). In case you missed the foreshadowing, my husband was also away covering the latest media interest so this meant that I could not find anyone to sit for me on an early Saturday morning so I could go race. Hence the DNS.
My training has been a lot like this too; scrambling when I can to get it done and sometimes having no choice but to let it go. This causes a dilemma for me. I need to do something when I am stressed and not being able to have that something, training, tends to make me more stressed. I've had to be ok with this and while my coach assures me I haven't ruined my upcoming season with my intermittent training regime, I am feeling less confident about it. After an email to her expressing myself on this front, she pointed me to a recent post by Jen Harrison (whom most of you are familiar with, I am sure). It was as if she was speaking to me in this post, the timing was uncanny, although apparently this seems to be a common February occurrence. I'm not sure losing your job counts as a recurring February theme, but the tone of the post was reassuring and for me, extremely poignant, a reminder not to lose my head over my training. After all, I am not Chrissie Wellington, I am a middle aged AGer doing this as a hobby.
On the job front, a bit of a silver lining. A fellow designer friend has asked me to design some stuff for her line of greeting cards for the National Stationery show. It could be good exposure for me. It is really nice that she thinks enough about my work to include me in her line. Fingers crossed.
I did receive a nice little package last week from Brooks. I was invited again this year to be part of the Brooks ID program. I love Brooks gear! I mean that for real. I admit to being a former Asics devotee, but I now own three pairs of Brooks shoes that have force me to change my mind. In particular the Brooks Launch, my go to shoe for racing and training.
New week, new resolve.
