The Beach and the Big Chainring

I try not to complain. I know that I have nothing to complain about. If I'm tired, there's someone out there who is training harder than I am, with a heavier workload, and most likely 7 kids. I get it, my life is not that difficult. But recently I've had a really hard time dealing with winter being here. I know that for other people, they are training in basically the arctic tundra. I understand that to those people weather in the 40s and 30s is nothing to complain about. However, I'm not those people. I LOVE hot weather and the cold just makes me want to cry. Since coming back from Florida I've had a hell of a time getting myself motivated. My training has consisted of strength training, a tiny bit of yoga, running on the treadmill, and swimming (indoors obviously). I cannot get myself motivated to go outside. I do not like the cold one little bit. When I left for Florida it was warm, summer was winding down. It was starting to cool off a little bit, and w

     One thing that Ironman taught me was that if the goal isn't so big it scares you, it's not big enough.  And so, the next big thing isn't so big that it scares me in terms of distance, but it's a huge goal two of my best friends and I are hoping to reach.  And I'll be honest, when we first started talking about it, it scared the heck out of me.  You can read all about our goal  here .        We will be racing Oceanside 70.3 in hopes of raising enough money to put 70 local girls through our local  Girls on the Run  program.  We will be blogging about our journey and about the girls on 70miles70girls.com.  Don't worry though.  I won't be cross posting and bombing this website as a fundraising platform, but wanted to let you know what's up next.         I'm also hoping to keep up with this site regarding my training for both Louisville and Oceanside.  I feel like I've gotten into a good blogging groove in terms of regularity post-IMF

     The big question.  After hearing about my Ironman, the most common question I get asked is, "what's next?" I thought I would wait weeks or even months to decide.  But after a few days of talking with my coach, my family, and a few friends, I couldn't wait any longer.        So now I have an answer.  Louisville is what's next.  I have some big races and big goals between now and then (which I'll talk about in the next few weeks), but I can't wait to head to Louisville in August!

Alternately tiled "One of the Best Days of My Life"             I honestly don’t even know where to start this race report because the entire week we were in Panama City Beach was nothing short of magical.   The race was so well run, packet pickup went smoothly, and the expo made me nothing short of excited for the race to come!               Now, the water, that was a different story. I’m from the beach, I know how to swim in the waves.   I know how to navigate currents.   I’m comfortable swimming without my wetsuit.   But the gulf?   It was a mess on Thursday and even worse on Friday.   The waves weren’t what bothered me. It was the strong rip current pulling in the opposite direction of the swim.   However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that wasting my energy worrying over things I can’t control does no good.   So I went out for a practice swim on Thursday.   Decided that if I had to, I could do it, and prayed that the weather forecast held true and we wou

I did it!!! Race report coming soon...