The Beach and the Big Chainring

Since I last put pen to paper, or ummm, fingers to keyboard, a lot has happened. Suffice it to say, it wasn't the best start to the year for me: lots of work stress; some family things; surgery; recovery; and the list goes on. I can't say for sure that "things have turned around" or "the rest of this year is going to be awesome." I just don't know that, that's not the way things work. But over the past 2 weeks, my mindset has started to change. I'm taking advantage of the things I can control and this summer I'm chasing joy. Let me back up a little... A few months ago, when my cast came off, I started trying to get back into the swim bike run groove, but for one reason or another, I was having trouble with it all. I was finishing workouts feeling frustrated and down on myself. And I just wasn't having fun. Looking back, I know a lot of it was related to the stress I was dealing with outside of training. Couple that with the fact tha

            I haven’t been the best at updating what’s been going on with my ankle, but I partially blame that on the pain meds I’ve been on since surgery. J Speaking of which, surgery went great, well, you know, as great as surgery can go.             This post is probably going to be a bit disjointed but I just wanted to post a quick update on how the surgery went and how things have been since. My first cast, immediately after surgery             The surgery went just as they expected, which I guess is good. They had to replace two of the ligaments in my ankle, and they did so with ligaments from a tissue bank. The incision is really huge (scroll right on past the picture below if you don’t like medical kind of stuff…it’s not that bad, but better safe than sorry), but my surgeon but dissolvable stitches on the inside to help minimize the scarring. I told him I wasn’t super concerned about it, but I’m thankful he was able to do that nonetheless. The incision is

Interestingly, this injury process has taught me a lot about myself and how I deal with things. For a while after my last post, I thought that perhaps I should just be done with triathlon for a while. That maybe I wasn’t in it for the right reasons and that it wasn’t something I truly enjoyed anymore. But as I told myself that, I wasn’t at peace with it. I knew that wasn’t the answer to what has been going on, but I didn’t really know what was. However, over this past week, I realized something. When I’m on the bike, or in the water, or out running, that’s where I battle my demons, for lack of a better expression. It’s where I push myself. It’s where I prove to myself that I can do the things that 2 short years ago I never dreamed possible. It’s the place that I learn if this is possible, there are lots of things that are possible with hard work and determination. And the lessons I learn out there on the blacktop or staring at the black line are lessons that I take with me through

I want to put a little disclaimer before posting this. I generally try not to be a complainer and hope this doesn't come off that way, this is just honestly where I'm at in my triathlon journey and I want to be honest about it and hope that writing about it will help in some way.  I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time starting and restarting this post over the past few weeks. In terms of life, in general, things are going great. The holidays were awesome, I went on a great vacation with one of my best friends, spent time with family, and got to see lots of my favorite people at one point or another. Work is good, insanely busy, but really good. My friends and family are great! Spending time with them makes me so happy. Of course, my sweet boy, Dooley is awesome, and he spent much of his Christmas break romping around with my brother's new golden retriever puppy, Hank. Dooley and I spent the two weeks before Christmas taking care of this little booger. But then t