Are You Living It?

Hmmmmm…where to start.

I feel like I got through the summer’s 20+ hours of training per week, associated fatigue, doctor’s visits, PT sessions, massages (not the comfy kind - the really painful sports medicine kind), chiropractor appointments, equipment maintenance, icebaths, stretching, and monetary expenditures by basically putting my hands over my ears and going, “la, la,la,la,la…” so I couldn’t hear the squealing of the rest of my life’s responsibilities being neglected. I just kept saying, “I’ll get to that…as soon as Ironman’s over.”

Well…Ironman’s over.

I feel like everyone and everything was lying in wait ready to pounce the moment I stepped off the plane. And pounce they have.

First, I am Ironbroke. Let no one tell you that triathlon is cheap sport, although you can make do very well on very little money if you try hard enough (which I do). But when you have a broken down body like mine, the costs can add up pretty quickly. Plus, Ironman itself is a ridiculously expensive event. Between nutrition, training costs, travel, entry fees, equipment, co-pays, childcare, and miscellaneous crap, I figure I spent about $8500 on the sport in the last year. OUCH!!! Translation? No going to visit my sisters this fall like I’d wanted, no going to visit my friend Kara in Michigan (thank God she’s coming here for a conference this weekend at least), probably no romantic weekend away during fall foliage. Don’t get me wrong…there is so much economic pain going around that I realize how lucky we are to be so comfortable…but I just want to complain anyway!

It also seems like a lot of folks had September 8th circled on the calendar, and had written on it, “call April and remind her that she said she could do (something…fill in the blank) after Ironman.” Committees, boards, collaborations, events, speaking engagements…if they had just kind of filtered in I think I could haven’t handled it…but it’s been a flood…so I can’t.

Then there’s my house - I needed to get my house in order which I’ve been doing but it’s made more challenging by the Ironbroke thing…I’m not particularly domestic and I tend to solve things by paying people to fix them. Instead I find myself rigging up shelving, searching for cheap storage on craig’s list and then driving half a day to pick it up (gas $, anyone?), and gasp…shopping at BJ’s and marketbasket (for anyone who’s laughing, you try getting in and out of Marketbasket in under an hour and without being rude to any senior citizens…it’s not possible. It is, however, a great opportunity to practice yogic breathing…)

My family…of course they are the only ones who really matter and who I really DO need to regroup and refocus all my efforts on…only problem is that I’m a little broken down physically and a little discombobulated from the aforementioned issues and they aren’t really in the mood to be patient with me anymore.

Plus, I can’t really work my angst out very well…between my feet and my hip (last night at Master’s I lost another toe top including nail when I pushed off the wall and peeled the callous that was holding the nail on right off - it was pretty gross!) I can’t get a decent workout in and even if I could I feel like (see above) I don’t have any time to anyway. My swim last night was pathetic…2500 yards SLOW.

Post event depression is a known entity in sports psychology - and I’ve got it! Doesn’t matter - I still gotta pull out the winter coats and clothes this morning and sort out all the clothes my kids outgrew for the salvation army, build another set of shelves, and pay the bills. Time to suck it up!

On a cheerier note, Morgan had her audition yesterday and did awesome. She is such a trooper. I hope she doesn’t get the part since it would mean time off of school, but I think it was a great experience, reading lines with a casting director and getting to use a microphone and such. She had so much fun.

And my friend Jenn had her beautiful baby girl (number 3) Sadie Jane (what an AWESOME name!) last Thursday night…I’d been waiting to announce it until she sent me some pix, but if there’s anyone with more to do than me right now…it’s her!

Congrats Jenn!

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