A Long Overdue Update

Well, it’s time for a long overdue update. We left off with the Tri Doc Wacky Costume 5K, which means we left off in May. Geeze. A lot has happened since then. The New Jeep After driving my trailblazer for 11 years and over 200,000 miles, we finally decided it was time for momma to get a new car. I couldn’t decide at first if I wanted to go practical (and get an Equinox) or go sporty (and get a Jeep). In the end, sporty won out and I drove home with a new 4 door Jeep! USAT Coaching Clinic I had been wanting to attend the USAT Level I Triathlon Coaching Clinic for a while but could not get in. I finally got into the one in Des Moines, IA at the end of May. Not the most desired locations, but I knew I wouldn’t get to see much of the city anyway, so off I went. As expected, I was in class most of the time. I even took a CEU class AFTER the regular class that Friday night to get a head start on those. The weekend was filled with lots of good information and I came back excited to get my coaching business going. Run Streak Also toward the end of May, I saw a post from Runner’s World about a run streak challenge they were doing. The challenge was to run every day between Memorial Day and July 4th. The only rule was you had to run at least one mile for it to count. That didn’t sound very hard to me and it was only for a little over a month. I decided to do it, but didn’t “officially” sign up for it or tell anyone. It was my own little challenge. Would I be able to do it? I’ll tell you what. I learned a lot from that little challenge and I’m glad I did it. First of all, I needed it mentally. I needed the stress relief it provided. I needed it to get me out of the house and focus on something else. Why? you ask. Because on June 4th, I was called into my bosses office and told that I was being laid off. One of the clients had made some major budget cuts and I was one of four people let go that day. The good (and bad) of it was that due to the nature of what I did, they wanted me to keep coming into the office for another month to transition the accounts out and to another agency. It was good because it meant continuing income, but it was hard to go to work every day and face people when everyone knew I wouldn’t be there much longer. I needed the stress relief that running provided me. Every day. The other thing I learned from the run challenge is that, as much as I love running, I’m not a streaker. I run 4-5 days most weeks as it is, but every now and then I just need a day without it. If I don’t feel like running, I don’t want to feel guilty about it. There were days where it was hard to get myself out the door and get the run in. And there were plenty of days where I did my one mile and was done. I much prefer running on my schedule and running as many miles as I feel like and then taking a break when I want/feel like. Lake Pflugerville Triathlon On Father’s Day, as I always do, I did the Lake Pflugerville Triathlon. I’ll try to do another post with just my race report, but I don’t really remember anything being out of the ordinary. I was proud, however, of my bike time because I had not really been on my bike much in the spring. The one thing I do remember is that after the race my daughter said she wanted to do it next year. We will see if that holds true or not. Yoga Teacher Training I had already signed up for several more yoga teacher trainings before I found out I was losing my job, so I still planned to attend. I had already paid for them and most of them were on the weekend, so why not? In fact, I ended up adding a training that I had not originally signed up for because I knew the class was right after I would end my days in the office. So, this summer I attended Level 2, Anatomy and YogaFit for Warriors. Vacation Again, I will try to do a separate post to cover vacation, but lets just say it was much needed. And like the yoga training, it had already been planned before I got laid off. It actually worked out fairly well. My last day in the office was July 3rd. July 4th was a holiday. I had already asked off for July 5th – 14th because we had a wedding to attend in Shreveport and then were moving on to our vacation in Orange Beach, Alabama. When I walked out of the office July 3rd, it was kind of like I was just going on vacation. Only I never went back. We left Saturday morning to head to Shreveport for the wedding of one of our former youth members. We didn’t want to miss that. Then we got up early Sunday to head to the beach, stopping in Monroe along the way to get pictures at the Duck Dynasty warehouse. It had to be done for the kids sake. I was so happy when we got to Orange Beach. I had rented a condo right on the beach. It was heavenly. I had also used some birthday money to download some books on my kindle. I planned to spend the week doing nothing but reading and laying on the beach. I had planned to sleep in a little as well, but I was up every morning fairly early so I either ran on the beach for a little bit or did yoga on the beach, then ate breakfast on the balcony, then staked our claim on the beach. I only left for a few minutes at lunch and stayed until the sun was going down. It was great because the kids are old enough that they could come and go as they pleased and I didn’t have to worry about them. It was a very much needed week. I ended up reading 5 ½ books during the week. Now that’s my idea of a vacation. Back to Reality Once we got back, I decided to take a couple of weeks and clean the house. And not just clean as in sweep, dust, vacuum, etc. I mean clean, as in get rid of stuff. So that’s what I did. We ended up having a garage sale, making around $400 and STILL having two truck loads of stuff to take to Goodwill. I’m glad that got done. In the meantime, I began looking for a job. In the beginning I was pretty picky about what I applied for, but over time I began to relax my standards. I also looked for new opportunities, not sure that I want to go back to an 8-5 desk job (I only worked until 3:30 at my last job). At the end of August I discovered an opportunity to run my own women’s boot camp. I just needed to pass my personal trainer certification, which I did at the beginning of September. I joined forces as an independent contractor with Texas Fit Chicks and just recently started a morning boot camp close to home. It’s not enough right now to replace my income (in fact it won’t even pay the car payment yet), but I hope to grow it. In the meantime, I am still looking for that elusive job. I know there is something out there that is perfect for me. I just haven’t found it yet.