Juggling

I haven't written a post in a while. Quite a while. As you may guess, it's because I've been struggling with juggling.

I'm now in Week 4 of my new job. The work is terrific, and I'm so tickled that I got this position... but there's a lot to learn, and my brain has been feeling very full of new information of late. It's made "extra curricular" thinking much more difficult. i.e. I've been finding myself not at all interested in sitting down at a computer to compose a blog post when I get home in the evenings. Plus in the past few weeks I've had several evening meetings that have lasted until about 9pm.

And with this career change has come a change in many other parts of my life. I'm no longer living the "bachelorette" life I was during the week when I was in Kalispell this last year. No, now I have a boy to come home to (and also to tempt me into snuggling and sleeping in rather than getting up early to work out). And with someone else to eat with, I've been more motivated to cook meals besides just a bowl of soup or cereal for dinner. Then add to the mix all the great friends I have here in Missoula, who are terrific to hang out with, and I've been enjoying the chance to be social-- even on weeknights. For example, I've recently gone to an African Dance class with friends, had a picnic down by the river one evening, have met friends to go to Out To Lunch in downtown, etc. It's been so nice to get re-connected to several folks who I've only seen sporadically for the past few years.

And then add into this mix the fact that getting to work now includes a 20 min drive plus a 5-10 minute walk, rather than the 5 min drive I used to do.

Oh yeah, and for some reason at the end of the first week of this new melee, I thought it would be a good idea to add an Olympic Distance triathlon into the mix. So I've also been trying to do some last-minute long rides, runs, and swims.

So, yeah, I've been a little busy. Thus the lack of blogging.

That and, well, I've really been re-thinking my decision to do the Oly Tri, and hadn't until this weekend made up my mind about it.

Here's my thinking, in a nutshell:

I considered this race earlier in the spring/summer, and thought it might be something I'd want to do. But, I looked at my schedule and the fact that August is usually a busy fire season in MT (which, thankfully this year it wasn't; that, and my new job doesn't involve fire work)... but I decided that I couldn't commit to training for the race given the timing. I'd kind of kept in my mind the thought that maybe I could try it, though, if fire season wasn't too bad.

So when Roni prodded me (again) after the Whitefish Tri (when I was super high on endorphines after finishing the race), I said "sure, I'll do it." And you know, I could do it. I physically could complete the race, I know it. And like I said before, it might be good just to gruel through that distance this fall so that next year I'll have a better sense of what it's like and I can train better for it.

But here come the "cons": I haven't trained for that distance! Thus I know it would be a slog. I'd be mentally unprepared, if not physically, and compared with times from folks the last few years, I'd definitely be near last. Now, I'd be okay with that position IF I knew it was the best that I could do. But being last or near last because of lack of preparation just isn't acceptable for me.

So the thought of the race, and the pressure to keep training has really been adding a disproportionate amount of stress to my already stress-full situation. (Not that stress is a bad thing, necessarily... I do best with a moderate amount of pressure!) But I just haven't been looking forward to my workouts, because they're geared toward an event I don't want to do.

That and, well, there've been too many other fun things to do besides do some last-minute training for an event I don't want to do.

So the last straw came last Thursday night when Jim said, "hey, I have a 3-day weekend, too" (he RARELY gets days off, especially not 3 in a row!), "so do you want to take the horses up to the Mission Mountains and go camping & fishing this weekend?"

My first thought was YES! That's one of the things I enjoy most in life... riding horses. in the mountains. with Jim.

Followed by, oh, but I have to do a Swim/Bike Brick on Saturday and a long run on Sunday.

So I decided not to do the Oly this year. The reason I race is to have fun, and to give myself good goals to work towards. This race just wasn't shaping up to be fun, and definitely hadn't served the purpose of being a long-term goal to help keep me on track with exercising.

So this weekend, I'll instead be going backpacking with two of my girlfriends. I was really glad to be able to say yes, I'll go! when they asked, instead of no, I have a race this weekend.

I'll send a "Backpack Report" rather than a race report. And I'll do some thinking along the trail about what my next longer-term race goals will be. But for a while, I just wanna have some fun and let exercise be a little less structured and regimented while I make some life transitions.