What a week! Today is Sunday. The men's group at my Church had asked me to come speak to them during their monthly men's breakfast this morning. I was very nervous. I do not like to speak in public. I get all nervous and forget important things that I want to say. I arrived just as they were finishing up cooking. Boy it smelt good and I was hungry, however I knew I would not be able to eat until after I had done my duty. They told me to grab a plate and join them but I just smiled and said not till after I'm done. See there was actually two reasons I didn't want to eat first. One was my nerves and the other was my vocal cord. Sometimes when I eat it makes my vocal cord problem worse. So it's better If I want people to able to hear me for me to hold off eating while trying to talk.
When they finally asked me to get up and speak my jitters really kicked in again but as soon as I looked out at them all I could see was God's smiling face in their eyes. I can honestly say that the people at Ellisville First United Methodist Church is one of the most loving churches I've ever been in. I decided to give them a brief introduction on myself. Some of them know me pretty well and others just know me as one of the church members. I told the how I was raised Baptist and didn't join the Methodist church until I was 33 years old. It was a big change in that I didn't understand why they changed preachers every couple of years. Other than that it's very similar to the Baptist Church. I think some of them were shocked to find out that I was NOT an athletic growing up. Actually I was the furthest thing from it! I was the dorky, clumsy, odd ball child. All my friends were super athletes, but I was not. I went on to tell them how I started running and what brought me to the St. Jude's marathon. I got so caught up in telling them my story that I missed 2 important facts I wanted to mention. See I believe now looking back that God placed me there in 2013 when the race was canceled as a motivation for me to start the team Run4TheKids. I sat there all mad that the race was canceled. Actually I was furious. I had given up all my Saturday's training hard to be able to run 26.2 miles and I had begged and pleaded for people to give me donations and I wanted to run. See I was being selfish. I was only thinking about my feelings as I sat there listening to the man cancel the race. Now looking back and I can see it was all part of God's plan to encourage me to go back the next year with a team of runners.
So many times we don't understand what is happening in our life but you know what? God is always there. We must have faith. He's working on his master plan for us. The second thing I forgot to mention to them was how the survival rate for cancer has increased tremendously though the work done by doctors at St. Jude! It's a wonderful place that helps so many kids. I'm so thankful that God called me to be part of helping them. I think the guys enjoyed me rambling on and on. They thanked me for coming and sharing my story and then of course I ate. :>). They can cook good. I told them they need to come to my house and train my hubby. Hee Hee.
Now let me recap my workouts. This past week I decided to change up my workouts. Honestly I need more swim time and needed a way to work that into my schedule without too much time away from home. I had often mentioned trying swimming in the mornings before work but could never bring myself to do it. Well, that all changed this past week. I mentioned it to one of my friends that is also training for the half ironman and she said she wanted to try it also. That was all I needed to hear.
So we decided to swim Monday morning before work. Now let me first say that the weekend leading up to Monday had been a tough weekend. We both ran 20 miles on Saturday and biked 25 miles on Sunday afternoon. I was really tired Sunday night. We had both joked Sunday night about one of us forgetting something on Monday. See our plan was to swim at 6am, shower at the pool and then drive 5 minutes down the road to our office and finish getting dressed. We both work for the same company and we have a really big nice bathroom at the office.
Monday morning we meet and we are both kind of dragging from our weekend but we are also excited to be getting the swim over before work. Monday's are normally rest days for me due to the longer training on the weekends. However, swim is supposed to be low impact so I figured it wouldn't hurt to throw in a short swim on Monday morning. :>) Our other friend Serina also meet us. She swam and drove back home to get dressed. As soon as Kathy and I got to the office to get dressed she realized she had left her purse with her makeup bag in it at home. We both laughed. She was so right about one of us forgetting something. I let her use my makeup. She said she was going to get a bag with extra "everything" in it and keep in her vehicle from now on. Hee Hee.
All day Monday I was extremely tired. I just wanted to nap. It was nice going straight home after work at 5pm. I went to bed early cause my schedule called for an early morning run followed by spin class after work on Tuesday.
So here was the week schedule:
Monday - Swim am
Tuesday - Run am / Spin (bike) pm
Wednesday - Swim am
Thursday - Run am / Spin (bike) pm
Friday - Swim am
Saturday - LSD run am
Sunday - Bike afternoon
That's 3 Swim, 3 Bike, and 3 run days. I ended the week with 21.5 miles running, 55 bike miles and 2.7 miles swimming.
My whole week was long at work and sometimes mental tiredness can be just as bad as physical. But I kept telling myself it's only the 1st week of this new schedule. They say you need to give something 30 days for it to become a habit. Swim is low impact, but it's also very tiring. I had only been swimming 1 - 2 times a week and not much during the holidays so swimming 3 times this week was tough. I will say that on Friday I felt much better in the water. My shoulders and arms are very tired and sore this weekend. Maybe it's the swimming 2.7 miles this week. :>)
I do think once my body adjust to the schedule that I will like it. First it gives me 3 nights during the week to be home early. In the past I would do many workouts after work which meant me not getting home till 7pm or after and by the time I cooked it was normally 8pm or so before I sat down to eat. That is just not good for my body. I like to eat early and go to bed early.
Well, It's been a great day so far. It's time to start a new week. This afternoon I'm meet a couple of friends and we did a run / bike / run in preparation of a duathlon we have coming up in 2 weeks. Let's just say it was harder than I had thought it would be! The wind was strong this afternoon which made it where you biked the whole time against the wind. Kathy said it was just what we needed cause the duathlon is on the coast where the wind normally blows hard on the bike route. She had eaten her wheaties today cause she was like a speed demon. She meant business. I could barely keep up with her! I was glad when it was over. I'm now in my pjs at 5:30pm and don't plan to do another thing the rest of the night.
Happy training. And remember, we may not understand what all is happening in our lives, we just need to remain strong in our faith that God is in control. We have to wait and see what he's cooking up for us in the end. Happy Sunday! D
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