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Sunday, February 16, 2014

HUGSIES

I woke up yesterday morning with a tremendous feeling of freedom. I still can't exactly put a word on how I felt.

It's like freedom and excitement and happiness and.....it kind of felt like what it would be like to pull a rainbow out of the sky, chew it up and blow bubbles with it.

I woke up that way for a few reasons. We've started making plans for our youngest's graduation and going off to college. That's the big one. When you have kids, even when they are old enough to drive, your life revolves around them. I've planned my race and training schedule around activities. I've had to skip races or training because they were sick or had some unexpected thing come up.

That's what it means to be a parent.

He is now finishing up. His sports are over. No more art shows. No more of any of that.

My schedule is my own now. Well, it will be in 2.5 months when he graduates.

The other day Molly had mentioned a race in Arizona in March that I was supposed to do with her, but I coach canceled due to wanting to kick my ass unforeseen circumstances. That's when I realized that I could still go to the race and wear my cute cheerleader outfit play sherpa.

I realized that I had nothing from stopping me from going anywhere at anytime. This might not be a big deal for some of you, but I know others know exactly what I'm talking about.

For the first time in 20 years, I have a race schedule based on what I want to do and when I want to do it.

That's what happened yesterday. I slept in, soooo late. I had a long bike ride to do. I didn't even get the ride started until around 1pm. I don't plan on doing that in the middle of summer, but I felt like I was catching up on 20 years of lack of sleep.

This new found sense of freedom and getting sleep and feeling really good about my training and nutrition and my mental state (for training and racing) and managing my work schedule, it's all just kind of wonderful. 

Wait! There's more warm fuzzy!

I thought about my friends, near and far. I love how you make me laugh no matter what kind of mood I'm in. I love how you make me think about things in a different way. I love how you all believe in me and push me to be a better person....even when you probably want to bitch slap me.

I think all this good stuff is the reason for the weirdest dreams ever. Several times a week, I have Ironman dreams, but they aren't the typical race anxiety dreams. They are good dreams. You are all there too. It's a great time.

It just goes to show how important you are to me; even if I don't say it very often.