reflections on fertility, and new training regimen.

M and I have been married 13 years. Woot! All good times. Well. Ya know. On balance, Many many more good times than otherwise. Shutting up now.

Had an interesting conversation though, about having another kid.

I like to joke that I've been fighting a holding action from "no children," but that's not really the case. I've been agnostic on the subject of more kids, letting the chips, as it were, fall where they may. M is 44 this year, so it seems increasingly unlikely that we will get preggers without medical intervention. I'm ok with this, but M has been intermittently upset about this state of affairs for going on 6 years. Which brings me to a married couple -- both friends of mine -- who are going through a really tough patch. She was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure. They are newly married, and now are looking at either never being able to have biological kids, or at expensive/painful medical procedures. You can check them out at http://hannahweptsarahlaughed.blogspot.com/

Send them some love if you've got some to spare.



Truth be told: I'm not best pleased with the knee failure at the marathon. That's been tough for me. I know that there is no good reason for me to be down about the experience, but there you are. I am -- and, I'm dealing with it.

Because there's no time for regrets -- I have another race in two weeks! A sprint triathlon, which means 750 meter swim, 14.5 mile bike ride, 5 kilometer run. Open water swim, which leads me to the next bit: Training weekend.

So, B and I took advantage of the MoCo/NoVa public school spring break to get together with my fam + M's sister & son at Lake Louisa, which is near Lake Anna in Virginia. The idea was to do some training in all three sports, run, bike, and swim. And so we did!

But it wasn't all beer and skittles. 1st, the water was ass-cold. I've never been that cold in the water and stayed in -- wetsuit or no, that was damn unpleasant. Swam maybe 1200 meters, working on sighting (which is the main reason to practice open water swims, besides the experience of being able to go more than 25 yards without having to turn around at a wall). Swimming in a straight line is more efficient, yes? Ass. Cold. Still, the race is also open water, and I can't imagine the water is going to be that much warmer, so . . . forewarned.

Running was also not swell. Saw the doc about my knee, and the diagnosis was tendinitis. Prescription, rest, ibuprofen, and check it out again in a week. So, I took off for an easy run around the lake -- 6 miles or so -- and 30 mins in the same spot started tweaking. The doc's instructions were to not push through it, so I walked the rest of the way; very frustrating to not be able to keep up the running training that I worked so hard to get. I can feel it slipping away. I know its better to heal - even if it means losing some fitness - than to really get injured. Knowing doesn't help as much as perhaps it ought.

Which takes us to biking. Plan was to ride 40 miles for me, 60 for B. However, as we topped off the air on our wheels, we realized that we didn't have spare tubes. A quick 3 hour round trip to Charlottesville for tubes later, we were ready to roll. 10 miles into the ride, it occurs to me to ask why we went to all that trouble if we weren't going to take the new spare tubes out of the trunk of the car. Hhhhhhh. Ride back to the car, get the tubes, and then go our separate ways because trying to keep up with B was kicking my ass. I finished my 40 mile ride, though.

So, plan over the next four months is 4 workouts per sport per week. Swimming 1500 each day; biking 105 mins x2 and 145 mins x2; and running as much as I can -- which right now, is not at all. I'm going to try to run in the water (I'm told thats possible) tomorrow, I think. Anyhoo, gotta get into the dissertation writing for the day. Sorry for the hiatus in the blogging; I've got more thoughts, so more soon I expect.