Holiday Cheer!

I feel like I have not had the opportunity to stop and take a breath since arriving home on Wednesday. There is so much to do between training, shopping, visiting sponsors and seeing family.

Training has been good, although I did hit a bit of a "bump" yesterday. With so many swim sessions this week, I finally just hit the wall. I wrestled with my decision to postpone my second swim session from Friday to Saturday morning for a good hour. I felt so guilty about not doing the training but at the same time I knew that nothing productive was going to come from the session. Fortunately, when I got in touch with Siri, she agreed with my decision. I went to Master's practice with Jarrod and Alicia. It was not very good, as I more or less felt like I was swimming into a brick wall the whole time. You know it's bad when you can hardly get through warm-up. But, I suppose, you have to have bad days in order to have the amazing break through days. I finished off my day with a ride on my trainer, just a few hours indoors, and then my favorite treadmill session. Unfortunately, I couldn't punish myself as much as I wanted because the treadmill didn't go fast enough!! I'm going to have to find one that goes faster for some of my workouts next week.

I took a trip to Puma North America yesterday, Friday, to spread some holiday cheer. I baked cookie bars for all of the people there who have been so wonderful to me all year. I like being able to go visit and to thank them in person. After all, it is probably nice for them to see my face once in a while rather than just another email.

The best part of my day today was visiting my two little cousins, William and Hayden. Their nickname for me is "party girl" and it is always a party when I'm there. Hayden doesn't let me put him down and when he does, he immediately grabs me by the leg to lead me somewhere to show me something. Tonight, I got to see the hot chocolate scene from "The Polar Express" with added entertainment from William and Hayden bouncing around, jumping up and down and singing the words the best they could. I think the red plastic fireman hat that Hayden insisted on wearing was probably the best part.

So, despite the 25 degree temperatures (that's -16C for all of you experiencing summer in the other hemisphere right now), the hard training continues as my first race of the season is two weeks from tomorrow!!

Now, I'm "cuddling" with my not so little, little sister Martha, attempting to convince her to go swim with me tomorrow. It will be the last swim of a 10 swim week for me.
Only 3 more sleeps until Santa comes!