Happy Holidays!

Happy holidays from down under! This was the first time I spent Christmas away from my family and it was certainly a new experience. My family was terrific and organized a box with some presents that arrived a good week in advance so I had some gifts to open that morning. All my training partners were impressed with my ability to wait until Christmas to open them.

Christmas morning we got a knock on our door at 6:15 am with two very excited faces who eagerly announced that "Santa came" and we had to hurry up to get upstairs so we could watch them open their presents. Those two faces are the two kids (7 and 4) who live upstairs and they were kind enough to invite us to watch them open their gifts. Christmas isn't the same when you don't have little kids around because their excitement is really what makes the day so special. So despite the really early wake up, I quite enjoyed watching them get their new bikes and scuba gear.

After a hard bike time trial, because yes, training continued, I had two very delicious meals and a very full belly to show from it all. Fortunately, we were all allowed to enjoy the day and forgot about our meal plans for the one day. It would have been hard to pass up on a small slice of cheesecake!

The following day I put in calls to the states to speak with various factions of my family. It was great to talk to everyone and a good compromise to not being able to be home with them.

It has been back to work since then. I am almost done with the final stages of this training block and at the end of this week will move into the next phase of my training. I'm excited to have more of a run focus and to start addressing some of my big weaknesses! I just have to keep plugging away, one day at a time.