The House is EMPTY! :(

Whelp... my sister and her crew: bro-in-law Scott, nephews Sam and Jake, and neices Sophie and Lilly all took an early flight out of Eugene this morning! The house seems a bit dead... pretty depressing actually. As always we had an AWESOME time together and are already making plans for our next visit. I sure do love those guys... and wish that we weren't so far away from each other. I will say that only getting to see all of them once or twice a year certainly makes me appreciate the time we DO have! What a great family! I can't believe how much the kiddos are growing and changing and maturing! SO fun to watch!

All training took a HUGE backseat to the visit. Sorry... that's just the way it is. I see them so rarely that the prospect of heading out on a 3 hour ride and missing out on the fun didn't appeal to me. We were pretty active the entire time so I don't think my body went into complete recovery mode... but I consumed enough greasey food to choke an elephant! Training picks up again tomorrow and I'm heading to Bend to wish Drew luck at IM Canada and meet with my future coach! Good times... good times...

So my last scheduled race of this season is on September 9th up in Hood River. Looking forward to it but it's more about going up and having fun with my friends rather than kicking my own A**. I just haven't been putting in the time and effort to be very competitive at this particular race.. so I'll just go out and have a good time. A couple of goals that I AM going to set are: swim the 1.5 mile downriver swim in under 30 min, complete the 18 mile nazi hill ride in 1 hr or less, and average 7:30 min miles over the course of the hilly 8 mile run! Lofty? I think not. All of that is totally within the realm of reality for me... even if I have been living on grease for the past 7 days! We'll just see what happens.

I can't believe it's already time to start thinking about next year's race schedule! The only thing I have tentatively planned for next year is Ironman 70.3 Lake Stephens... other than that I'm wide open! Also... I'm going up to volunteer an IM CDL... just to get the lay of the land and experience the whole ironman thing from the outside. Ought to be a good time.

That's it for now... oh WAIT! If you're reading this and you're in Eugene, put 9:00 am on Saturday September 8th on your calendar... there's something going on that you won't want to miss! Details to follow!

Breathe...