Caught on the verge

Sometimes Lucy just all of a sudden gets really excited about life.  She grabs a toy, runs back and forth across the apartment, playfully growls, and jumps on me if I ignore her.  Sometimes this excitement is provoked (say, if I just came home or am about to take her on a run).  Other times, it just happens.  Life just gets exciting.

Life got so exciting that her head went blurry.

Sometimes when it happens, you can see her getting revved up for it.  She gets a crazy look in her eye, a telltale tenseness in her body.  It's just a split second, but when you spot it, you know that excitement is on it's way.

With school over, now that I'm officially a week into summer, I feel like I'm in the split second that happens just before things get exciting.  I'm not sure why.  Here's what my first week of summer has looked like so far.

Thursday: I went into work to clean up a bit and start getting ready for summer school.  So I guess summer hadn't started yet, but I'm counting it.  I came home around 2:00 to quick turn around and head downtown to make it to the Seattle Rock N Roll Expo with Ironman Jason and Ironman Joe to pick up my race packet.  I collected lots of free stuff from all the vendors.

Look at that haul.  Everything that's edible has been eaten.
The rest remains useless in the free bag I got.

After gorging myself on free samples of running energy crap, I came back to my place, grabbed Lucy, and headed out on a run with Jason and Joe.  We went about 5 miles, and in the middle, Lucy quite successfully made Joe tumble to the pavement.  That's right, she took down an Ironman.  Pretty impressive.  Sorry Joe.

Friday:  I woke up, relaxed for a couple hours, and then went for the first swim I've been on in about a year and a half.  As expected, my arms felt like they were going to fall off, but it was great to be back in the water.  Ironman Jason came with me, and I was able to give him a few pointers on how to improve his stroke.  Helping is fun.  And Jason has helped me so much with running, and most especially biking in the past few months, it was great to be able to return the favor for once.  Then I came home, walked Lucy, and headed downtown for our Inspirational Dinner for the Rock N Roll Seattle Marathon with Team in Training.  Dinner was carbful (yep, that's a word in the dictionary of Tessa), and I got to hear John "The Penguin" Bingham speak again.  And then I got to hear Erica tell the story of her sister Heather, which I've heard before, but this time was different.  She told it for a whole room full of nervous marathoners and inspired them to keep running, keep pushing, and feel good about the awesome amount of fundraising they'd done in the past few months.

Saturday: I ran the Rock N Roll Seattle Half Marathon and then did a lot of cheering.  You can read about that here.

Sunday: I wasn't exactly 100% when I woke up after the celebrations from the night before, so I relaxed for the morning.  Then around mid afternoon Erica, Lucy, and I went for an easy 4 mile recovery run.  Lucy really likes Erica so she didn't trip her and make her fall down.  That was nice.

Monday: I'm not sure if what I did on Monday can be consider a "brick" workout, but I ran and biked both on the same day, so that counts for me.  Lucy and I did a 3 miler in the morning, then Lucy accompanied me to school for about 4 hours while I made final preparations for summer school.  Later that night, I met up with Erica and MacKenzie for a "Girls' Night" bike ride that rounded out at about 30 miles.

We're ladies.  And we ride bikes.

This was my first time back on the bike in a little over a month, and I was ecstatic to be back on it.  STP is creeping slowly closer and I need to build up some seat time again.  My seat wasn't super happy on this ride, but me and my seat powered through.

Tuesday:  First day of summer school!  It was crazy, hectic, and a lot of fun.  I was impressed with how many kiddos showed up and how excited they were to be there.  And then I got to do a lot of reading with them.  The 2.5 hours breezed by, and before I knew it, it was 1:00 and I was out and running with my teacher crew.  We've decided to keep up the teacher running club throughout the summer so that everyone can stay motivated to stay active.  Then Tuesday night we celebrated MacKenzie's birthday with lots of wine and lots of sushi.

Jason's not just an Ironman, he's also a chef.  So he
pre-prepped everything.

And then we became sushi rolling masters.

Today:  Despite the plethora of wine that was imbibed last night, I woke up this morning feeling good and ready for a bike ride.  Me, Jason, and Nick (another fellow runner and rider) rode up to coach Shelby's running store to say hi and then back down again--altogether about 40 miles.  Not too shabby, I'd say.  My legs are certainly feeling it though.  No bike rides for a month and then 2 pretty hefty ones so close together proved to be a little bit of a challenge (mainly on the hills and the seat).  But I ended the ride feeling good, took an unexpected 30 minute power nap, and then walked Lucy for about an hour.

So now, I am tired.  My body and my mind are both tired.  And I apologize if that makes this post fairly uninteresting.  But there's a point to all of it.

Refer back to Lucy's sudden life excitement.  Remember how I'm suddenly feeling "on the verge" of something.  This week was fun, and I exercised a lot.  And I saw a lot of friends and experienced strength at it's core (in a few different ways).  And I reflected back on what I've accomplished in the past few months, with my running and biking and teaching and writing.  And I realized that life is pretty great right now.  And suddenly I feel like life might just get exciting.  I don't want to jinx things, but I feel like I'm due for something really good to happen.  I've put so much positive effort into living lately that I feel like it's time for something awesome to be waiting around a corner somewhere for me.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe something will come up and bite me on my very sore seat instead, but for now I want to believe that I've got a lot to look forward to.  Come what may in whatever form it takes, I'll be smiling until I get there anyways.