Friday, June 23, 2017

Stress, mindfulness, and marathons

Things have been remarkably busy lately, and I've been unable to slow down and write at all in the past few weeks.

We had a large amount of commitments from work in the past two months, and I took on work on top of that. So that meant more nights out, and time spent lugging around heavy equipment. My job has a large amount of work this time of year anyway, with having to take stock of resources, their conditions, and then making sure things are set for the following year.

This past week, baby girl got sick. Which meant her last couple of days in daycare, she had to spend with me at home. So I didn't get to do all of that wrapping up that I normally do. But that's life, I suppose, and obviously my child comes first in my priorities. I'm disappointed that more folks where I work can't understand the commitment that raising a child is. I don't expect everyone to want to be parents, but I expected more people to respect that my wife and I do want to be parents even if we have a different situation than everyone else. Chiefly that difference comes in the fact that we don't have a huge network of family support. We're doing a lot of stuff on our own, and it's really, really hard at times.

I've been practicing some mindfulness over the past couple of weeks and I do think it has given me more space to breathe when things get trying. I'm interested to see if I can use it to help me before races, where my pulse gets up and I typically have a hard time staying calm and just running.

Running-wise things are finally picking up this year. It was a rough Winter (and Spring) with more downtime than I like. But the whole running thing is a journey, it's a thing to enjoy, even for its ebbs and flows. I'm running a streak again between memorial day and September, as I have done in the past, and I'm up to day #27 already (I started a couple of days before memorial day...)

Training needs to start soon for the NYC Marathon for me. I'm looking into a 16-week plan, and planning to abstain from alcohol for the rest of the summer to aid in that goal (no more Tiki drinks! Why?!) I'm hoping for a good showing at NYC but as of right now I'm not forcing myself into a super strict time goal. Sub-4 would be nice. I'm only planning to run this one once because of the high entrance fee, so it'd be too bad to miss the sights!

I'm hoping to get out and do some hiking this summer, along with more beach trips and tons of trips to the zoo with the little one. I've even unplugged from Facebook for a couple of weeks, so maybe that will help me calm my mind a bit and find focus and clarity on other things (that app is without a doubt my biggest tech addiction.)