Friday!

The Week Without an Assistant is OVER!

Thank goodness.

Typing, filing, sorting timesheets, delivering mail, coordinating office parties and answering silly questions on top of my real work is killing me. Oh wait-- answering silly questions is one of my normal job duties. But the other stuff, while easy and low-stress, totally disrupts my train of thought from the budgets and other reports that I'm supposedly getting paid to do.

So here's to my assistant's meds kicking in this weekend so she can return on Monday!

Unfortunately I will not be able to make my uncle's funeral this weekend. My cousins on this side of the state aren't going after all, and round trip airfare is on the order of $500. Geez, I know the airlines need to make a buck, but it seems a bit steep just from Houston to either Albuquerque or El Paso, doesn't it? Especially when Southwest sends a plane that direction every couple hours.

It doesn't feel right that I'm not going, but that's how things work out sometimes. I still don't really believe that I won't ever see my Uncle Leo's smile again, so of course the notion of a funeral is just not working for me. Maybe if I could go it would make it more real. Because I know when I see the headstone in the cemetery this summer, it will just be a name. I think I'll be looking for him unconsciously at family gatherings for a long time to come.

I've done a lot of reminiscing this week about my relatives on my father's side of the family. Interestingly, it was in the company of my extended family that I first realized I was an adult. The incident happened at my grandparents' last anniversary -- their 65th. Me and some of my cousins had skipped out of the party early to go hear another cousin sing at a local nightclub. Then we went to a diner for late night breakfast. We started checking our watches anxiously around 2:30 and even though we were having a great time, we figured we'd better get back to my aunt's house where we were staying before our parents started worrying about us.

But when we got home... no parents. We were puzzled and settled in to wait. Time passed. More time passed. It was the early 90s and no one had a cell phone. We had no idea where our parents were, and soon we were pacing around anxiously. Should we go to bed or keep waiting? What if something had happened? Should we call the cops? Call the hospitals?

Finally around 4 am, our parents stumbled in the front door, all of them drunk and giggling. They were having a great time. And without thinking, like little chips of the old blocks, we pounced.

"Where have you been?"

"Do you know what time it is?"

"We've been worried sick!"

"You could've at least called!"

Oh my. Even as the words came out of my mouth and I saw my parents, aunts and uncles stumbling around for an explanation, I knew what was happening. I had become a grownup. And even as I joined in giving the older generation a thorough scolding, inside I was laughing fit to die. When had I grown up?

When, indeed? Some boundaries in life are so clear when we cross them: graduations, marriages, births and deaths, major life decisions. Others are so subtle you only know you've crossed when you find yourself a few miles down the road on the other side.

But hey, this is supposed to be a triathlon blog!

I've had a pretty good training week, although my speed is still off. I think my Monday massage will fix it this time, though. My legs feel training-tired, not sick and depleted-tired like those first few days after starting to work out again. I started to have a recurrance of the problem with my left rectus femoris, but I changed the muscle groups I train in the mornings and did some aggressive myofascial release with the massage ball and foam roller, so we'll see if that did the trick when I go for my long run in the morning. It's usually the long run that sets it off.

My plan for the weekend is to run long on Saturday and then ride Sunday. That's if weather and body permit, of course.

This Week's Workouts
Monday: 45 minutes core and strength training, 30 minutes elliptical at about 195 strides/min average
Tuesday: 45 minutes core and strength training
Wednesday: 45 minutes core and strength training, 45 minutes Spinervals 3.0 Suffer-O-Rama
Thursday: 45 minutes core and strength training, 15 minutes elliptical at about 180 strides/min average, 30 minutes treadmill at 8:30 avg pace
Friday: 45 minutes core and strength training