What’s Next?

Now that the marathon is over, the obvious question is what to do next.

In the immediate short term, I just want to get over this respiratory thing so I can train again. I’m trying to take things easy, but it’s hard when your body is ready to go. Everything I do has to be kept slow or else I set off a fit of coughing. It’s that deep, wet, choking coughing, too. It sounds so scary that I try to get away from people when it happens so they don’t think I’m dying. Nice.

So getting well is the top priority. That, and finishing Diana’s Diary. It’s been a fun project, good for my writing in so many ways. But it’s served its purpose, Diana is nearly to Kentucky anyway, and I’m ready to wrap things up and go back to my regular writing. It’s been tough to come up with a fictional diary entry for each day and photoshop illustrations for it. Sometimes I’m up until 3 am working on it, and that kind of time commitment takes away from other things I want to do now, like do the spring bike ride series this year, get my upper body back in shape, and maybe gear up for a long-course tri.

Oops. I just gave myself away, didn’t I?

Yes, my goals in a nutshell are:

• Get my bike tuned up and do the spring ride series
• Start swimming again
• Start doing upper body work again
• Do either Iron Star or the Woodlands Tri One O One this fall. Iron Star would be a repeat for me, so I’m leaning toward the longer distance in the Woodlands.
• Start work on a new novel and/or write some short stories.

And my long term goal is to work with my high school friend Brad Glendenning to put together a team for the Texas Independence Relay. It will take place in March 2008, so we’ve got plenty of time, but we need to start getting commitments from people now, so they can have a year to train.

And that’s it! I can’t get started on much just yet, but it’ll happen soon. Just as soon as I quit scaring others (and myself) with this cough, I’m hitting the weight room and the pool!

Recent Workouts
Saturday: 2 hours slow elliptical