tough week

“ A road well begun is the battle half won. The important thing is to make a beginning and get under way. ”Soren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and writer. When I first read this it struck a chord with me. This has been a mentally tough week for me. Not to bore anyone with the details, but it does help for me to write this down like I am talking about it. On April 3rd I participated in the Credit Union Cherry Blossom 10 miler in Washington DC. I had a great run and tore up the course. This was my third time running in this event and I have improved my time each year. Back in 2009 I had just started running for a number of reasons. I remember it so clearly. I was so nervous. All that I had in my mind was "don't let the sweep bus get you". In my training leading up to it the furthest distance that I ran was 8 miles and that was tough. Anyway, I did get through it finishing before the 2 hour 20 min time limit with a 1 hour 54 min (and change) personal best and longest distance yet. Last year I took 10 mins off of that time. This year I completed it in 1 hour 35 min and 58 sec. I was so proud and excited. So were my wife and friends that were down there. Well, our kids were with my parents so my wife and I decided to go to a nice restaurant and then to a winery after we got home and I had a chance to get cleaned up. We had a wonderful afternoon and evening. The kids did not have school the next day so they were spending more time with the grandparents. Monday morning. Here comes the tough part. My wife gets a text from a co-Teacher, "check your group wise''. My wife logs in to her email, and there it is. Here Principal had lost her battle with Pancreatic Cancer and past away the day before. The good news is that she did not suffer that long. She had been diagnosed with it just this past February. The bad news is that my wife's Mom, my mother in law, lost her battle with Pancreatic Cancer in April 2003. Being that we went through this before we knew what was coming, but it is still hard to deal with. With that in mind it has been very tough to get a work out in. There had been days that I felt that I needed one to try to clear the cobwebs from my mind and just try to get some of the emotion out. It pains me to see my wife in such sorrow and pain and there is nothing that I can do to relieve it. Our schedule has been so crazy as well. We both have had different activities come up with our kids that it has been hard to sit down and take everything in and talk about things. Everyone at the school has been crushed. Some were under the believe that she was going to beat this thing. Unfortunately, my wife and I saw the writing on the wall all too clearly. So this has been a really tough week in focusing on exercising in general. This coming weekend I have a Duathlon on Saturday and a 10k on Sunday. Crazy I know. What was I thinking when I signed up for those?!? Well I am still in decent shape from my 10 miler that I know I will complete both events. This will be my first Duathlon that I will be participating in. The distances are 1.9 mile run, 10 mile bike and 3.1 mile run. I don't think that I will go all out at the Duathlon as this will be my first time. I just want to take everything in and be able to complete the course. The 10k I ran last year and it stands as my PR of 59:19. I want to keep the momentum going and try to get closer to 55 mins. I will update next week as to how the weekend went. Thanks for reading. It helped me greatly.