When Life Gets to be Too Much

You may or may not have noticed my lack of blogging lately.  With the exception of race recaps I’ve really not blogged anything since the New Year.  Even before that I was not consistent.  You may have even assumed by now that I’m not blogging anymore, this is just a dead blog.

In some ways that would be a completely fair assumption, since I really haven’t blogged much.  But, my intention has been to continue this blog all along.  You see, I started this blog to write about “the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of my life with a little humor mixed in”.  So, this blog has been, all along, about my life, with the intention of helping others who may have similar things going on in their life paths at the time.  Through the years, we’ve chronicled my children growing up, our foster/adoption experience, you’ve listened to me cry over my mother and our broken relationship, you know that marriage is one of my hot buttons, and you’ve read as I was healed from an 18 year affliction with Rheumatoid Arthritis.  You know I struggled with the decision to homeschool, and you know how important my faith is to me, you have cheered me on as I began my journey as a runner, and you know that being a Police Officer’s wife isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

So, I ask you to consider that my absence these past few months has also been a chronicle of events in my life, because it is the very evidence of just how busy this past year has been.  Having teenagers and toddlers at the same time is it’s own animal, and one I don’t recommend.  It has been a tough school year.  Over the past several months I have barely had any time to sit, let alone think.  Auston will graduate next year (2014), so his High School schedule really picked up this year.  He joined choir, which had us out of the house every Tuesday afternoon/evening, which was quite a challenge.  It effectively took several hours out of my already busy week.  There is definitely a tipping point where you find yourself on the downhill side of being too busy, and I think we found that this year. 

Our schedule this year looked something like this:

Sunday: Church, Youth Group
Monday: Shea to Therapy, Boy Scouts
Tuesday: Tuesdays with Mom, Choir
Wednesday: Youth Group
Thursday: Bagel Run, Bible Study, HIS Classes, Date Night
Friday: Sports Day

You can see this put one of the adults in this house out every evening, with some Fridays and Saturdays home.  I have had many people tell me to just hang on, it is a season….  And, that is honestly what got me through the year, but really, it was too much.

This week is the first week off of the majority of our activities, Youth Group will continue until the middle of June, but the bulk of them are done, so I’ve found myself this week taking a look around my filthy house and beginning to take stock of where I need to focus now that I have some time.  I’ve written out a new weekly cleaning plan, and started to catch up on all of the things that haven’t been done….  It will take me a few weeks to get a handle on this monster…

Through all of this craziness I maintained my running, sometimes better than others.  Last week I only got two runs in because the boys were gone on a camp out for 3 days, but this week has been an oddity.  I find myself at Wednesday and haven’t run a mile yet for the week.  I have been getting in activity each day, I started participating in a plank challenge with my MRTT chapter, and I’ve been doing some leg work and some push ups, but I haven’t RUN.  My main excuse is that the babies have been getting up early lately, and I am nervous about being gone and them getting up.  Normally I would just get one of the boys to come to the living room, but they’ve been just as busy as I have, so I’m trying to give them a week or two to rest too.  So, this morning I thought to myself, is it really THAT big of a deal that I haven’t run in 6 days?  In some ways it is, because you loose some endurance, but I don’t really have that much to begin with LOL…  But really, is it a bad thing for me to take a couple of days off?  I mean, my life has been so crazy these last several months, I think it really IS ok to take a few days, even a week or two, and regroup.  It hasn’t even been an option for so long.  And really, my next big race isn’t until the end of July, and even that one I can take down from a half if I need to, so if I’m going to take a breather, now is the time to do it, before I have to get training hard for my fall racing schedule.

So, I’ll go to the Bagel run in the morning, because I really, really do enjoy it.  But I’m giving myself permission to run my long run this week or not.  And next week I’ll be camping, so I’ll probably only get a couple of miles in then too.  I’ll take this time to work on some strength training that I’m generally worried about doing because I don’t want to be too sore to run LOL.  I really need strength training, and my lack of muscle really affects my run, so I need to get over that… (which is why I joined the plank challenge), and then once we get back from camping I’ll hit the roads hard again.  I just want to make sure that my training doesn’t become such a burden that I don’t enjoy running.  THAT would be REALLY bad, since it is like the one thing I do for myself… 

What do you think?  Have you ever taken a breather from something without dropping it entirely?

Race Recap- Esprit De She

When I heard about the Esprit De She race, a race for women only, I was only hesitant for a second about signing up.  And that was because the race was a Thursday evening.  I don’t run in the evening and Thursdays are date night.  Well, I decided to bite the bullet and sign up.    I was only pressured a *little* by my BRF Jess.  So, I told Trishia about it too

Trishia refused to wear a tutu.  So we surrounded her with out awesome tutu-ness for the picture LOL 

Here’s a picture of my flat mama- so you can see the back of our shirts

As we were standing around waiting for the race to start suddenly, out of no where came this ball of happiness exclaiming, “OMG are you Semalee?”  I turned and said, yes…..?  It was Charissa- the chapter leader for the North Houston MRTT!  So cool to meet her in person, and this kind of fast friendship is just what I love so much about Moms Run This Town.    She was doing the 10K, so she went off to get ready to start, and I didn’t even think to get a picture!  UGH!

The Expo at the Start/Finish Area was pretty nice, we perused the vendors and walked around for a bit.  I have to say I was actually quite surprised that there weren’t more ladies in tutus at the race

We got our traditional pre race pictures and were ready to start…

The race was held in a nice area of town, but it is also a busy area of town, and race start time was during a busy going home time for residents in the area.  I was a little taken aback by all the traffic, and because of the large amount of traffic the officers had to stop the racers a couple of times to let the cars go by.  It didn’t bother me too terribly because I was there for an easy run, no PR goals or anything.  But if I was looking for a PR that would have really irritated me.  We even had a couple of drivers get frustrated enough to start honking at the runners.

This was my first evening race and I was tired.  I had to push myself to keep going, more than usual.  I think I’m not much of an evening runner.  Or I just need to do it more   I race a casual pace of 3/1 with Jess.  Trishia took off and left us in the dust  

As far as the race, I liked it.  I would recommend it to others, for sure.  I found it to be well organized, and full of fun.  I really enjoyed the free mimosa afterwards too   They had a nice singer and candles on the tables with table cloths when we got back, and it was a beautiful  night.  I really thought it was a nice touch, it didn’t seem like it was just thrown together, but like they had put thought and effort into the after party.  That doesn’t always happen   Oh- and free photos!

Here are Trishia and Jess….  I must have been snatched by aliens….

I love how happy Jess looks

What’s with the tongue?

One of my favorite pictures.  <3

But seriously, this is the classic one….  What do you do when you’re at an all girls race?  Compare bras, of course!  Who knew there was a photographer standing by????  Caption this!  LOL

And on that note, I’m out!  LOLOLOL