Reflection

Hey-o, bloggy land!  How are things out there?  I have been a bit off the grid the past few days.  I am lucky enough to have the full week off between Christmas and New Year's (unpaid natch), so I have been doing a whole lot of nothing.  Wait, I take that back.  I have actually been doing a lot of stuff - napping, sleeping in, playing with puppies.  I have also been subbing in my spin class, so I taught twice this week rather than my normal one night.  Yesterday I even attended a spin class at the gym I pay to attend, taught two hours later at the gym that pays me to attend, then I joined a friend for a DanceJam class last night.  Three workouts, one day.  Not too bad.  I haven't run once over the break, but I am thinking New Year's Day may mean a long run.

As I look back to 2011, I keep trying to draw out some cathartic moment.  There have been a lot of things happen - I changed jobs (again) to a commission based sales environment so I could work closer to home and have more flexibility in training time.  That has yet to be seen as a smart choice.  I PRed all my running and tri distances.  I raced my first ever Oly length tri, and I joined a tri team.  I lost someone close to me (Betsy), and I made many new friends.  I learned to live with less, and I learned to train harder than ever.

I guess what I learned this year is I am capable of far more than I ever thought I was.  I had my heart broken, my livelihood questioned, my body pushed to its physical limits.  But I walked out from all of it on the other side knowing that I can, and did survive and grow stronger because of it all.

Lord knows that if I stay on this path, only more suffering is yet to come.  But I guess that's what it is all about right?  We live and we learn.  And I am grateful for all of it.  When my time comes, I will know that these years have been the ones that taught me more about myself than I ever expected to learn.  Hopefully there is a lot more to learn - both the good and bad.  Stay tuned, and I will tell you all about it.

Happy New Year, all!