Desire

I've been in a bit of a slump lately (poor Chad) because I want more than anything to be in a classroom teaching. It's frustrating to go through and spend so much money on a great education and then not be able to use the knowledge learned. I have finally found something that I want to do and I can feel it right at my fingertips, but I am just unable to grab a hold of it....grrr, this makes me mad! There are many other attributes to my "slump", but this seems to be the main thing right now.

In the meantime, I've tried to channel my "slump" to other areas of my life...or rather, get rid of the negativity that I feel towards everything lately. Therefore, I began training...for a triathlon. In May I participated in my first sprint triathlon and became totally hooked. Throughout the summer I have diligently trained for my second sprint triathlon that I competed in this past weekend. This sprint triathlon consisted of a 1/2 mile swim, 12 mile bike ride and 3.1 mile run. I surprised myself and beat my last time by about 12 minutes. It's hard to compare the two triathlons because the swim was shorter and the bike a couple miles longer; however, my "enginerd" husband was able to compute that my time was about 12 minutes less.

I'm competing in my third triathlon in 5 weeks here in Kirkland. The distance for this sprint-tri is 1/4 mile swim, 12 mile bike ride, and 3.1 mile run. I enjoy biking and running, but I am an AWFUL swimmer. This is the area that really slows me down. I feel if I could improve on my swimming I could be more competitive for my age group. Hmmm...maybe swim lessons will be in my near future. Until then, my goal for this next triathlon is to complete the 1/4 mile swim in 8 minutes, bike 12 miles in 45 minutes and run 3.1 miles in 27 minutes. I also need to shorten my transition time from the swim to bike by a couple minutes and maintain the transition time from bike to run at a minute or less. Totally do-able...I have 4 1/2 weeks left....I better get to swimming, biking and running!