RESET

The past three weeks have been rather crappy with long and stressful work hours, an uncooperative foot, and other random stuff. After Wildflower I was all ready to get back to training hard and getting faster but am still having some trouble with my foot. In addition, I took on a ton of new responsibility at work, which is good in theory, but requires that I bust out my sales personality and sell stuff. I am NOT a salesperson. I was passed over for the sales gene. I was the person that had I been a Girl Scout, I would have been last place in the cookie sales contest. My parents would have felt so bad that they would have bought all my cookies, which, come to think of it, is probably why they never let me enlist in the scouts. Anyway, all this to say, I've been under some major stress.


I am an all or nothing person and when one thing is going bad for me (the foot) I typically feel like my life is over. I dwell on things endlessly and obsess about how I'm going to get fat because I can't train or whatever. Currently, I'm in the process of seeing every type of doctor/healer/specialist known to man, but all of this narcissistic fervor has really just made things worse. After training yesterday I decided that I had to do something about my attitude. I needed to reset myself and to do that I had to go to my reset place - Monterey, the land of the newly wed, nearly dead, and home to some really cool people as well.

I lived in Monterey for 4 years during grad school (international policy) and then worked for the government there afterwards. As cheesy as this sounds, Monterey is the place where I grew up mentally, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, and athletically. Every time I go back I am reminded of who I was and what I've become. I'm reminded that there is more to life than worrying about my stupid foot. In the bigger scheme of things, my foot is much less important than genocide in the Sudan, the ridiculous state of education in the world, failed states, innocent civilians and soldiers dying in necessary and unnecessary conflicts, and other problems.

Today, I drove down to Monterey and did a killer ride with my friend Alexis. What I "really" love about Monterey is the never ending HEADWINDS, TOURISTS, and FOG! We headed on our normal ride out to Pebble Beach and then into Carmel Valley, up and over Laureles grade, and then out 68 to Reservation road just because we needed more headwind. The fog and headwinds never let up but at the end of our ride, I felt recharged and happy again. I first learned to ride out here on my old school road bike and remember attempting to draft off Matt's back wheel - yelling at him every 2 minutes as he was dropping me. I might have even cried once. Thankfully I did not have a power meter at that point in my athletic career.



Here is a beautiful picture of the scenery. Alexis is right ahead of me here.

Another beautiful sight.

After dodging the droves of tourists sporting Monterey Bay sweatshirts and standing in line for the aquarium, I met up with another friend Jamie for lunch and then headed back to the sunny bay area where I found Matt trying to jam in as much Monaco Formula One tv time as possible before I got home and complained about car racing. Seriously, who likes watching cars go round and round and round?