The Kid Factor

Yesterday morning while dragging our butts to the gym for our morning 45 min bike workout we realized that it was not even 12 hours since we were at the gym last biking. Yep, and in those 12 hours we jammed eating dinner, getting grocery shopping done, doing the dishes, and 8 hours of sleep. That is probably one of the hardest things that we have found since starting our training program is the lack of time at night. We are up between 4:45 and 5 am to get to the gym right when it opens, therefore we are asleep between 8:30 and 9pm each night. We work until 5pm, are at the gym again and not home until 6:30ish and have to make, eat, and clean up dinner. That precious hour in the evening between 7 and 8 isn't even enough time to do the laundry which I discovered last week when I went to bed and left the washing machine going.

Last night, as we were going to bed at 8, talking about how exhausted we were, we got talking about how hard it would be to try and do this with kids! I just want to take a moment and give props to any mother or father out there who are training for something! It would be so difficult! YOu would defintely have to consider the kid factor when signing up for ironman and committing yourself to all those hours of training. Ben and I have the luxery of a full nights rest and being able to go to bed at 8pm. We don't have to worry about who will watch the kids as we go train in the mornings and in the evenings. If we are tired and grumpy and all we feel like doing is sitting in a corner and staring at the wall in the dark, we can do that! You could probably do that with kids too, but I think they would get very concerned about mommy. But most of all, if I am tired and grumpy and I bark at Ben over something stupid he knows that it is just because I'm tired and hungry and in a few minutes I will realize how stupid it was and apologize. We have that luxery to be grumpy without hurting anyones feelings, since there is complete understanding because the other person feels just as tired. Perhaps that is why most people that do ironman are males 30-50 and females 40+. The males don't have to worry about their kids because their wives will take care of them while they're training while the older females may have kids but perhaps they are older and understand that mom is training for the ironman.

Other than training, last week was a little hectic with people visiting. Infact a friend of ours was in town from Calgary and we didn't even get a chance to see her! Which is really too bad. Ben was getting adjusted to being back at work after a few months off. Ben's mom and her partner brought dinner and stayed the night on thursday. In fact, we walked into the house after training and Ben's mom was there cooking a delicious dinner, we were pretty spoiled. Then Friday night my best friend from high school and her boyfriend came down for some skiing. They didn't get here until around 11pm at night, and let me tell you it was a struggle staying up for them. I was pretty jealous of ben when he headed to bed around 9. On saterday we skiied allll day. It was awesome! It was a great day, there was lots of snow that week so the hill still had some sweet powder stashes left. We were supposed to bike for an hour and a half that day but we figured skiing all day more than counted for that. Then saterday night it started snowing, no more than snowing but completely blizzarding! Infact there was a snow warning here which never happens because they always get lots of snow! Well ben was like a little kid on christmas morning when he woke up on sunday. He was up at 5am going for coffee and checking the snow report and was ready to head to the hill!(and yes the hill does not open until 8:30 and we are only a 10 minute drive from the hill). My friends decided to be responsible and hit the road before itclosed, and ben and I headed to the hill for 745am (that was the earliest I was getting up there).

That day I skied the deepest snow of my life! like seroiusly. It was up to your waist! And that hill is amazing, we did not wait in a single line for more than 5 minutes all day! Infact, our first run we had an entire run top to bottom of untouched snow. Seroiusly, not a single person had skied it yet. Amazing. By the time we got home the power was out, so even if we had the energy to do the hour run and half hour bike we couldn't since there was no power! Instead we had a nap on the couch, went for a walk, and waited for the power to come back on so we could cook dinner. It's amazing how much you can't do when the power is out! That is the seccond time it has happened here. You cannot cook anything, there is no heat, it's even hard to shower by candle/flashlight! But it eventually came on by 5pm, and we were asleep by 8:30 getting ready for anther week of training.