Cindy Present | Get Out Girl

Training for Ironman Texas has begun! It is kind of like an event in itself; you know you're on holiday; you know you haven't had that fine-tuned mission - but you know its coming soon! And now it's here. You wake up in anticipation; you have a plan; you have a goal and the ball starts rolling once that calendar turns to the first day of the new training cycle. Finally. Its a love/hate relationship. You LOVE what it does for you; you love how it makes you feel - tired, hungry, spent, but improving with every day. You DREAD what you have to do, but LOVE it all in the same breath - getting up early, going to bed early, having to say no to social fun, juggling husband/kids/cooking/sleeping/playing/training. People think you are crazy - but you are, aren't you? Crazy for the journey, the scheduling, the planning, the pursuit of a stronger (mentally, physically and spiritually) YOU! The first IM I trained for I felt it was more "my deal". It kind of left me with mo...

Wulp , it happened. I got hit by a car while biking. And it wasn't a tag (I've had two mirror tags :-) But this was a full blown hit from someone that was not looking and never slowed down. I feel like I should be at a Bikers Car Accident Anonymous meeting when I say it: "I got hit by a car while biking". Its not easy to say. Should I be ashamed? After all, one of the biggest pet peeves of many drivers is sharing the road with cyclists. We are rather crazy to think that the relationship of bikes and cars on the same road can be "friendly". I mean, cyclists are working to obtain the lightest and most aerodynamic of rides and motorists, especially in our area, are acquiring the fastest or biggest and baddest of rides. Even with all precautions taken should we, as cyclists, really trust the "larger" of our road-sharers to be aware, pay attention and control their thousands of pounds of forces with those that we cyclists would prefer to weigh in grams?...

It's been an amazing summer with so many lives that have touched ours. We've definitely had our share of summertime fun. Steve and I have enjoyed many sunrise ski rides (when the fog has not interfered ;-) and when it has, we've taken to the tranquility of our stand and paddle boards and snuck shoreline through the fog and over the silent waters after dawn. The boys have taken to the lake this summer, skiing, wakeboarding, riding the wakesurf boards and learning to barefoot on the boom - it's been an almost daily occurence, teaching us, as we've spent hours and hours pulling them, that you have to be careful what you ask for ;-) Through it all we've been humbled by the lives that have intersected with ours, the stories each of those lives brings to our friendship. We spent one day on the lake serving families with challenged kids and were blessed to spend the day with a family with two autistic boys. "We've learned not to be frustrated by their autism, ...

First, a huge shout out to all my friends, family (and new friends I've acquired through my blog ;-) for all the prayers, love, texts, messages, emails, posts, phone calls and good ju ju you sent me before, during and after IM. WOW. I've never felt so connected to such a wonderful group of people in my life. You were great therapy and made the whole IM experience so fun. THANK YOU. Now, about those "Now What?" questions. Wulp, good question. I was truly expecting about 2 weeks of being tired, burned out, overtrained, hungry and sore, simply wanting to lay on the couch and get up only when the words "momma" came a callin'. Well, I got the momma words, but none of the other stuff ever showed up...haven't been sore, I'm always hungry and most importantly, never felt burned out. I did get about 48 hours of grogginess at the end of last week, but being back home in the every day shuffle was EXHAUSTING! (ok, and I do admit, teaching class last Monday m...

21 years ago today there was a very handsome prince who took one of the biggest steps of his life. Armed with charm and chivalry, the ultimate of patience, unmeasurable kindness and never ending bravery (all of which he needed based on the multitude of experiences from the previous six years which had gotten him to this day ;-) he chose to take the girl out of the country and begin to write the chapters of the storybook with the fairy tale ending that is not yet known. It was Saturday, May 13, hundreds of people were gathered in Austin for a whimsical weekend (ok, not really that fancy, but lots of skiing, bbq, shrimp boils, beer and hangovers ;-). As the day proceeded to the big event, the handsome prince may have had doubts as Mother Nature pitted him against one of the biggest hail storms of the decade to even get to the ceremony (actually it was Dad that was having to defy the storm by going home in the softball size hail to get his famed cowboy bow tie, thus having to cross hell a...

Jack went to Zion National Park yesterday. And he was recognized! Lots of triathletes were roaming the park and some folks remembered seeing Jack roadside in different places around St George..."IT'S JACK!" We felt like Rock Star escorts as we hiked about 10 miles throughout the park. (I even got a warm fuzzy as we were about 5 miles into a steep trail and some guy says, "Hey, you're Cindy!" Huh?? I thought I'd been mistaken for a "Most Wanted" or "Missing" poster when he said, "I'm Christian. We passed each other back on forth biking yesterday." (Our IM race numbers had our names printed below the number, so if you were one of the 1% of the athletes not totally focused on the yellow line and cones in front of you, you may have captured a person's name - and NOTE: of COURSE his name would be CHRISTIAN! Not Frank, Bob or Joe - but CHRISTIAN! The ONLY person in the IM that shouted out my name was named CHRISTIAN...Hell...