What have we been up to?

Wow, I knew it had been awhile since I'd posted, but didn't realize just how long ago my last post was!

Since then, Joe and I have been focusing primarily on two things - finishing the screened porch, and training for various sporting events. After volunteering at a triathlon in mid July, I decided it was time for me to try one. I signed up for the Olathe Medical Center's Women's Only Triathlon, on Sept.13, thinking it would be a great first race and give me a few months to train. They only offered one length, a sprint, which consists of a 500 meter swim, 13 mile bike ride and a 2.6 mile run. No big deal! I started training right away, and managed to stay with it right through the end.

The night before the race we had crazy storms, torrential downpour and even a tornado near the area where the race was to be held! It continued to rain all night, and when Joe and I got up at 5 to head to the race, it was still looking ominous. (Ok, who's kidding who - that early in the morning, we couldn't see anything... but we could tell the rain hadn't cleared the area!) Joe and Kyle were planning on volunteering to support me and the others who had ventured out for the late season race. Once I got my transition area all set up, it started to pour again. 30 minutes before the race, the race director decided to cancel the bike portion, due to the weather. We went ahead with the swim then proceeded directly to the run, which had lots of standing water on the course. My times in both event were far less than stellar, but my finish time was average, and hey, at least I did it! I hope to keep racing in 2009 as I really enjoyed the training and think I would have had a much better feeling about the race had the weather not imposed.

We have finished part 1 of rebuilding the porch, which looks quite nice. I will take the camera home tonight to take pictures, esp. since I spent most of yesterday cleaning the house! Joe came home, noticed how nice it was to have everything clean, and we vowed to work much harder and cleaning up a little every day so I don't have to spend hours and hours cleaning on my day off!