Now to Catch you up on what I have been doing since....

It has now been over a year since that ride and I have to confess that this ride was WAY more difficult for me both emotionally and physically that I imagined.  I haven't really been on my road bike since, and looking back I really regret that.  As one of my friends pointed out, at the end of the CA MS150 ride I was probably in the best shape of my life.  I mean, I did a CO MS150, a metric century, Venus De Miles and another MS150 in CA. Not to mention hundreds of miles training...  That's quite the season.  ...when I got back from CA I hung up my bike...and life got in the way.  I honestly think that since I pushed myself so hard that summer...It wasn't that difficult to ignore the call of my lovely road bike. To be honest I had a hard time looking at her for a while, she reminded me of many things about myself that turns out...I wasn't really ready to see.

See, almost immediately after returning I was given a HUGE promotion at work.  It was very exciting and little more than crazy scary. I never imagined I had the talent to do this job...but here they were giving it me and asking me to do it well. But, they basically said, "show us you can do this new job, oh and we're not going to back fill your old job so do that one too...AND if either are neglected we will yank this new promotion away from you and know you are a failure and can't handle it."  Okay, so maybe I am paraphrasing...but you get the idea. And this IS what it was all about. For some reason (perhaps they know me better than I know myself and knew I would see this as the ultimate challenge...which I did). At the time, I never really understood exactly how much they were asking of me.

Now it is a year later, and not to toot my own horn I was WAY more successful than they imagined I would have been...and because of that they kept giving me the most difficult problems to tackle, which I did. I worked really hard at both jobs, averaging 60+ hours a week, working all evenings and weekends just trying to catch up. I am happy to report that no balls were dropped or even injured during this one year period. But, I did kinda start to feel like a zombie robot (imagine that!).

So, about a month ago I compiled a whole bunch of data and walked into the owners office and told them, either you promote me...or don't. I can't keep doing both jobs anymore. I'm done. Make a choice.

I made this decision thinking about how much of my life and the people/things I love had been severely neglected. Oh, and did I mention that I settled in my old habits and my horrible eating and lack of exercise have resulted in a 30+ pound weight gain. I had reached critical mass (literally, har!) and something needed to be done.

Their response, yep...we have been thinking a lot about this. There is no denying that you have succeeded in everything we wanted and more, so starting 11/01 you will no longer have to do two jobs and can focus on just the new job.

I am now 15 days into just doing my new job and I am loving the fact that I now have some free time and my mind isn't constantly doing the inventory to ensure nothing was dropped. But, I have to confess it is very weird! It has been so long since I've had free time.  I almost don't know what to do with it.  Almost.  I have decided to start writing again...and doing what I can to lose those 30 pounds and get back to a point where bike riding is actually enjoyable again. I do miss it so much! Honestly, I miss a lot of things a lot.

But, this is a start...and recording my progress and new journey to discover me and what I want to do with these new "spaces or voids" in my life is kinda fun and exciting!

Roo