Summer

It's no secret that I love the summer. I crave it's warmth, long days and motivation.

At the same time, it always comes with a hint of disappointment, even before it starts. I always start off and think, "wow, this summer is going to be great. I'm going to do nothing, every weekend. Absolutely nothing." Then of course reality sets in, and I realize I have no weekends free until August. It's race, after race, after race and too many weddings. Even today I finally accepted that June is almost over.

This means that the longest days have come to pass, and the days will only get shorter and the weeks will only go faster. I really do enjoy the days that it stays light out til 9. In most places in Europe right now, it's light out until after 10, or even later. People just hang out all night, nobody watches TV, of course nobody does any physical activity either. It wouldn't be a lifestyle I would care for at this point, but I do wish we here in the States would stay out a little later during the week, start work a little later, take life a little less seriously from time to time.

Since Friday, I've run 60 miles. It's one of the longest weeks I've had in years, and it was comprised of 6 straight runs: 11, 5, 16, 7, 12 and 9. 33 of the miles came on the trails. During this time I didn't ride my bike at all, and only swam twice. I'm amazed at how beat I am after this amount of running. I definitely need to accept this as a normal week as I prepare for the marathon this fall.

Tonight I made it to my Thursday Night Ride, which is one of my favorite activities during the summer. Hard to believe it's my fourth summer doing this ride, and it's nice to see the familiar faces if but once a week. Since we had as much daylight as we were going to have, we did a longer ride, checking out some new roads in the process. It was a good ride, albeit very warm. Well over 90 degrees, and it just crushed me. I was glad to see I had more power left at the end of the ride than I did last week, when I was crawling.

I'm going to look to get in the pool tomorrow morning and hit our usual Friday afternoon trail run, followed by a bbq and one of the few nights I am planning on going out. Saturday I'll try and ride a little and run following the Dreaded Druid Hills race, and then it's baseball time in DC. Sunday is another Patapsco long run and hopefully an easy ride in the afternoon. Then I plan on taking it easy until Thursday, when I'll set up a good 4-5 days of riding and then recover leading up to Rhode Island Half IM.

But, I'm also going to try and enjoy the summer before Labor Day rears its ugly head.