Weekend Activities

This past weekend, just like most weekends lately, have been packed with activities. They're all good activities but I still wish I had one more day off before going back to work on Mondays.

Two activities that take up a lot of my weekend time are running and volunteering at the Animal Trustees of Austin.

The running part many of you know about. I'm training for the Austin half marathon, which occurs on February 14. I'm raising money for LIVESTRONG (shameless plug: feel free to donate on my fundraising page). I've done one other half marathon (and trained for one full marathon until a certain broken finger incident, which we don't need to recap, happened) but it was 5 years ago. I've decided that a 28 year old body and a 33 year old body don't recover quite as well. It's been awhile since I've run consistently 5x/week, averaging 20+ miles/week but boy am I tired. And hungry. I'm hungry all the time.

I'm so grateful that Kelsey is training with me. She's a bit faster than me so I think we'll do our own thing during the actual event but she's been such a good sport about running at my 10:30 minute pace. It's been fun to get to spend so much time with her and, honestly, I don't know how I would motivate this often without being accountable to her.

Yesterday was a big day. We were supposed to run 9 miles but since the Hike and Bike Trail in Austin is a full 10 mile loop we figured we'd just do that. So we tied our shoes (Kelsey in double knots b/c they always come untied), put on layers and hit the trail. We were both feeling great. The temps were chilly (low 40s) but it was sunny and beautiful out. And then we hit a detour. Part of the trail was closed for some reason so we had to turn around and back track a bit. After running for an hour and 55 minutes (and only walking for 5) we were done! And I was convinced it was more than 10 miles with out little detour. Sure enough it was closer to 11. And I can tell. My knees hurt a bit today and I'm moving a bit slower but I'm so proud of us. It's hard to imagine at the time how I'd run 2 more miles for the half marathon but I know I can. And we have five more weeks to train for it. I can't thank Kelsey enough for her time, patience and support.

So on top of running each day of the weekend, I volunteer every Saturday at the Animal Trustees of Austin. They are a non-profit vet clinic in Austin that offers low-cost vet care for cats and dogs. They do great work and are a well respected organization in Austin. When Max died last year one of my colleagues donated to the ATA in Max's name. I wasn't familiar with them so I checked them out a bit and was impressed. Then a few months later when I adopted Buster, I had his leg surgery there b/c the rescue group I got him from only worked with them.

They treated Buster so well so, again, I was impressed. This summer I started thinking about volunteering on a regular basis. Doing something for my community outside of the cancer world. This seemed like a natural fit. So in September I took a tour, met with the volunteer coordinator and I love it. Every Saturday they run a low-cost spay/neuter clinic and I process check out when people come to pick up their pets. It's the perfect balance of working with people and getting to spend time with the animals. I knew I wasn't ready to see anything tragic or take care of the animals based on Max's experience but I feel like this is my way of helping others and maybe even helping the other Max's of the world. I like to think he'd be proud of me.

So in between working, home projects and socializing with friends, volunteering and running keep me busy. I'll admit that I'll be happy when the half marathon is over with and I can run only 2-3x/week. In the meantime, I'll continue to eat pretty much everything in sight.