May has been absolutely kicking my butt.
Factors at play:
- Marathon training. I know, training isn’t exactly a new commitment for me. But running at the current intensity is beyond anything I have done in recent years, and I am absolutely feeling it. My mileage for the past 3 weeks: 70, 70, 66. All while the temps are rising (and this week, rapidly rising. #(!$*&@). Since starting to ramp up my running in September of 2022, I have never felt burned out or unexcited about heading out for a run. Right now, I am kind of there. Thankfully, I am in the taper phase so I guess the timing mostly worked out. I am excited for the race itself and I’m sure I will be excited to train again after my race at some point, but I am also VERY MUCH looking forward to some extra rest and fewer miles June through August.
- Call week. I didn’t even work nights/weekends, but as always, being on call was action-packed and reactive and now that I generally count on ~40% of daytime work hours to be available for podcasting and the like, it’s difficult to lose those hours! I do a decent job planning ahead, but no matter what there’s a backlog by the following Tuesday (yesterday) at a time when I typically feel the most ready for an easier recovery day. I really do try not to schedule lots of hard landscape items on a post-call Tuesday, but sometimes it can’t be helped. Yesterday was completely packed, and I did it to myself. I did ask my sound team for an extension so that I didn’t have to speak into a microphone for the 7th straight hour and I am very glad I did that.
- Really sad and emotional things. Grateful I am not referring to anything personally impacting me or our family, but just a lot going on in the community (and also the world) right now. I try to keep my news consumption very controlled (and I recognize the privilege in being able to do that) but still, sometimes really sad things happen and they take energy to process.
- It’s May. I haven’t been as inundated as some, but the school events and ‘extras’ do seem to be coming fast and furious. In addition to the usual suspects (Mother’s Day events, end of year showcases), we’ve had a lot of ‘tryouts’ in our lives lately, which offer another level of challenging emotion to handle. C is currently in both soccer AND lacrosse so there’s a practice until 7:30 or 8 pm every single night (plus girls have gymnastics Tues + A has a later dance class Thurs).
All this is to say that the only progress I have made on ANY long term project is to (drumroll, please) . . MEET WITH OUR ESTATE PLANNING LAWYER yesterday morning!!! And she now has enough info to do some drafts and give us specific instructions on what to do with various accounts. I guess this is significant and should be celebrated.
Here are my revised goals for the rest of May:
1- ENJOY trip to Traverse City + the race, no matter the outcome. Appreciate the beautiful sights, weather, the break from parenting responsibilities, and the 1:1 time with Josh!
2- Do whatever the estate planning lawyer says to do with various accounts
3- Try to get more sleep. I think the early (VERY early) longer training runs have been creating a sleep debt issue and I don’t feel like I’ve been sleeping all that well a lot of nights, either.
4- Get back into podcast rhythms but do not stress about ‘extras’. Will dive into that in June.
5- Be kind to myself + have fun. As noted, it will not be realistic to do a ton of ‘extras’ in the next two weeks, so better to just take the pressure off. Things will slow down in summer. (I know sometimes people just imagine a less busy time to come, but objectively the June + July calendars will contain less. Fewer late nights with the kids’ activities will be a significant change, among other things.)
(And we can wait to stress about August until AT LEAST July. Lol.)
12 Comments
You know how easy it is to forget past tough times while wallowing in current ones? I’ve got one daughter doing final exams before graduating from uni in July and then looking for her first job, learning to drive (late because of Covid) and suffering from anxiety and PCOS, the other doing second year exams and still dealing with break up from what turns out to have been quite an abusive and coercive relationship, of which we were largely oblivious. Pretty busy at work, my mum definitely has dementia, both parents turn 85 this year. Sounds terrible. But then I got one of those “remember what was happening this day last year” photos, of my dad lying in a hospital bed looking terrible, having collapsed in church and having to have a 6 hour intestinal operation. That took up so much time looking after mum when he wasn’t there to do it, as well as all the worry etc about him, at a time when daughters were doing second and first year exams respectively and my husband was on a deadline to submit his PhD thesis by mid-July! So yes, it’s tough now, but I think last year was worse!!
YES that truly does sound worse!! I hope the current stressors pass quickly too though!!
I can see why you are experiencing some running burn out since you had been training for a fall/winter marathon and then pivoted to this one. So you’ve been at a fairly high volume of running for quite some time. I know there are people who train for multiple marathons each year but I could only handle training for 1 and then I enjoyed the step back after my fall marathon. Hopefully you can shift your focus this summer and run less/focus on strength training, etc.
Yay for meeting with your estate planning attorney though!! High five to you and Josh!
Since our kids are so young, May is just like any other month for us generally speaking. We have a few extra things like our anniversary this weekend but that is a fun thing and reason to go on a date which we have scheduled for Sat night. I am flying back from my last trip for the month and very much look forward to being home for the next month as I don’t travel until 6/11 thank goodness. Plus we are getting to the absolute best weather months in Mn. I know it’s the opposite for you guys though!!
Well not high the whole time – due to injury Oct to Dec! But definitely marathon training for a while.
Oof, not quite the degree of chaos here (my kid ratio is much lower, and he only has mellow once a week activities), but still quite full on. Not aided by Covid and a near collapse of the government. There was a day when it looked like there could be an election, I could barely speak, but was getting requests for commentary, and I just cried. But my big event went off without a hitch and now it’s just writing time for awhile. And a quick trip, but it’s only 5 hours of meetings, with some exploring time with my work bestie. And I’ll sneak to a yoga class, because I love going to a new class when I’m travelling.
I’m so, so pleased you had your estate planning meeting. You are going to feel so much better, and the rest of the process will likely be fairly straightforward. The house declutter can wait til you aren’t so tired. Still game to be accountability buddies when you’re at that point.
It’s almost over the pre-race anxiety phase. Hopefully once you are there, you surrender to have an enjoyable race weekend experience, the most important goal of all. It’s great that it’s going to be a couple “date” too.
Then you can take a break from running at this mileage level for a while when weather is not cooperative.
End of school year event is piling up indeed, 3 weeks and kids are done with school. time really flies by so quickly.
Running in this weather is exhausting (that humidity this morning was TERRIBLE!) Pair that with late night activities, not enough sleep, and no wonder you’re feeling a little burned out. I think your marathon is coming at the perfect time- next week you’ll be in full taper, then you’ll run the race (hopefully in delightfully cool temps!) and after that, get some extra rest. After my long run yesterday I thought “NO MORE LONG RUNS TILL THE FALL.”
YES IT WAS. Absolutely brutal and gross this morning. and yes – I think I timed things pretty well. I know I’ll still run some in June/July but really looking forward to dialing it down, doing other things, and not slogging through super long runs for a bit.
Enjoy Traverse City! It’s one of my favorite places. If you have time hit up Cherry Republic and Brilliant Books.
Oh awesome!!
Well done on the estate planning – that’s great! And enjoy Traverse City – it’s on my to-visit list! Would love to see some photos.
Marathon seems so intense and daunting. I can imagine how much you look forward to a break.
Go you for talking to the estate planning lawyer!