Come on, February!

Greetings, readers! Its been far too long. How were your holidays? I came down with a nasty cold on a fairly important day:

Smiling through a cold and a double-photobomb.

Yes, you read that correctly. I woke up on the day of my wedding (aka: New Year's Eve) sick as a dog. Sore throat, congestion, headache- the whole package. Fortunately, I was able to draw on my marathon/triathlon experiences to make it through the day. I simply told myself "You can't be sick today, so take some Dayquil and pretend you're not sick. Time to put the game face on."  Miraculously, that worked. I still had a great day and very few people even knew I had a cold. We even got a workout in!

Smiling here was a challenge. 

Ever since the wedding, though, things had been a bit more challenging. My cold stuck around for the whole week after the wedding, which was okay because we were off work and taking it easy. Then, I went back to work and got handed a whole new pile of responsibilities. Coping with those new responsibilities has meant several weeks of very long hours, surrounded by others who are also coping with new responsibilities. The first week back, I spent nearly every second I wasn't at work sleeping. Then, I got sick again. And again. In the entire month of January, I think I've been without a cold for maybe 5 days.

I'm sure you can guess how this has affected my training. I had been looking forward to January as the month I would get back in gear with working out and blogging. I wouldn't be planning a wedding anymore, which would mean more time for the gym and more mental space to focus on eating healthy. My winter half-marathon training would start up again, as would my Wonder Women triathlon group. My January theme was going to be "getting back in the game."

That was the plan. In reality, my January theme has been "I need to lie down." In 29 days, I've done 9 workouts, which is less than half my usual routine. I've missed half of my beloved half-marathon runs, and half of the Wonder Women workouts (which I both love and pay for). This is both frustrating and depressing. In fact, I think I've been experiencing a little of what some of my mildly depressed clients feel: they have no energy to do anything, but then doing nothing leaves them with no energy. If nothing else, this difficult month has given me more empathy for those coping with a persistent feeling of "blah."

So, I am very excited for the coming of February. While there's no guarantee that I won't suffer another round of this cold, there is something about the changing of the month that feels like a new beginning. I'm starting to get the hang of things at work, Andrew and I are almost finished writing our thank you cards, and we made it to the gym this morning. Plus, I just wrote a blog post! In short, things are starting to feel more manageable. I look forward to catching you up on events from the end of last year and having some new adventures to share!