Gratitude.

I am overwhelmingly grateful for the incredible response from friends and athletes, many of whom I’ve never met, wanting to throw a bone and help out with the Goggle Drive.  This is so cool, and so very encouraging. Ryan and I are very excited to share this with everyone.  THANK YOU.   I don’t want to count our chickens before they hatch, but we’ve got a LOT of goodies coming our way, which will soon be shipped off to our little future champions in Cape Town.   We plan to have everything packed up within the next three weeks, so bug your friends between now and then and send me your schwag!

I will definitely post updates on our progress, as well as photos from Cape Town when they get the gear.  THANK YOU again for your kindness, generosity, and interest in helping out.

Training-wise, this week is all about doing the right things — staying sharp and staying healthy– and getting fired up for Sunday’s race in New Orleans.  It’s the first 70.3 of the season for me and an inaugural race for the city.  The pro start list is a biggie, and it’ll be very cool to see how I can compete against some very strong women.  But to be completely honest, I have two primary objectives in mind:

1.) Bull sharks — AVOID ‘EM

2.) Crawfish– FIND ‘EM!

If I accomplish these two goals, it’ll be a successful weekend.  I’m not asking too much, right?

Just kidding. I can’t wait to get out there and give it my all.  And being full of gratitude and excitement for something else (like collecting goggles!) has been another great reminder about what really matters and how to keep things in perspective.  (Like “we are just so lucky to do this!”) Pressure builds (or maybe we just build it on ourselves), but keeping it all in check and balancing a healthy dose of pressure with realistic goals and a clear understanding of where it all fits into the grand scheme of the world will truly help us to move forward, no matter what the “race” may be.

This train departs for New Orleans on Thursday. Hopefully I’ll accomplish #2 by dinner that night!