Bringing you up to speed

Well, here I am sitting on my comfy couch wrapped up in a warm blanket, sipping on Good Earth tea, and relishing some precious down time. As of today, I am officially finished with 1/3 of my triathlon training. So far, so good! My body is still in one piece, and I am more than excited to start raising money for Uganda Village Project. My official fundraising page on the UVP website will be up shortly, but for now I will get this blog going.

When that alarm goes off at 4:45 or 5:00 in the morning (more often than not), what gets me out of bed is the thought of my friends in Ibulanku and the work of UVP... and of course the thought of that finish line waiting for me on June 27th. God has faithfully brought me to this point, and I can not wait to see what is in store for the next 6 months.

You have missed out on my accounts of the last 3 months of training, so I will bring you up to speed. Luckily, I'm super-cool and have been diligently filling out my "Triathlete's Training Diary." Up to this point (just finished week 12 of 36 weeks of training), my totals are:

44 miles of swimming
908 miles of biking
213 miles of running

There you have it.

Now you can only imagine the number of loads of laundry of sweaty workout clothes that have resulted from those miles! AND top that off with my increased caloric intake involving LOTS of peanut butter, clif bars, bananas, pancakes... and banana pancakes, bagels, pasta, and of course a variety of weird sport "foods" like the infamous Gu -- with my most recent addition being jelly belly's 'sport beans' (that one goes out to my mama, lover of jelly bellies). It's been quite the experience :)

This is my first EVER blog post, and I think it is time for me to wrap it up. I will leave you all with a quote that is inspiring me in my training and helping me to run with perseverence this race marked before me:

"Before you accomplish something, you must expect it of yourself."

So that's what I'm doing. And doing so by the grace of God.