Week highlights

The week started off with the normal busy work week & with the normal morning workouts.
Friday, the whirlwind started. I have to share the fun, exciting times with the not so fun exciting times.
Not that we were really surprised with how the banking industries are in a really bad position right now, but they ended Ron's contract at Wachovia on Friday. 10,000+ people they are notifiying. Since Ron is a contractor, he would be on the list, of course. YUCK>>> He's very good at what he does. It shows since he's only had 2 contracts in 12 years!! He'll come out on top, I'm sure! We decided to end the evening at our little hangout by relaxing at "Blakney" listening to music outside.

Saturday I completed one of the toughest things I've ever done. I swam 750meters at Lake Norman. They were having a practice event prior to the Lake Norman TRI at the end of August. It's the best TRI in Charlotte & closes in a couple of hours each year. It was sooooo hard. Like me, if you don't know how far that is, it's approx. 7 football fields, or 1/2mile. I hated it!! I went with a few other girls. I looked at the lake and how far out I had to go and back and was getting ready to back out. Then who showed up to swim with me and support me? Ashley, my awesome IRONMAN friend. She just completed the Austria Ironman about two weeks ago. She told me she would come out and swim with me. I told me no, don't bother, I'll be okay. Well, she was my little angel! I would not have finished without her!! I got to the first booie(sp?) and told her I couldn't do it, that I had to go back. She said no, that I could do it and coached me to keep going. I kept going off course, and she stayed right with me and guided me the whole time. She is so strong and such a great competitor. She often wins some of the TRIs. I was so tired, that I had to roll over and float on my back so many times I couldn't even count. I felt like such a "VARSITY LOOSER", as they call it now. That's a loser, with a capital "V"! She was so good and encouraged me and told me how great I was doing to whole time. It was really, really pitiful, but I got through it. It took me 30mins, which don't seem like a lot, but the mental part of it tired me out so bad that I had plan to run afterwards and bailed on that! I went home, and went to bed and slept for two hours! And it was only a silly 30min swim! I'm suppose to go back next Saturday for another practice swim. I'm not sure at this point if I'll go or not. If I don't go, that means I won't be doing the TRI. I'll give it some thought. I'm sure Ashley won't be there next week to support and guide me. Actually, I guess she shouldn't. She can't be there on race day, so I guess I need to do it one time by myself to see if I can get through it. Stay tuned......I just know it wasn't fun at all, so I'm not sure about putting myself through that again. By the way, it was so bad, I had a lifeguard come by on a boat once or twice to ask if I was okay. Sweet Ashley said, she is find I'm swimming with her! So sad! If I go next week, they might just make the decision to pull me out of the water! That' their decision/call when they see someone isn't doing that great!!

On another note, Ron and I did attend a birthday party of one of our new "Bee team" cycling friends. That was a lot of fun. Much more fun than Saturday morning! The girls that swam Saturday morning spent some time trying to determine if we wanted to go back to Lake Norman and try the swim again. We all agreed since misery loves company, but we'll see when next Saturday gets here!

Sunday afternoon we're going cycling with the Bee team, which should be much more fun than that darn crazy swim!

One thing I do love is checking my mail and getting surprises from my CO friends. Angie sent Ron and I a cute little memory of Italy.(thank you Angie :-) I miss my CO buddies, and I've been thinking of a way to get out to see them sometime this fall.