About This Blog

As time permits, in-depth musings on myriad subjects will be posted. Abbreviated adages will be announced via Twitter.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

A Wasted Week

The week started out good: Good ride Sunday morning at a good pace in fantastic weather. Stretched on Monday. Swam on Tuesday (all 3200 meters, too, also at a good pace). Wednesday, it hit me. Hard.

Let's rewind a bit, just to have full perspective.

I teach high school. Yeah, not the most sanitary of environments. The past few years have been spent building up my immune system to pretty high standards -- successfully so, too. Friday night, I dove into the Schertz Pool as part of the Polar Bear Splash fund raiser...without my wet suit. Yup, just me in a square-cut suit and a pair of goggles. The water temperature was a crisp 43°, while the air was a cool 47°.

Sleep was not hard to come by Friday or Saturday night, but, come Sunday, I could not sleep worth a darned. Same for Monday. And Tuesday. Finally, Wednesday morning, my body had had all that it could take and shut itself down. No getting out of bed for practice; barely making it up and through the day for work. Once home, I fed, took some cold medicine after talking & coaching for wellness by N--- (what a gal), read, and was asleep by 8:00. Practice this morning was rough, but manageable. Same with the school day. And, here we are.

The purpose of this post was more or less to just have a place in which to whine. Yes, CdA is still 6+ months out, and I'm still feeling strong after a good finish at the marathon last month, but...that was last month. This week has just felt...wasted. I feel weighed down by the demands of work (swimming on its own is a full time job, to say nothing with teaching six English classes a day), in that I have virtually no free time. I literally wake up and go straight to work. If I'm lucky, I have about 30 minutes after swim practice at home before I have to head to the school. Typically, I'm there until 4:30 or later (twice this week, it was after 5:30 before I left), before heading home to maybe eat something before it's time to grade papers or read from one of the two novels my two different levels are covering; fortunately, I've read them both so it's mostly review. By then, it's after dark, and, after feeding the cat, I don't feel like doing much else except trying to get some sleep for the day begins all over again in less than ten hours. Being sick on top of all that isn't helping matters much, either.

Breathe.

Time to wrap this thing up before I go off on another rant. I really do like my job, what I do, working with kids, trying to make a difference. Catch me again when I'm a lot less groggy. I'll do my best to be Mr. Sunshine. Thanks for reading.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hope you get to feeling better. Regardless of what job you have, I think we all struggle with the amount of down time and how to manage it - even when training for ultra distance events.

Best is to look for all opportunities to stay healthy and get ample sleep. W/o that foundation, forget it.

Anonymous said...

You have a misspelled word in this blog. Fortunately...

Unknown said...

'Fotunately' is how it's pronounced in Boston...you know, with the 'aw' replacing the 'or.' It's all int he dialect.

Thanks for the note. The post has been fixed.