Round up

A simply hectic week here - somehow even more busy that usual. First we spent a lot of the week negotiating and finally putting on an offer on a house/building plot. We're now under contract! Whilst we're under contract to sell our house to the town, we have to wait until its ratified by a referendum in June. Everything is resting on this vote... which is nerve wracking to say the least.

Unfortunately I was sick all of last week, which didn't help things along, and as soon as I remotely felt better Raf came down with something, poor boy, just a bad tummy, but he vomited for the first time as a toddler and he didn't seem to know what was going on.

As for training.. what a couple of weeks. it happened in March, too, where I had a super first half in terms of training and then a terrible final couple of weeks due to illnesses of various types. And so it was this past month, too. A rest week the week before last and then last week just plain sick. I've managed a bit of running this week but no swimming or cycling. My goals for the month have largely been unmet, as is seemingly usual, with 73 miles run (goal was 80), 7 miles swam (goal 10, but I swam almost all of these miles the first two weeks of the month so I was for sure on target), and only 12 hours of cycling (goal was 20).

There is always May.

The sun has been shining, the semester is almost at an end, and the summer is stretching out before me, yet I am feeling incredibly homesick. I just did a search for jobs in the UK but it's a terrible time to look for something, and the reality is that it would be very difficult for us to make the move back any time soon. Yet I feel so melancholy about it at the moment, and perhaps it was the crowds and European styling I've been seeing on the telly this past week, or maybe it's something else, but I am missing home today. I miss running across fields and cycling down narrow lanes, I miss sarnies from Marks and Spencers and shandy on the river front, I miss walking around busy high-streets and walking to Grantchester and having tea in the Orchard, I miss getting in the car and visiting one of my sisters, and I miss church bells on a Sunday morning. I miss words like queue and mum and lift and petrol and mate and bloke...

And then maybe I don't miss these things ... well, not all of them. Sometimes, when i feel this homesick and full of longing, I wonder if what I really miss is my younger life, so carefree and self-absorbed: of researching and writing and running. And of course so miserable in many ways because, really, the pressure and the intensity of a place like Cambridge Uni means that no one there is really happy or carefree, but everyday is focused on the same thing, with few interruptions.

That's not the life I want, and I think this wistful thinking is more that i currently have too much on my plate, that I feel stretched thin by having too many roles to fulfill and there is a sense that in being stretched this much that you can't possibly be doing a good job in any sphere.

It does have me rethinking my goals for the summer, too, though. I don't know that i can really expect myself to train for a 70.3. I have more time in the summer, for sure, yet I have yet to have a month of training go even remotely right - largely because of illness. I will have to give it some thought over the next month or so...

In exciting news, though, a Cervelo P2 in my size has arrived at my LBS and I'm checking it out Tuesday afternoon! Very exciting, indeed.