Croup, Puke, and Training

The Saddle and the Mileage. Photo ops were limited this week.

As age-group triathletes and aspiring ironmen of three children ages six and under, we find ourselves often with unique challenges to our quest for mid-pack domination.

This week was no different.

Thankfully, as I've said before, we work well together. Training went exceptionally well this week all things considered (read on). We have fallen into a rhythm that looks something like this:

• Monday: work, Jason comes home, Nikki swims long at night, Jason takes the day off (from working out)
• Tuesday: work. Nikki bikes and runs during kid rest time in the afternoon. Jason bikes and runs with his faithful biking buddy Tom. 
• Wednesday: work. Nikki takes the day off from working out. Jason swims long at night after he gets home from work. 
• Thursday: work. Nikki bikes and runs during the kids' rest time. Jason bikes and runs at night, usually alone. 
• Friday: two long work outs (one of us will bike and the other one swims)
• Saturday: two long work outs (one of us will swim, and the other one will bike) 
• Sunday: Sunday, funday, long-runday. We take turns running or get a sitter and tackle our beastly runs simultaneously. 

This past week had the makings of following the schedule fairly well. We hit just about every workout without a hitch until Wednesday night. Jason went in for his regular swim and came home a little early. When I asked him about it, he mentioned he only got two thirds of the swim done. And then he said, "I think you better sit down for this story." He went on to share how a bird managed to find its way into our local community center and then poop in the pool. Yep. Poop. And that apparently shut down his swim since life guards told him basically to swim at his own risk. Yep. Poop. If it isn't coming from the kids, it's hitting us from somewhere else. 

Thursday night the four-year-old began showing signs of croup. Friday, with Jason's encouragement, I did my long swim during the local pool's noon swim time, tucking it in between gymnastics and swimming lessons in the morning for the six-year-old, and a doctor's appointment for our croup victim. Jason had a "splash and dash that day," so after naptime we packed up the kids (including the croupy one because he sounded better by then), and the kids and I enjoyed the beach while Jason did lap after lap around our line of buoys. Then he ran home, and we met him. And we were all wiped out. 

I had glorious plans of an early bedtime and an early wake up, with the hope of finishing my bike ride by 11am. At 1:30am the now-medicated croup victim arrived in our room to inform us he had thrown up on his bed and needed assistance. I spent the rest of the night on the couch keeping him company. 

My Saturday long ride, which was supposed to begin at 7am, began closer to 9am. Mr. Wonderful stayed home with the minions, and about an hour after I returned in the early afternoon, he took off on his run (in our then 80+degree heat). The result at the end of the day wasn't pretty, but it was done. Sunday did not look much different except Saturday night Jason took his turn on the couch monitoring a water-situation in the basement thanks to the deluge of rain we've been receiving on a nightly basis lately (seriously--70 points of rain in a half hour--eek). Today Jason put in a five-hour century ride on the trainer (he's an animal), and I engaged in some mental training with a long run in our increasingly warmer temperatures. 

And that, folks, is how we're training now. Some people might find reading about it downright boring (I know I would if I didn't care much about triathlon). A new friend of mine who rode nearly two hours with me Saturday just wondered how we're training, both of us, at the same time. My response? I'm not sure. I just go day by day right now. 

Perspective matters, I suppose. We have people around us who are dealing with real problems--a hospitalized infant, the loss of a parent, teenagers. So all I can think when I examine our lives right now is this: if the biggest problem we have right now is who's going to get to the ice bath first, we don't really have any problems. Including the elusive bird (which, rumor has it, is still in the facility).