New Year's Thingy - Let It Go

We just celebrated New Year's Eve at my house tonight.  Yes, it's January 2nd.  I'm a little behind.  But really, it's kind of an arbitrary holiday anyway.  On the actual evening of December 31st we stayed in and went to bed early because I had a race the next day, and last night I had a horrible migraine that forced me into a dark room by 7 pm.  So... Happy New Year from the Cupcake Triathlete gang!

Yes those are cups on their heads.
Cheaper and more fun to make than party hats.

I have only one real New Years Resolution this year, and Disney was nice enough to make a movie with a great theme song to signify it.  Bonus, a great song for a cold weather running, which I seem to be doing a lot of lately.  If you have not yet seen Frozen, you really should.  Go to your local mall and kidnap a random child if you don't have one of your own to justify your presence in this movie.  Don't worry - their parents won't be mad - they will thank you.

LET IT GO

Let it go, let it GOOOO, turn away and slam the door!  Let it go, let it go-ooooo, the cold never bothered me anyway!!!

Specifically, letting things go in my professional life.  Now most people, including me, don't usually blog about their work, because it's unprofessional as well as being esoteric boring crap that no one wants to read about.  No difference here.  BUT for whatever reason, I have this running list in my head of all arguments, disagreements, slights, and personal conflicts I've had in my professional career, who was involved, etc. that I have not put down yet.  I remember and rehash things endlessly.  Not so much in real life, just career life.  My company went through several rounds of layoffs, one of which I was cut in, and I still take it personally.  This is doing me absolutely no good.  Constantly worrying if today is the day I'll be fired and looking for nuance in a coworker's straightforward request to grab coffee when they said something hurtful to me two years ago is doing me NO GOOD.  Especially if I ever want to move up and along, I need to be ok with the fact that not everyone is going to like me.  When I told my Boss Scarecrow about my resolution this morning he took the obvious jab that most people aren't gonna like me.  Har har.  That's ok.  Disagreeing with people is ok.  I am actually pretty smart and good at my job, and part of that is disagreeing with people. This is gonna be a huge challenge for me, as shedding 15+ years of meticulously up-kept emotional baggage will take a lot of effort.  A big enough challenge that I felt I had to write about it here, since triathlon is my model for doing so.  I don't obsess and hold onto bad workouts, so why hold on to bad conversations?

Enough about work...

Back to triathlete stuff.  Back to "the cold never bothered me anyway".  New Years Day dawned for me with a horrific migraine.  Why can't I have a hangover like a normal person?  I attribute the migraine to detoxing on my clean eating diet - it was bound to happen between Days 3 and 5.  Too bad I had a race then.  But after some coffee (no I haven't quit caffeine yet despite my daughter's daily admonishments to do so), breakfast, and encouragement from Sheriff and friends, I did make it to the starting line.

It was cold

It was cold, and bright bright bright sunny.  It always is on migraine days.  But I found my friends, bumped into some teammates from CMMS, waited around in the nice warm gym for the start, and just hoped I'd finish under 12 minute miles and without throwing up.

Clean eating race breakfast.  Hard cooked egg,
steel cut oatmeal with walnuts and raspberries

What happened next I still have not figured out.  I ran the race with a 49:47 finish - under 10:00 per mile.  I NEVER run that fast, and certainly not for that long on a course of rolling hills.  Moreover, I didn't leave my breakfast in a snowbank to do it.  In fact, I had none of the tummy troubles that usually plague me when I run.  Afterwards I talked to Sheriff about what happened, and he said that these kind of jumps in performance are going to happen in the first couple of years of training.  Hmm.  I guess that makes sense, but I'm also wondering if clean eating helped my normally messed up GI tract from slowing me down.  Or if my migraine medicine somehow numbed the pain in my legs.  Or if someone sprinkled magic fairy dust on my sneakers. Disney music is magic.....  Time will tell I guess.

Me and my kickass tri friend Jess that I met at a swim
clinic last summer, at the starting line

So what is next?  Lots of not freaking out at work, since January is our toughest month.  Since we're in the middle of a snowstorm and the Jedi cancelled our plow service, I'm guessing some shoveling.  Several friends are doing a ten mile race in 6 weeks - I asked Sheriff if I could join and he said sure.

Ten miles.  That's like, twice as far....  Get ready....

How did you celebrate New Year's?  With a hangover, a run, or both?