A Night Off

July has been a long, hard month. Rewarding and fun, but busy. We've been very short-staffed at work and it's been hectic trying to keep up. Fourth of July week (one of our busiest weeks of the year), for instance, due to vacancies and vacations, we had only one of our three-and-a-half clerks. We're just lucky we didn't have any storytimes or programs planned for the week because the rest of us basically spent the week doing clerk work. That was probably the worst, but the month has never been relaxed. Things are finally feeling manageable as the summer reading program draws to a close and we are now fully staffed.

Besides work, it's been a very busy month for competitions. The Shawnee Mission Triathlon was Sunday the ninth. I had one of my best races ever, a four-minute PR on that course and my highest placing for that race (only my third try). My parents came to watch and it was a very good weekend. The following Saturday, the fifteenth, was a 10K trail run at Clinton Lake near Lawrence. It was the first year for this event with only around thirty runners, but I had a really good race. It was the beginning of a heat wave, humid, and absolutely still in the woods; afterwards I was wringing the sweat out of my shirt as though I'd swam in it. Last Sunday, the twenty-third, was the Midwest Mayhem olympic distance triathlon at Lone Star Lake, also near Lawrence. Well, it was supposed to be olympic distance, but one of the volunteers steered some of us wrong and we ended up biking four or five miles extra. I've only done it two years and already think this race is my nemesis. Last year the heat was awful and I didn't drink enough, having an awful run. This year I drank more, paced myself better, and improved my time, but the run still hurt worse than anything else I've done. I've been sore and extra tired all week, even though my workouts have been very light. Still feeling worn out, I'm taking tonight off, sitting in front of the tv, working on my blog, and reading. It's a nice and much-needed break.

Tomorrow: Oceans of Fun with the wife and some of her students followed by an after-hours teen event at the library. Saturday: the Prairie Punisher Duathlon in Gardner. Then July will be over and hopefully life a bit slower.