Moving, again & running when I can

I haven’t blogged the last 2 months because I have been extremely busy moving. If you remember, two years ago around this time Phil and I were packing up our house in New Jersey to move across the country to Colorado. Once again we packed up the entire house and the cats and we moved, only this time we moved 1/10th of a mile up the street. We bought a house!

We love the little mountain town we settled in and we decided that it was time to officially make our own home there. The house we bought needed to be completely renovated before we moved in and it required a lot of patience and a lot of work. We closed on the house in October and didn’t officially move in until the very end of November. When we moved in the house was still under construction and nothing was unpacked! I am not a patient person. I need strict timelines and finite answers. Renovating and construction do not provide either of those things. There is a HUGE difference between real time and construction time. To convert real time to construction time you simply need to add 2 days if it’s a small project and add one or two full weeks if it’s a large project. If it is something that you’d like prioritized during the renovation then add 2 months to the date you’d like it finished by, especially if it is really important to you. Timelines are an enigma when it comes to renovating. Free time is also an enigma when you renovate a home because your free time will vanish. Your free time will vanish because you will feel guilty if you do anything other than work on the long list of projects!

With free time getting sucked into home projects, running goals needed to be adjusted. I don’t enjoy waking up in the morning to run and I struggle to do it. Buying this fixer-upper house forced me to wake up before the sun and run. If I didn’t run in the morning before work I just didn’t run. I am extremely lucky to know so many early morning runners that will hold me accountable to running super early, and Phil and I are extremely lucky to have so many wonderful friends and neighbors to help us do work on the house at night and on the weekends. You know you picked the right place to live when everyone you know chips in to help you complete a never ending list of impossible tasks, and you know you picked the right place to live when everyone drags you out the door in the morning to run so that your running goals do not slip away entirely.

Before we made an offer on the house I was trying to train for a November marathon. For obvious reasons, my priorities shifted and I opted not to run a marathon this fall. This year has been chaotic, stressful, and exciting. Running has been chaotic, stressful, and exciting. Goals will be set for the upcoming year of running and I am sure in due time I will no longer be doing dishes in the bathtub. Each day progress is being made and each day things are becoming less stressful and less chaotic, however they are still very exciting–I am neighbors with a mountain and nothing is more exciting than that!!!