Up In September

Yay October is my favorite month and it's finally here again!! Hockey is coming back. College Football is in full mid-season form. Even tonight my NC State wolfpack is about to upset Louisville here in Raleigh in one of the best ACC games of the season! September had some really cool shit, here's how it went down.

Swim: 12,300 yards, 4 swims
Bike: 19.9 miles, 2 rides
Run: 14 miles, 4 runs!
Strength: 3 times
Yoga: 2 times

First thing to notice - no 0's! I got something done in all activities last month. Those easy 4 runs give me 47.1 miles of running on the year. I had some long stretches with nothing - 11 days and 6 days based around drugs and vacations. But really now that the arthritis is under control with medication I can begin losing some weight (hard) and getting back to a regular level of activity (easy). I'm going to start off just running twice a week. I did have a 4 miler in there - longest run since early March. The weather started to cool down a bit in September and it felt so good to get back out there again.

We did some other cool stuff in September too:

Finished some skirting and landscaping around the deck

Hardscaping is done. Time to plant some grass

New woodworking store opened in Cary, I picked up a new sander

Ella and I took my first boat out to Lake Raleigh for some fun paddling time

We had a blast

On vacation in Beaufort, NC

They had to fight off the pirate with water cannons

Outside the watercraft center

Some of the planking we did in boatbuilding class

On the pier in Emerald Isle

this is not a strip club. really.

Loading stuff into Neena's warehouse

I'm ready for work

Our new concrete fountain

Yeti for the yard

With my favorite landscaper

Since the kids are out of school for the entire month of September and March, we take our family vacations then. This time since I couldn't schedule a marathon for the vacation, I signed up for a boatbuilding class at one of our state museums! It was amazing. The teacher demonstrated all of the mistakes I made in my first 2 boats and how to avoid them. I learned so much, and still have to write a more complete recap on my woodworking blog. Beaufort NC is a wonderful coastal town, but it is quite expensive there so we didn't stay long. The next weekend we went down to Kelley's mom's lakehouse. She moved to Raleigh a couple of years ago, but still has a full lake house with 6 storage buildings on the property filled with retail store merchandise for a store she recently closed down. We have an auction guy lined up to help us sell off of this stuff, so we took several truckloads from the house to the warehouse for him to sell. It made a nice dent in getting the house cleaned up, but there is still a long way to go there. On the way back, we stopped by Bethune Concrete and picked up a bunch of concrete statues for the yard. We really just stopped for the fountain, and bought 6 other pieces as well.

The boatbuilding class was the same weekend I was supposed to be in Portland, OR for the Boring marathon. I knew the fall schedule was hosed, but it was kind of tough to know I was missing out on a race. Then last weekend was the Yeti 100/50 and I had to skip it. Next up is the Javelina Jundred where I'm going to skip running the 100k there, but my cousin Ryan is still going to run it. I signed up to run the 10k at the hometown City of Oaks marathon. Running the full last year was my last marathon. So this is going to be a bit bittersweet but it will feel good to train with a purpose and get back out there again.