Eleven Days and Counting & E-Mailing Amy

May 16th is coming up fast. It's the day of the biathlon. I'm working pretty hard to build my stamina up for it.

When I left work at noon today, clouds were spitting rain on my windshield. I benched any hopes of biking and/or running this afternoon and went to the grocery store instead. It's been quite a while since I've grocery shopped and there were several items I needed. I rolled the cart down all the aisles, half filled it with more than what I needed (I hate when that happens), checked out, loaded the bags in the truck and drove home.

As I was putting the groceries away, the sun peeked out. I looked out the window and saw blue sky to the west. Huh. Maybe I can get in a two miles run while it's not raining, I thought. So I geared up and ran two miles. When I got home, half of the sky was cloudless. Rain is definitely expected tomorrow and the rest of the week so I figured I better take advantage of this unexpected nice day today.

I switched to my biking gear and rode fourteen miles. I finished the ride in about an hour. Around 3:00, I coasted in the driveway and into the garage. As long as I'd run two miles and biked more than the biathlon route of eleven miles, I talked myself into running another two miles. This time I didn't walk/run like I did in my previous training session; I ran the entire two miles. I actually felt good (relatively) when I finished.

If I can run two miles, bike eleven miles and run two more miles (the biathlon distance) two more times before the 16th, I should be ready. One more long training session would probably be enough but it the weather permits, I'll shoot for two. I take this stuff pretty seriously, can you tell?

I'd like to share another part of my day. I finished reading the book, Tethered, by Amy MacKinnon, last night. I noticed on the back book flap that Amy has a website. I went to it and saw that I could contact her by e-mail. I was unclear about a couple of things in her book so I e-mailed her last night with my questions. I didn't know how soon or if I would hear from her. Sure enough, when I got home today after getting groceries, there was an e-mail from her on my laptop. She thanked me for reading her book and for contacting her. In several sentences, she answered my questions thoroughly.

She signed her e-mail: Sincerely, Amy. I'm impressed and honored by her quick and sincere response. I suppose someone else may have sent it for her but I'm going to assume it was Amy. I've never communicated with a well-known author before now. I guess that deep down inside I'm beginning to feel like a full-fledged writer, unpublished, but still an earnest artist. I reckon I might as well start hob-nobbing and rubbing elbows with the best of 'em. What the heck, maybe some of their talent will rub off on me.