Vulnerability and Resiliency: Lessons from the Cancer Center

The windows in the room lined the upper reaches of the ceiling, enough to let plenty of light in the room, but not big enough or low enough to let us see anything below the blue sky line. My sister sat in an office-grade recliner with blue plastic covering, and I sat in a matching chair, without the reclining function. The machines beeped every so often as either my sister or one of the other patients finished their bags of drugs: benadryl, saline, dextrose, various concoctions of chemotherapy. At times, I could tell by the winces on my sister’s face …

I’m going mental

We are about 12 weeks away from the big show: Ironman Lake Placid. As I type that sentence, I can feel my heart rate elevate. A few weeks ago (7 to be exact), I wrote a post about how training for Ironman Lake Placid was changing our lives. At that time, I thought only in simple terms of time management. Ha! Silly girl. I didn’t even know the half of it when I wrote that entry. Way back on March 12th, I oh-so naively thought this journey was about managing time and training my body for the physical endurance challenge …

Hitting the road

Saturday morning means one thing: my long bike ride. All week long, I was looking forward to the ride because everyone was abuzz with “how nice” the weather would be. Hmmm. Well, the sun and warm temps must have taken a pass on the Southern Jersey shoreline on Saturday morning. When we woke up, it was foggy, damp and chilly. My original plan had been to get up early (which I did) and complete my ride, leaving most of the day to catch up on work. No dice. It just wasn’t safe to head out a 7:00 a.m. with such …

Thanks for the Recent Donations to the Iron Scholarship!

Much thanks to my supporters Dan & Mary Shaw, Kim & Rick Cote, Franny & Paul Kircher, and Lynn Barbato. Their recent generous support has brought my fundraising total to $590.60! Since we started training for the Ironman in January, we’ve swum, biked,  ran or weight trained for 125 hours, which translates into anywhere from 9 to 15 hours of training per week, and about 620 miles. While we push the limits of our physical celebrex endurance, your support will help students whose academic endurance is helping them realize their dreams. If everyone who visits this site donates just $5, …

Indoor training doesn’t have to be as terrible as the weather

Cold weather doesn’t bother me. I prefer it to the warmer weather. However, snow is a problem for outdoor training – especially cycling, Unfortunately, the snow has been plentiful this winter–an anomaly for the Southern New Jersey coast. With all the snow, and limited city budgets for plowing said snow, John and I have had to ride the indoor trainer* quite a bit. If you’ve never ridden a bike trainer, you have been spared what is sometimes mental agony, resulting from spinning in circles without going anywhere, which can be similar to running on a treadmill or swimming laps in …