Where did the time go....

My Dad e-mailed me the other day to tell me that he was on his way to Hawaii (don't hate) and that I had not updated my blog in a while. I knew it had been a while but in looking today it has been over 2 weeks. WOW! Where did the time go??? Well, here is the update...

Denver was great. For a conference. If you like those sorts of things. or traveling with your boss. Lets just say my turn at the speaking engagement went well which was all I really wanted to get out of the trip. I only ran about 2 miles on a treadmill one morning but did catch up on lots of sleep which was even better!


Immediately following vacation, I had taken a week off to volunteer at a women's professional tennis tournament here in Atlanta. They aren't the top tier players but generally anywhere from number 75 on down in the world. Great players in anyone's book. These ladies go from town to town trying to win enough to crack into the top rankings and thus the bigger tournaments like the Australian Open, US Open and Wimbledon among others. It is really interesting to hear their stories. They literally are trying to scrape together gas money as they make almost nothing at this level and still have to pay for lodging, transportation and coaches. It is truly following a dream.

My job at the tournament the past few years has been coordinating volunteers which basically entails recruiting people to help, scheduling them and then making sure they show up to do the job. There are long days involved at the tournaments. I worked from Sunday the 12th to Sunday the 19th from 8:00 to 7:00 most days. I even got wrangled into assisting with the player's party one night as well as coordinating the pro-am another night.

The hard part is always recruiting volunteers but once they show up they love it and want to do it year after year. This year, in addition to those duties I was responsible for coming up with some of the lunches and snacks as donations were down quite a bit due to the economy. I spent almost 12 hours the Saturday after I got back from Denver making untold dozens of cookies, cakes, etc. for the USTA officials and volunteers. (Another reason why my blog was suffering).

All in all the tournament went well. We only had rain on one day and it was later in the week so it was easy to catch up on the matches the following day. We got rave reviews from the USTA director that was there and all the players moved on teh Augusta or Canada for their next chance at winning big.


With all the activity, I surprised myself with getting any running in at all but when there is a will there is a way, I guess. I am up to 8 miles on my long runs, I may pop out later today and try to do 10 miles at Stone Mountain. I have a 10k Peachtree Qualifier planned for next weekend at Callaway. I am not 100% certain I will do it since it is a bit of a drive but it is in the afternoon and they will have their Christmas Displays up (people travel quite a distance to see them so it is kind of cool to be seeing them on foot before the car crowds come into the park). We'll see...

My foot is feeling good now. I am not sure whether to credit the orthotics or just normal healing of the stress fractures but I am not noticing much pain in that foot at all now. There is an occasional achiness but not really anything to worry about.



Not that my doctor would probably approve but somehow, once the orthotics came in, I managed to jump back in full force to everything, tennis included. (I do have an issue with taking on too much). Last week, I managed to play every night. Not my ideal situation but somehow the matches just ended up that way. Luckily this week I only play twice. The ALTA team that I captain won our division last Sunday! This is big in our area as you get the ever-important BAG TAG. (it is just a piece of plastic that you hang on your tennis bag with the date and "division winner" on it - in these parts it is like an Olympic Gold medal - people generally want as many as they can so you can't help but notice them clanking together when you walk on the court - I guess it is supposed to intimidate somehow). Anyhow... so we have the bag tag - it is our first for ALTA. We made the playoffs and then lost in the first round. We are pretty proud (of making the playoffs not necessarily losing in the first round). No one thought we had a chance this season at all. The team was a combination of two different teams and at one point one of our teammates had commented that we were so bad that she would be embarrassed to watch (Yeah, she says a lot of things that we aren't proud of...).

Anything else
As if this post wasn't long enough....


I did see the musical, Wicked, last Friday. It was soooo good. Definitely a chick thing. I wasn't expecting it to be funny but it was and just really great! It is the story of the witches of Oz before the whole house/tornado/Dorothy thing. Loved it. We were kind of up in the rafters but there really aren't any bad seats at the Fox. When I purchased the tickets we could not tell where they were on the seating chart so were a little concerned. When we arrived, we were told to go up a flight of stairs through the portal and we would be directed from there. We were a little concerned as it sounded very Harry Potterish but turned out to be fine :) I would definitely go see it again.

OK - off to run, maybe... or just do laundry.