Packing and getting everything ready for my move next week is still kind of crushing my soul, but I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are now six days away from the move, my apartment is completely overrun with boxes, and my only form of exercise lately has been hauling around bags of clothes for Goodwill.

(I donated so many race shirts. They were literally taking up an entire drawer in my dresser. I don't know how I possibly accumulated so many of these shirts, especially since I'm not racing much these days).

Anyway, moving news aside, let me tell you about something fun.

Last weekend, a group of my friends did Bike to the Beach again. This is a 106-mile bike ride from DC to Dewey Beach. It starts around 5 a.m. and then wraps up in the afternoon with a post-ride party at the beach.



I drove down to the beach on Friday morning so that I could get in some beach time before watching my friends cross the finish line.

Despite the fact that they got stuck in a downpour for at least 40 minutes on the ride, they crossed the finish line smiling (perhaps because they were just happy to get off their bikes/out of their wet socks/jerseys/etc?).

We celebrated with some post-race drinks, and then spent the rest of the weekend hanging at the beach and cruising around Rehoboth Bay in a boat we rented on Sunday.



The weather was way better this year than last year, and I think that contributed to the awesomeness of the weekend.



Boat day is one of the best days of the whole weekend. There's honestly not too much better than cruising around with your friends with the music playing and the sun shining. We anchored in shallow water in the morning and after lunch dropped anchor in way deeper water so we could dive and flip off the boat.



When we got back, we took awkward family photos in our matching denim and white tops on the beach with this borrowed golden retriever wearing booties.



It was a good weekend and a really nice break from thinking about all the million logistics needed for this move.

I'm not even sure where to start this post. I was going to write about my workout plans following up my last race, but then I looked at my calendar for August and just laughed at the thought that I'd be able to establish any sort of regular schedule.

So instead, here's a quick update (rant?) of what's been going on in my mind.



My general mental state lately is constantly stressed and overwhelmed. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the two biggest are the fact that I don't have a single free weekend until literally the month of October. I don't even know how that happened, but I'm really not happy about it.

The other major stressor is the fact that I'm moving later this month, and moving in general is sucky and stressful.

My move is less than two weeks away, and I haven't even attempted to start packing. Instead I've been making incredibly long lists of all the stuff I need to do for the move other than packing (canceling my cable, changing my address with the USPS, turning utilities on in the new place, etc).

I know the move stress is temporary and will hopefully be completely gone in two weeks when it's all finished. So for now, I'm just trying to get through it without too many panic attacks and focus on the fun part of having a new place to live (that will have a washer and dryer in the unit!!!!).

As for the lack of free weekends, I want to be clear, some of the weekend commitments are fun things I'm looking forward to, like my softball tournament this weekend and next weekend. But the fact that I can't even find a single free weekend for two months if I needed to schedule something really, really stresses me out.

I'm worried that in two months I'm going to be a burned out shell of my current self.

My hope is that in two weeks when the move is done, some of this stress will go away and then maybe the lack of free weekends won't seem like the big daunting thing like it feels right now.

Anyway, that's me and that's what's going on right now. It's not the best of times ever over here, but I'm trying to remind myself that this too shall pass and things will calm down again at some point.