My big, fat week before vacation

Here is it Thursday and I have yet to post my weekly update. What can I say? Husband and I are frantically preparing to head off on a two week trip to Europe. We're scheduled to leave Saturday night and will spend time with friends in France and England, before heading to the Netherlands to attend a reunion of college classmates.

(For the criminally-minded amongst you, forget about breaking into our house while we're away! It's well-protected by an alarm system, a house sitter, a band of nosey neighbours, and a herd of vicious guard-cats who will lick the skin off ya. In any case, not counting my marathon finisher's medals, we don't own much worth stealing.)

I wish I had more time to write this evening because it feels like there's lots to write about. My runs went quite well again last week - the high point being a 7.5 km run with a local Running Room group on Tuesday. I had been asked to give a presentation to the group on chi running and they invited me along for their run afterwards. I enjoyed the chance to share my enthusiasm for "mindful" running and got some nice feedback on my presentation, so hopefully I'll be invited back soon.

My other runs were good too, though I had to call Husband to rescue me at the 14k mark of my LSR on Sunday when a bruised hip (the result of a boating mishap the day before) got too achy for me to continue. It was irritating that such a minor injury interfered my run on a beautiful summer morning, but it didn't make sense to keep going when I was so uncomfortable. After all, I still have plenty of time to prepare for the races I hope to run this fall.

The other high points of my week were non-running ones.

The first came last Friday when I learned that I'd been nominated for a "Very Inspiring Blogger" award by one of my favourite bloggers.

The Blonde is a Colorado gal who writes about training, travelling and racing in some truly gorgeous places and I've been reading her blog for some time now, so I was thrilled to get a "thumbs up" from her. I hoped to nominate my own favourite bloggers (including the Blonde, of course) for the same award this past weekend but wasn't home long enough. However, I'll be sure to get to it as soon as I'm back from vacation. In the meantime, check out The Blonde Runs - in particular, her posts on trail running and photos from a recent visit to Whistler, BC!

The second high point of the week was spending most of Saturday and Sunday at an annual family reunion held at my sister's place. She has a lovely home located on a nearby lake and roughly thirty of us spent the weekend laughing, talking, eating, swimming, boating, tubing and catching up. It was - as usual - a great joy spending time with everyone.

Since I'll be leaving my smart phone behind, the lights will dim on this blog while Husband and I are on the road - but perhaps that's not a bad thing. My recent reading included a very interesting book entitled The Narcissism Epidemic which has me thinking a lot about the ways I use social media (including this blog). More thoughts on that when I get home.

Finally, I want to share something Husband and I witnessed two days ago. After much soul-searching, our kind and gentle neighbour bowed to the inevitable and put his ailing 15 year old border collie to sleep. Watching our neighbour and his friends bring Boy home to bury him in the backyard was terribly sad, of course, but oddly uplifting as well. It seems to me one of life's great miracles that creatures as different as humans and dogs (and cats for that matter) are capable of forming such deep and lasting bonds of affection. And the fact that we're capable of it reinforce my faith (or hope, at least) that, however narcissistic and destructive our culture has become, we humans are capable of the wisdom, compassion and empathy necessary to tackle the serious social, environmental and economic challenges we face.

Thanks for reading, friends, and have a marvellous couple of weeks! I'll look forward to sharing our European adventures when I get back to my computer.