Since I last posted, we’ve been on the move, and I’m settling in now to catch up on a few highlights. On January 19th, Mark and I celebrated our 18th anniversary. We were in Lynchburg at Liberty University that weekend for one of Nina’s track meets, and had an awesome dinner out on Saturday evening before the meet on Sunday.
We don’t normally both go to the meets, as one most often stays back with Lyla and Cayenne, but since this one fell on our anniversary, Mouse and Pops watched Lyla and Cayenne for us while we were gone for the two days. Lyla was thrilled with that though because she got to spend some time with their neighbor’s horses which is always a high point for her.
The next weekend, I flew out to Burlington, VT to facilitate my first BODYFLOW Initial Training. Over the past several months, I’ve been training for a new role with Les Mills to be a BODYFLOW trainer. The Initial Training Modules for new instructors are two 10-hour consecutive training days, and in the new role that I came into, I’m leading the training modules to hopefully bring new groups of people into the role of a BODYFLOW instructor. It has been a lot of learning, studying, and preparation to be ready to run the whole module myself, but it’s a role that I’ve really wanted to take on. It allows me to take my love of teaching and my love of BODYFLOW to a much deeper level than the weekly classes I instruct. While I love teaching my classes and will continue to do it in addition to the trainer role, this deeper level of teaching and involvement in others’ instrctor journey is very rewarding.
Less than two weeks after I got home from Burlington, I flew out to Memphis for my second training. While it was a lot to have the two so close together, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take the work and solidify all the material in my head that I had just taught in Burlington. It proved to be a very valuable training as I felt so much more comfortable and confident the second time around, and I can’t wait to get my next booking! Even though it was my first time to Memphis, I didn’t get to see much of the city. The training days are long for the attendees, but they’re longer for the trainer because we’re there earlier and later for set up and clean up, and by the end of the day after being “ON” all day, I’m exhausted and have just gone back to the hotel to prepare for the next day.
This training finished up the day Nina and Lyla were headed to middle school Winter Camp for our church. Mark got them off to camp, and because there weren’t any late flights leaving out of Memphis on Friday night, I had to fly out on Saturday. With the girls at camp that day, we wanted to make the most of it and go on a long hike then head out to dinner afterwards. My ideal day! So, with anticipation of the fun waiting for me back at home, I got the earliest flight out of Memphis I could get (5:30am) to get me home by 11:30am. Even thought that meant a 3:30am wake up call, I was excited to get back home. There were no issues with my flight out of Memphis, however unfortunatly all flights from Memphis to Dulles connected through Charlotte. That’s when things went south. Our flight out of Charlotte got delayed, then delayed again, then delayed again, etc. so by the time I got home, it was after 4pm. I was so bummed. Spending the day in the airport instead of out hiking was such a disappointment for me, but we still got to go out for an awesome dinner together which did redeem the super long travel day.
The very next weekend, we were on the move again. This time, it was Nina and I heading back up to NY for the Ocean Breeze Pre-National Invitational on Staten Island.
She had a great meet, and we took some time in between her events to explore along the beach that is right next to the track facility.
Nina had her best hurdles race up to this point at the Ocean Breeze Invitational. This season she’s been working on taking fewer steps in between hurdles, and while it’s been a challenging adjustment, it's been a worthwhile one. Going over the first hurdle she was approximately even with the group (one girl - nearest to the bottom of the first photo - was blinding fast and already out of the frame of the photo of the 2nd pic, and one girl was behind the group), but she picked up speed with the fewer steps in between hurdles and took 2nd in her heat with a time that was a big improvement over her last meet’s hurdle time.
I love this picture that the team photographer took. I’m jealous because he gets to get down on the track for all the good shots, but her face tells the story. :) Nina, on the other hand, upon seeing this photo is irritated that she is too high over the hurdle. haa haa!
She ran her best 200m time and also jumped well in high jump, so she was happy with her performance this meet. As I said before, this is a tough sport. There’s a lot of waiting around for events to start, you have to manage your time and energy, and when it’s “go time” you have to be on. We’re figuring this out as we go along, but we’re getting there.
We do get a lot of quality time together though at the meets, and it’s great to see all the talented young athletes that are there to compete. She had a pretty big break in between high jump and the start of the 200, so after staring out those back windows at the ocean most of the day, we did have to get outside for some fresh air and a walk on the sand. When we’re that close to a beach, we just can’t pass it up!
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