'Tis the Season!

I don't know about you, but I love the holidays.  I really do.  However, it seems that as a Mom, who also happens to work outside the home, who also happens to be "in training", all the duties that come with the holidays just stress me the heck out!

I usually start the Christmas shopping in early November, sometimes earlier if I catch a good sale.  However, this year has been different...with training for NYC, then the trip to NYC, immediately followed by the Kiddo's birthday party and then Thanksgiving, I fell waaaaaayyyyyyy behind!  As I've mentioned over and over, I am a total type A and doing things last minute just drives me nuts.  I have been thinking up a post about this for the past fews days when I ran across a post on this same topic at Mommy, Run Fast!.

Let's face it, when you have to choose between workouts or getting your family's Christmas presents purchased and wrapped, I would imagine that taking care of the family stuff will trump the workouts for most (if not all) of us.  Hmmm, that long bike ride, or getting the Kiddo to Church early for choir practice for the Christmas Eve performance...yeah, the Kiddo wins.  And add a late night out at a work holiday party the night before...ugh. 

On Sunday, I found myself with way too much to do and not enough time to get it all done.  I had presents to buy (that needed to be mailed asap), a photobook for the grandparents that needed to be created (in time to be shipped), gifts to wrap, laundry to fold, a house to clean (before the inlaws come to visit), I wanted to visit a friend who is in town for the holidays, get the Christmas cards in the mail and I needed to get in 1:15 on the bike.  Things were going well - the hubby and I divided and conquered!  He took care of the laundy while watching football and entertaining the kids and he wrapped a lot of presents. I managed to visit with the out of town friend for about an hour and pick up the gifts that needed to be mailed.  Oh, and did I mention the kids had birthday parties to attend?  The bike ride never happened and my house is still a mess, but we made progress, dammit!  Finally, after the kids were tucked in bed (again, a divide and conquer effort), I tackled the photobook - I spent the next 4 hours on Shutterfly and was almost ready to order the book when Shutterfly asked me to log in again and then told me that it didn't recognize my e-mail address. FML.  After a full day of rushing around, the photobook incident just about pushed me over the edge.  I went to bed angry at stupid Shutterfly around midnight knowing damn well that I would NOT be waking up at stupid thirty to run my 4-miler.

And, in the midst of all this, I received an e-mail from Coach telling me that my she would be putting my Monday swim workout in Training Peaks.  I responded with something about how I appreciated that, but that I was super stressed and not sure how I was going to get all my workouts in with all the holiday crap I had to do.  Waaaah, waaaah, I'm sure that was not what Coach wanted to hear.  But, to my amazement she gave me a "no worries" type of response.  She was emphathetic and told me that she didn't want to add to the stress.  Then, she said, "Let's just focus on the run this week.  Let's leave the rest for after Christmas (next week)".  It was that easy.  I don't know what I expected, maybe a "Suck it up, we're all busy" type of response.  I should know better.  Coming from Coach, this made me realize that it's okay to take a little break.  Not that we should do this all the time, but sometimes it just has to be done.  I could have fit all the workouts in - heck, if they are on my training schedule, I will do everything I can to get'em done.  (It's the type A thing.)  But, the result would be a tired, worn out mess of a girl just in time for my 18 miler on Saturday. Not to mention that no one wants to be around a haggard, tired, grumpy Mommy on Christmas Eve and Christmas day!

So that's it...the Holidays should be a fun, enjoyable time of year, not a stressed out to the max crazed mess.  So let's rearrange, relax and enjoy!

How are you doing with juggling the workouts with the holiday frenzy? Or, have you already gotten everything done and just chillaxin' right now?