Goodbye Summer... See You in Seven Months (frowny face)

It was a cold, wet, dreary day today - the kind where you just want to stay indoors. So that was exactly what I did. I skipped my run, I simply wasn't feeling it. I don't usually skip run workouts but I REALLY didn't want to go outside. Unfortunately for me, it's going to be chilly, rainy, and depressing for the rest of the week - hello trainer! I'm also using the excuse that my knee is still sore from Sunday's ride (hence why I didn't do a trainer ride tonight in place of my run) and I have too much writing to do (the deadline on that 100 pages worth of papers is fast approaching!)

I've become a true cold-weather wuss since moving away from New England. Now it hits the 50s and it's simply too cold. And snow - what is that? With fall weather here, I'm already missing outdoor summer workouts. I love stepping outside and just feeling the heat envelope you. I don't care if I lose half my bodyweight through sweat - I would rather have hot weather than cold weather. And please don't get me started on outdoor biking in the fall/winter/early spring - four words: frozen fingers and toes. And one word to sum that up: MISERABLE. Thaaaaannnkkkk goodness Ironman Florida is flat because THIS GIRL is doing the rest of her rides on the trainer!

It's also the end of a long season (Boston was six months ago and I did my first triathlon of the season more than five months ago). I do love racing and I'm sad the season is almost over - but my motivation to go outside and workout (and this weather isn't helping) is severely waning. I don't know if it's because I have these papers hanging over my head, or if I'm just in a funk that I'll get over in a few days, or the fact that I keep thinking we need to pack because we're moving ONE MONTH from today, but my mind is simply not as Ironman-focused as I'd like. Can I just go out and wing the race? It's a combination of all those things, I think. I'm really struggling with one of my paper topics - and hopefully choosing the right path with my topic will be the hardest part and once I figure that out, the rest will come easy. I'm looking at Nepal and caste-based discrimination within that country. There are SO MANY angles I could take with that subject and I really can't figure out which one to go with. Right now I'm leaning towards investigating the roots of caste within Nepali society and how the social system perpetuates the oppression wrought by the caste hierarchy and how lessons from the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa could be applied to the Dalit Rights movement, even though caste-discrimination and racism are different forms of oppression with different ideologies behind them - the intention of both movements is the same: bring human rights to a population that has long been denied dignity and various freedoms. I've always had a love/hate relationship with research papers (mostly because I procrastinate) but I really am learning alot about defining a question and designing a research method to meet my objectives through these two papers. And with that said, I'm off to write more of my papers!