They say absence makes the heart grow founder, I was not ignoring my blog to make you want to read this post even more, in fact it was just my body succumbed to the Autumn head cold. Yes, I have been out of commission for the past couple of days.
 

Sunday, I felt it coming on, the dreaded fall head cold. If you are from New England and especially if you live on a mountain you know this time of year is particularly hard. It is true we have some amazing foliage and on the rare sunny day it’s a gift to live here but more than likely we are either in the clouds this time of year and you would be placing a pretty good bet if you said “it was going to rain today”. This weather along with the temperature changes brings on the seasonal Autumn head cold.
 

So where have I been recently, well Sunday I decided it was time to get out for a run on a misty cloudy day. I met my training partner on the second half of his brick workout and we set off for a jog up a mountain. In the first few minutes my suspicions from the morning were true this was not just a few seasonal allergies this was a full on head cold brewing in my sinuses. As I watched my heart rate do some crazy things and felt horrible slowing my training partner down, my body was giving out all the warning signs. We ran for about an hour and I took a shower at The Barn to ward off post run chills before driving home. As I got home a way of weakness came over me and my all ability to breathe from my nose was rendered useless. I had it a cold.
 

Because of some circumstances that had happened over the weekend with work I was not able to take the day off, instead one of the upsides of living where you work is between meeting I could go back to my room and nap. This is pretty much all I did on Monday was go from meeting to meeting and nap to nap.
 

Today, my sinuses cleared a little, even if the weather didn’t want to do the same. I spent most of the day catching up from Monday and still reeling after the weekend. Normally, this blog is mostly about my training and racing but this is too important not to share and may as well shed some light on my reluctance to write over the past few days.
 

One of my colleagues, I work in a very small school with a year round staff of about 15, was tragically struck by a truck while crossing a street in front of her house over the weekend and died almost instantly. She had lived an amazing life and had two major passions, education and volunteerism. She held her doctorate in education and had spent her adult life helping shape the next generations minds. She had volunteered with organizations from locally in her backyard and also globally in Africa. She came to us to work in the twilight years of what many would consider their teaching careers, and instead of retirement decided to continue to teach at our school.
 

Her passing has been one of those kicks in the ass that makes you think. I think whenever someone you know passes it forces you to question your own mortality and your own directions in life. It has at least made me think about just how lucky I am to have my health, have the opportunity to train, have such a great support group around me, and finally just a reminder again how each day is a gift, even the bad for we never know when it will be our last. It reminds us maybe we can do a little more each day just to pay tribute to how fortunate we are to be alive.