Hello all! I had an immense day of adventuring in Austin and I thought I would share. The week of 2/24 – 2/28, being the first week of my career as a Physical Therapist, was both fun and exhausting. I am getting caught up to speed on the documentation software, learning plenty from my veteran PT co-workers and have found a healthy work-life balance. Wonderful!

Training for Boston has been going better than I could have ever expected. I was fortunate enough to make it out the door to train every morning before work. Here’s what that schedule looked like:

• 68 minutes (“brick”) around 10ish miles
• 6x1k track workout + 4.5 mile cool down after
• 68 minutes (“brick”) around 10ish miles
• Fartlek: 10x2min on and 1 min off on the track + 3 mile cool down
• 68 minutes (“brick”) around 10ish miles
• 16 mile long run at 6:21 avg mile pace
• 60 minute recovery run. 9 miles

I am running strong and I’m feeling good.

Friday after work I peddled to the yellow bike, a community non-profit bike shop. I met Dot, Ben, Pete, and Jules. I was in awe of their vast collection of bikes, parts, and accompanying bike-related sundries. I am excited to return and work on some bikes.

I had a particularly interesting day on Saturday 3/1/25. First, I woke, drank coffee and scrolled on ebay browsing vintage road bikes. I made it out on the open road for some smashing of the tarmac. After getting home I saw an email from a Catholic Young Adults group I am a member of, regarding a meet up that day to put together some care packages for the homeless. I wasn’t set on going, but I am so glad I did. I showed up and we had a massive turnout of around 30 people. We put together bags of food and water to go out and give them to the homeless. The objective was to help them with the care packages, but to also interact with them and get to know them. Overall, it was an amazing experience I continue going to these.

Later, at Mass, I learned the distinction between richness and wealth as defined by the Priest during the Homily. My takeaway is that richness means having a lot of cash, where wealth means having all that you need. His advice was to focus on wealth rather than richness. Meaning, reminding yourself that with God you have all that you need – wealth; and that by constantly focusing on how much money you have we tend to forget that fact.

Reflections, quotes, and vocab

I found halfway through the week that more and more I was pouring more time and focus into bike browsing. Bike browsing is an outlet for stress relief. It was getting out of hand so I decided to slap a $100 wager on this. Meaning: if I browsed bikes on FB marketplace I would pay up $100 divided amongst my friends. It made a big impact and I’m happy to share that I am much better off without the Facebook vice. Here are some quotes I picked up this week worth sharing:

• Friendship is rare and few value it because few have experienced it – C.S. Lewis
• No one ever got in trouble for going to bed early – Ancient sage
• Largesse – generosity in bestowing money or gifts upon others.
• Loath – reluctant
• Perdition – a state of eternal punishment and damnation into which a sinful and unpenitent person passes after death.
• Metanoia – Change in one’s way of life resulting from penitence or spiritual conversion.
• The cause of your downfall is the means of your salvation.