Family life and triathlon, how do you make it work?

Hey guys,

Long time no write, its been busy here at the Furse household, lots of stuff going on and most of it not good. Let me recap the last 3 months.

After a fun/hard and decent marathon in November I had a 3 week recovery period and then it was time to get back on my bike after 5 months and start training for Ironman Texas in May. My program was for a good 5 months ( no biggie) easy to do to build to Texas. ( not!!!!)

Starting in December my kids had 17 days off for December break, its really hard to get to the pool or head outside for rides and runs when you have 4 kids that aren't of age for me to leave at home. Let's say I did the best I could and did a lot of treadmill running and trainer rides.

January- 7 yr old with emergency appendectomy- out of school for a week at same time 11yr old diagnosed with strep

10 days later in early feb during major snowstorm we had to drive 7 yr old back to ER for emergency CT scan for r/o abscess to his appendectomy site, fever 5 days, ended up going back to school for 1 day following week and then out of school that next day, double ear infection.

In short, sinus infections, stomach bug, fevers of unknown etiology, ear infections, vacations, parent teacher conferences, you get my drift, its been a long 3 months. My kids haven't been this sick ever and its been really hard to get in consistent training with being exhausted all the time and being up all night as the primary caretaker of the kids. I was able to do stuff on the trainer and on the treadmill but my swimming has suffered, sometimes only 1-2x a week have I gotten in the pool. Normally I wouldn't mind if this lasted a few weeks or even a month but 3 months isn't funny especially when you need to do a 2.4 mile swim, it just sucks.

Last week was a decent week for me with regards to working out, I actually got in 16 1/2 hours, it wasn't perfect and I had to tweak things but I got everything in except a 3rd swim again.  Well along comes this week, Sunday night my youngest started vomiting at 11pm and it didn't stop till 7am, I was exhausted my husband was exhausted, and he had a fever. Unfortunately I had to put my little guy in the car so I could drive all my kids to school and then I had to bring him with me to the car dealership because I had to fix my right front flat tire. He was so sick sitting there, I felt sooooo bad for him. At 9:30 am on Monday I get a call from my kids school saying my 11 year old hit his head twice and probably had a concussion. I had my mother in law grab my little guy ( who then proceeded to vomit in her car) and I brought my son to the ER. He was evaluated and diagnosed with a mild concussion.

The day proceeded as normal but when my 11 year old woke up in the morning yesterday his concussion symptoms remained and then he started vomiting, and vomitng and vomiting. I called the doctors office multiple times, I wasn't too sure if it was the same stomach bug that my 7yr old had or his concussion was now a subdural hematoma. After trying to give him fluids over several hours and his symptoms worsening I decided to bring him back to the ER for evaluation.

Now during this time my daughter was starting to feel bad so I sent her to bed with a bowl and hope for the best. My 7yr old was doing fine and my 9 yr old was at baseball practice. I ran over to our neighbors house to see if her daughter could watch my two kids while I brought my 11 year old to the ER. I was able to get him to the hospital and they evaluated him and drew bloodwork and put in an IV, he was severely dehydrated and needed lots of fluids. I got a call about 30minutes after I arrived at the hospital and my daughter had vomited everywhere in her room and bathroom, I think my new sitter was horrified and had her mom come over to help with cleaning her up. I felt so bad leaving her in that situation I was just hoping my daughter didn't get sick till I got home.

While Kellen was sleeping on the gurney getting fluids I was starting to get sick as well and proceeded to vomit in his emesis basin and trash can in  his room, the poor physician felt so bad she gave me zofran as well to make sure I wasn't going to pass out either.

It was a long night in the furse household, we didn't get back till 12:30am and my son, daughter and myself were still not feeling great this morning. Alas, another day and no workout and not getting to the pool.

Life is life and family always comes first, its been a tough past 3 1/2 months for us and I'm hoping there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It's so hard to try to do everything, manage the kids, the house, being a class parent, training and trying to stay fit and do ironman or anything longer than an olympic, its just becoming a job trying to manage getting in workouts. I'm not burnt out from training, I actually love the training when I can get it in, I was just hoping that Texas would be a good race for me, that I would actually go in healthy and trained correctly. My coach has been amazing and has made lots of adjustments to my schedule and has been very patient but I have to say my situation isn't ideal.

Texas is coming in 5 weeks, I have hopefully 2-3 weeks that I can get in some solid work to make me feel okay but I'm not too sure how this race is going to pan out for me. My swim most likely won't be my normal swim time ( which will bum me out), the bike hopefully will be okay and hopefully I'll be okay on the run if I pace/watch my nutrition and ride smart. I'm just bummed that its played out this way. Such is life, we move on. We;ll see what happens.