A Little Catch Up

Endangeredswimmer hasn't been updated much lately due to some pretty severe events in my family. This is my attempt at a catchup. I did post a couple of days ago, a piece about my dad, but I never did my totals for the week of 10/28-11/4, and I wrote nothing about the following week. Now I will attempt to document my training or lack thereof. For two weeks ago, my totals were:

swim - 6,500 meters
walk - 2.08
weights - one time
run - 21.43

For the year that brought me to

702,129.59 meters of swimming and
1,085.28 miles of running.

We had both parents in the hospital that weekend, and then Dad died unexpectedly the following Monday, Nov. 4, wiping out swimming for that week. I never knew so much was involved in burying someone. I did, however, run everyday, or every night to be precise. I put my shoes on each night after work or whatever and went out for a run thinking about my dad with each step. For the week  of 11/4-11/10, I

ran - 28.6 miles,
lifted weights once,
walked - 5.63 miles, but for the first time this year I
swam - nothing.

Now a new week and a new life has started. It is still hard for me to believe he is gone. A void exists in my heart now, a place that only he filled, and anytime I have done anything physical since his passing, he has been constantly in my thoughts. Usually I break out in laughter more often than tears when I remember him, his life, his stories, his fits. My dad pitched the biggest fits of anybody who ever lived, but he was not mean, he never directed his anger towards us only towards the things that irritated him. Once when I was a boy, he was in the backyard and a blue jay flew down and pecked him on top of his head causing some pretty amazing wounds. He became so enraged that he went inside, retrieved his shotgun, and began to shoot up the back yard, the trees, the sky. Really, you can't make this stuff up. The police came out and had a little discussion with Pop, but he didn't go to jail. There was nobody like him, ever, and I am full of those kinds of stories, stories of him going ballistic over the minutest of aggravations. Those kind of things bothered my mother and my sister, but I enjoyed them, especially as I got older. Now I can pull up his memory any time, any place and get a chuckle, even a deep belly laugh by rembering one of his tantrums. God bless you, Roger Hodge.