Another quick update

I forgot to include the turkey, bacon, avocado, blue cheese club sandwich on the huge porch at Central Market last Saturday night as one of the huge highlights of my first week!  Wow that was good.

Austin is absolutely kicking my butt.  I did a 10 mile run tonight and nearly died.  Are we noticing a trend here - that I have nearly died during/after each workout?  Hopefully that ends somewhat soon!  To be fair this run had a good 5 mile section in the middle that had far more up than down.  We just kept going up and up and up.  The last 2 miles were down or flat, so that made it okay.  I had a blast running with the girls and hope to run with them again.  It was 92 degrees at the end of the run at 8:45pm.  BUT it wasn't super humid and actually felt pretty good once the sun started going down.

This morning I had a bit of an interesting "scare."  Sometime in the last 2 weeks or so I was in Houston, I felt something that had popped up on my face - near the top of my jawline near my left ear.  It felt like a mole and didn't hurt, but I also couldn't see it in the mirror very well.  Had I not been in the middle of moving, I probably would have had it checked out.  I feel it every day, but haven't actually seen it very often.  My current insurance is also ending on Saturday and the new one doesn't start for 3 more weeks.  I figured I'd get it checked out when I could on my new insurance.  Until this morning.  It was blood red and I know it wasn't that color the last time I saw it.  Normally something like this might not have worried me, or maybe not 10 years ago, but my aunt died of melanoma 7 years ago, so we are all very very cautious with stuff like this.  I visited the dermatologist regularly in Houston and let her take off anything and everything that ever looked even 2% suspicious.  So this morning I was a bit freaked out - more I think because I didn't know what to do about the insurance situation than because I actually thought it was cancerous.  It usually takes months to get into a dermatologist, and after my aunt's experience, I don't want to wait months (she found a spot on her leg and her primary care physician wanted her to get a dermatologist to look at it...and it took her 4 months to get into one...and the cancer was already in her lymph nodes by then).  On a whim I figured I'd at least try calling a few dermatologists on my old insurance near my office this morning and see if I could give them my sob story and get in today or tomorrow.  Shockingly, the first place I called had an appt at 1pm today.  Thank God.  So the good news is the dr didn't think it looked cancerous at all.  The bad(ish) news is I have a hole and 4 stitches in my face.  That isn't really awful news though - I'd rather have it taken off and looked at, and it wasn't completely flattering having a blood-red growth on my face.  Of course she said  "I hope you don't have any lake swims planned during the next week" when I said I am a triathlete.  I responded with silence.  So the nurse told me what to do with it since I said I was going to be a bad patient and race on Sunday.  It also doesn't feel great either - the lidocaine wore off in the car on the way to my run, but hopefully it feels better soon enough.  They were nice enough to ensure it goes to the pathologist by tomorrow so it won't be pushed after my insurance deadline (forcing me to pay for the report or for COBRA, neither of which I want to fork over hundreds of dollars for).

I have another fun weekend ahead, but need to make sure I actually stop to rest too.  I'm absolutely exhausted!  Tomorrow is a happy hour with the tri club, Saturday I'm riding the Longhorn course and Sunday I'm doing a sprint down in New Braunfels.  I hope the hills don't kill me there - it is a possibility, you know.