January is a hard to deal with month for me. I might also face a couple of intimidating thoughts right at this time and blaming the one month that usually motivates people to eat healthier, smoke less and work out more. Oh, well.

Training Log

I am not sure if I have announced it on the blog, but I have decided a couple of months ago to tackle an athletic challenge – the Half Ironman in Mallorca. That means 1.9km of swimming, 90km biking followed by a half marathon of running. We booked a house by the beach, family and friends are coming. While foggy and dark, the sun never shines-January in Germany makes me long for palm trees for the first time this month I am going through rapid mood changes with regards to this race. I woke up last week realizing that time is passing and I no longer have six months (the magic amount of time needed for preparation). I counted with my fingers multiple times only to arrive at the same number over and over again: FOUR! It is only four months away.

Never good at all three
Euphoria happens when things work out well. Naturally. My swim went well, I ran a faster km on average, my bike ride felt good. Any of these make me more confident. Here’s the thing, though: I have never had a week where I felt that I have all three sports under control…when I ran a lot, I felt like a stone in the water. When I feel like a flash on my bike, I sometimes add a run thinking I must have done my first steps more smoothly. That probably is the beauty and the beast of triathlon. At times like these in January, foggy January, no me likey!

If training is well there is always this: ZE WEDDING
Yeah, because a middle distance tri race is not enough in one year, Pouya and I have also set a date for the wedding – six weeks after the race (please laugh, that’s ok). Here is the thing: If you strongly feel about a specific date to tie the knot, I strongly advise you to reserve it roughly a decade in advance…the weddingmania has taken over Germany! Some vendors told us that women choose the date according to average weather records – as if rain or sun would matter that much. Anyways, Ze wedding.

Weddings are a great forcing function of self-reflection and understanding how others see you
My friends who have only recently gotten married will all laugh: My dear Mama, who is certainly very excited sent me three dates for wedding exhibitions last week. Wedding Exhibitions. First of all, I never even knew such a thing existed. Second, rapid thoughts overtook me: I asked myself whether I gave away the vibes of being a person who would spend a day at a wedding exhibition. Then I wondered whether this is the time in my life where I would change into the kind of person I would always make fun of: The “this will be the bestest day of my life, ever”-bride and I would commence that change with the wed-exhibit. And then, combined with some earth-shattering shivers some pretty interesting self reflective thoughts fired: I really do not care this much about my wedding as I care about the wonderful man I am marrying. For this day I am hoping that some people do me the honor and travel from near and far to spend a couple of hours with me and my family, laughing, enjoying, dancing (YES, I already have the band. NO, I do not have the dress). Since I have by now project planned about a dozen pretty great events and I know how much tedious attention to detail needs to go into it, I really do not feel like doing that for my wedding. “Perfect” is a mindset, not a measure when it comes to weddings – it took me a long time putting this into words and it feels pretty f… great right now, because you have no idea, or maybe you have, how many people have an opinion on ANYTHING and everything.

My boss told me last night: “For everyone of your guests it will have been a wedding. For you it will have been your wedding. Own it.” Writing these words seems to be the first step…

I hope I successfully expressed a good amount of sarcasm. If not, I am very well aware that this is a “first-world-problem”-blogpost and I am ending it with some impressions from the trip India which is currently being wrapped into a big India diary post: