T-40 weeks: "What if grief is love, just love in a different form?"

Dear Papa, and dear Reader,

Today, I had my third-to-last race of the year! No triathlon this time, only one discipline: The Annapolis 10 mile run! I had only done two 10 mile races before: One in San Francisco and one here in DC. It's a really great distance, pretty much right in the middle between a 10km and a half marathon.

The last 10 miler I did was in early April this year, only a few days after returning home from your funeral. It was as flat a course as it can be, but I was tired, deep in grief, and my fitness wasn't there. It was a beautiful race as well, the Cherry Blossom 10 miler in DC, but I couldn't quite enjoy it as much. During the time around your passing in Germany, I couldn't bring myself to run much at all, even though the few times I did, it really helped me. All in all, I wasn't as prepared for that race back then.

This race today was totally different. I am at peak fitness for the season, and I was ready for and excited about it. The course was quite hilly, so everyone told me to spare some energy on the first four miles, as the "real race" and the steep hills started after the bridge, which turned out to be great advice. The hills ended up feeling much better than I had feared, and I was able to really push through the last 2 miles and finish with a sprint. I could probably have taken 2-3 minutes off my time if I had leaned in a bit earlier, but I came in at almost the exact same time as the Cherry Blossom 10 miler four months ago, which was entirely flat and much easier. So hey, I'm really happy about that result!

Behind the finish line, I ran into my friend Zach. Zach has an incredibly hard story: He lost both of his sisters to a fire and his dad to cancer, all in a time span of less than two years! Can you imagine? I'm tearing up just thinking about it. Imagining losing all my brothers at the same time to a fire, and then going through losing you on top of that less than two years later, and all of that in my twenties... It's simply unimaginable. Zach turned his pain and grief into triathlon and a full Ironman. He was in training and in deep grief when I met him early last year. Never would I have imagined that only a few months later, I would lose you.

Now I know what training with grief feels like, and Zach's story and perseverance is a big reason why I am confident I can do it, too! Zach has a beautiful and deeply reflective blog on Substack called Running With Grief. One thing that stuck with me from his last post is this question: "What if grief is love, just love in a different form?" I think he's right. That's exactly what it is.

Grief is love. This reframe helps me so much in those moments when sadness and grief hit me and the tears flow. Now I just try to focus on feeling the immense love I have for you, Papa. I wish I had told you far more often how much you mean to me. I did it at times, but not enough. Remember this night in the picture 10 years ago, when you visited me in San Francisco? That night, I know I told you. But I hope you always knew. And I hope and pray that you can hear and feel it when I say it now. I love you. So much! You mean the world to me. And the world is a little lonelier without you in it!

This week, I am very proud to say that I got back into better swimming habits. In fact, I had the best swim week of my entire life with 12,250 yds / 11,200 m and 3:45 hours over 4 sessions swimming time. Probably nothing compared to what I'll need to do for the Ironman training next year, but I was proud to make up for my slow week last week. Running and cycling was almost the exact same: 26.5 miles / 42.5 km in 4:15 hours of running, and 110 miles / 177 km in 6 hours of cycling. This was a solid third week of my first "build block" for the Half Ironman in five weeks, which means I get a "recovery week" next week: Only 8 hours of workouts! That will be nice for a change. (Some of those will be threshold tests though to test my fitness. Those are torture!)

Papa, I hope you're having a blast wherever you are. I hope you can somehow experience the fun I'm having out there in these races. Because you're always there with me.

Kathrin

P.S. Dear Reader, if you have comments, questions, memories, or thoughts to share, please leave a comment (and leave your name in the comment so I know who it's from). I would love to hear from you!

Go to the full list of blog posts or read more about the project Ironman for Papa