What Happened to Me?

What’s up all you players and playettes!?  My oh my... what a long, dry, absence it's been.  Days.  Weeks.  Months.  Who knows?  I've been so out of touch with my electorate, I don't even know what y'all are into these days.  What have you been doing?  Shopping for turtlenecks, listening to vinyls and cruising the drag in your muscle cars?  I hear that boy bands aren't popular anymore.  Just unbelievable.

But then again, what have I even been doing?  I don't really know that either.  I've been so out of touch with myself, too.  I've been out of the blogging game so long, it'll be a miracle if I still have any followers.  To those of you who are reading this: you are true supporters, and I love each and every one of you.  Either that or you just got lost out there in cyberspace and stumbled into my blog.  For which I am deeply, deeply sorry.

While it pains me to acknowledge this, I haven't posted to the blog in... over three months.  Just pathetic.  Some of you may have noticed that my schedule still includes the Vineman and Calgary 70.3s (I need to fix that), but I haven’t written any more race reports, and those races are in the distant past.  I'll hit you with some honesty here: I didn't do them.  Even the twittersphere has been relatively quite for me.  You probably all thought (and I won’t blame you) I had fallen off the wagon.  Dropped off the triathlon radar, maybe even the life radar.  I don’t have anything to say for myself.  I have no excuses, it’s just pathetic.

In truth, I actually have a laundry list of excuses.  And by laundry list I mean two.  I’ll let you decide whether either of them has any merit.

Excuse #1 – I was in EUROPE!

Those of you who have taken a gander at my “About Me” page (pretty much you mom and dad, which is ironic because you guys already know basically everything there is to know about me) may recall that my family had been planning a big European extravaganza.  Actually we had been planning it for several years.  Well it finally happened.  And it was everything we hoped it would be, as my sibs, folks and I gallivanted all around Germany, France, and Belgium for 16 days, eating way too many sausages, kebabs, crepes and waffles.  I may have even sampled a few beers.  I’ll include a few pics and captions to satisfy your curiosity, but this blog isn’t about my worldly travels (see the title if you need a reminder).  It’s about triathlons, so I’ll try to stay on topic.

Sibs and I in an awesome place high above the ground (Rothenburg, Germany)

Hofbrau! (Munich, Germany)

Just the worst (Salzburg, Austria)

Bromanji (Bacharach, Germany)

I think he's getting hungry (Paris, France)

Normandy (northern France)

Beauty (Brugge, Belgium)

Such a great trip, we were so lucky to make this happen.  But needless to say, this two week binge sort of stopped my season in its tracks.  I told myself it’d be a nice rest break.  Maybe do some easy runs over there, sleep a bunch, then come home and vamp back up for a few late season races. Well, that didn’t exactly happen, because…

Excuse #2 – I started medical school

It’s true.  Literally the day after I flew back from Europe I went to class.  This may come as something of a surprise, because I have scarcely mentioned this pursuit anywhere on my blog.   To which I again must point my finger at the title.  This isn’t “Andrew Langfield Tries to Get into Med School.”  But believe it or not, I did actually study in college, and I did actually take the MCAT awhile back… and write a personal statement… and muck my way through a tedious application process replete with bonehead mistakes… and travel the country for interviews… etc.  And that isn’t even the beginning.  If I’m really going to put all my cards on the table, I have to confess that way back, when I first moved to P-town, one of the biggest reasons for that was to establish residency here in Oregon with the goal of getting accepted at OHSU (Oregon Health & Science University).  Well I fooled them all.  It worked.  They let me in.  And as competitive as it is to get in these days, I decided I would be a huge idiot not to start school.  I believe it's always been the direction my life was headed, even before I earned my pro card.  So there it is.

Surprise!

Believe me, it has been a lot to think about and process over the past 4-5 months.  I wasn’t sure I was ready to start.  I thought about withdrawing my application, focusing exclusively on tris, reapplying in a few more years.  Even after I was accepted here at OHSU – my dream school – I wasn’t sure I was ready to go through with it.  But like I said, solid reasoning got the best of me.  Now I couldn't be happier with my decision.

So to those of you who feel betrayed, I am sorry.  But if I haven’t lost you already, I hope you’ll keep following.  Because this isn’t the end.  Oh no!  Far from it.  I’ve had some time to think.  And I’ve been in school for a few months now, so I’m beginning to get an idea for what the time commitments will be.  I think it’s doable.  I intend to continue.  "The Shortest Career in the History of Professional Triathlon" is not a reputation I will adopt without a fight.

But perhaps most importantly, I need to do a bit more thinking about which direction I’m going to take this blog.  I will of course keep posting about triathlon stuff - training, racing, traveling.  But should I mention med school from time to time?  Do I need to change the title that everyone has come to love?  I'm all ears, if anyone has any ideas about what they'd like to see.

I should have some answers in the near future, so stay tuned!  It'll be less than three months this time, I promise.

Take care all!