It's been about 10 years since I have taken this much time off of any sort of exercise for this amount of time. What I am saying is, I'm at a 10 year low in fitness. The good news is I rode my bike to work today ( 4 minutes) and I made it in the same time (4 minutes) that it always takes so I guess I'm doing ok and haven't lost it all yet.
After the season ends I always want to just take a break and not think about doing anything. The problem is, since racing and training is my 2nd job, having an off season is really just eliminating one of them and it really doesn't feel like much of a break, or vacation, I just have a few extra hours in the morning before work. If I didn't have a real job, I might be more motivated to keep up some sort of fitness, but mentally I'm just done for a while and just need a break, or I guess 1/2 break.

So, to fill the extra hours I have I started a house remodel. It's more exhausting than training but I've set an aggresive timeline and am trying to stick to it. I'm not in construction, but I like to learn and I like take on things like this (well, I've never taken anything on like this before) and work my way through it. Last fall we had the oppurtunity to buy a house and I'm finally converting it to a rental now that I have some extra time. The nice part is that there is nothing major that needs work, but a ton of smaller projects and mostly general neglect and repare. It's eye opening sometimes to see what some peoples standards are compared to  what we are used to. I wonder how long they lived there with the electrical messed up in the living room and no lights?


took a bit to figure this one out but it was nice to find an explanation as to the reason for the hole in the upstairs closet floor with random wires nutted together. Unfortunately for them they didn't know what wires were supposed to be together.

I've pretty much been working at the house 9-2 and then going to work, but I feel I'm getting over the hump of the major projects and then I'll be able to back off and get some workouts in besides just crawling around on my knees all day.
Major projects completed are pulling all the knob and tube electrical out of the upstairs and climbing around on planks in the attic dropping new electrical and adding outlets to all the rooms, 100 yr old homes only have 1 per room and now all 3 upstairs bedrooms have 3 and I inhaled 3lbs of insulation!
We completely gutted a gross, awkward bathroom to a clean and usable one.

pure nasty, plastic pink tile
 

not a plumber I guess, or even close

the new bathroom, lots of plumbing changes
 

We added two walk in closets to the master bedroom and new windows.

I also cleaned, scrubbed and painted the entire basement, that was one of those jobs that made a huge change with very little cost and actually not much time.

jamie getting her paint on

Painted the entire 2nd floor and I just completed and updated the 2nd floor railing/banister.
This weekend I'll finish tearing out the kitchen and start putting in a new floor and then work on new cabinets and a new layout.
Still up are refinishing some hardwood flooring, a couple more windows, 1/2 bathroom update and then some outside work when the weather warms up.

It's been a ton of work, but also at the same time not that much considering what we have accomplished and that most of the jobs I can complete in a day or two and feel like I'm making good progress. Of course the bathroom took a good week, but I had my brother-in-law come up and he did a majority of the construction/plumbing/installation work so that was a big help.

Keeping J out of trouble and paint

So, I feel a little guilty for taking 5 weeks off the bike/skiis, but I feel pretty good about what I accomplished and having a rental house will hopefully be a great investment down the road and worth the effort. The weather has generally been to crummy for anything else anyway so why suffer through it?

Ellie is a HUGE help pulling the tap measure in and out
 

the last project upstairs to complete, got this one done just before work today.

I bet the time it took to build this...

...was the same amount of time it took to build this