It was bound to happen sooner or later. Jeremy and I were hoping it would be later rather than sooner, but our return tickets home have been purchased. We are officially returning to the U.S. on Monday, September 15, four weeks from today. Judging by how fast the past few weeks and months have gone by, I know it will be here in the blink of an eye. Our big finale will be our Ireland trip, including my half marathon in Dingle on September 6th followed by a week in Dublin.

When we were planning this trip, we were optimistically thinking we could make it a whole year before returning, or at least until Christmas, but when we come back it will have been just shy of six months. Which is still a long time! It’s time for us to reenter reality and get jobs and settle down somewhere. I’m trying not to think about how much I’m going to miss Europe, and instead just enjoying the time we have left, and thinking about things I am looking forward to in the U.S., like:

– Being close to family and friends, and seeing my nephew walk for the first time

– Mexican food

– Having more than five items of clothing to wear

– Finding a running club

– Getting serious about training, and choosing my first full marathon to register for

– Being back in time for the Cancer Center 10K and the Santa Barbara International Half Marathon, both of which are in my hometown and I’ve run them before

– Getting back into strength training

– Hiking

– These shoes that I bought myself as a consolation for returning home (I got them on The Clymb – this is my personal referral link and if you sign up with it you get a $10 credit, and I get one too if you make a purchase over $25 – and with some credits I had, they only cost me $37! They are originally over $200):

I know there’s a lot more, but that’s all I can think of right now. We’ll be flying back to Georgia, spending about a week there visiting family and friends, then driving back to Santa Barbara, hopefully making a stop at the Grand Canyon on the way.

I’ll have to do a roundup of all the things I’ll miss about Europe, but it seems like it would be too long of a list. All I know is that we will definitely be back in the hopefully not-too-distant future because there are a million places I still want to visit that we didn’t get to this time around!

On another note, I’m totally late to the game but I looked up myself on Athlinks.com and was so surprised to see two 5Ks that I ran in Georgia years ago that I kind of forgot about and had no idea what my time was. It was during my period of running while I was in college where I was pretty serious about it, but had no clue about technique or training or finding the right shoes or paces or wearing technical clothing, etc… But the races were in 2005 and 2006, which shows me that I took a whopping SIX YEARS off of running before my next race in 2012, and I’m happy to report I’ve been running consistently since 2012. My times for the races were 30:23 and 30:22. At least I’m a little faster now!

I also found this hilarious picture of me and my friend Patrick after the 5K in 2006, during which I was absolutely miserable and hot and it was really hard.

Here’s to making the most of the next four weeks!