Melissa Stockwell

I am sure by now you have sniffed your way to dozens of tennis balls, eaten through a jar of peanut butter, maybe a few beef sticks and are basking by the sun next to a pretty lake up there in your doggie heaven. We sure miss you a lot down here

The Tokyo Paralympics were less than 2 years away and I was going to be a 40 year old mother of 2 trying to compete against those much younger than I. We love our home in Chicago. And I am just so thankful that I get to live my life with my family who believes in me and my dreams. We are hoping he will settle into our Colorado life easily but if we bring all his dinosaurs with him, I think he should be just fine.

But in just one week, we will have the cutest, toothless one year old and a soon to be 4 year old (in Nov) on our hands. If you read my last blog you know my hope this year was to get into some of the races where I could earn some big points and move my way up the world rankings. I have not moved up much in the rankings simply because I did not race last year and have no previous points to add to my races this year. And because next year I will have previous points from this year, that will help with the rankings as well.

To avoid pages and pages of reading, I am going to do my best to summarize my life over the past 8 months with a 3 ½ year old, an 8 month old, a rock star husband and my days of speaking, travel, training and trying to figure out if I can maintain my elite level status in Paratriathlon. I went into the race just wanting to race my race and prove to myself that my training was working. Next for me on the racing circuit is trying to race in as many big point races as I can race this year and increase my world ranking. And then it’s this whole nomination process to get into each race and you don’t know if you are on the start list until a few weeks before the race.