Today is the first day of my 3 day weekend and the start to it could not be more beautiful. Ruth and I hit the lake around 8 AM for a swim and saw lots of other like-minded swimmers out there.

1.2 Mile Swim @ 00:45:00

Then I bricked the swim and rode my bike from the beach down to Seward Park and then up the hill to Ruth's.

15 Mile Bike @ 00:55:00

I have been thinking a lot about FOOD, specifically my history around it and am putting some pieces together, especially after finding my birth mother 3 months ago. When she visited a couple of weeks ago for my Ironman race, she shared much about her life and my first couple of years.

Food, or the lack of has been a part of my cells from the moment they started splitting. My mother's family starved for years trying to survive after the Korean war. Her life was unthinkable and she survived exploitation, starvation, abuse and humiliation just to earn enough to keep her brother, sister and mother alive. There were many heartbreaking stories -- one was about how they had been hungry for days and she finally was able to pull together enough money to buy some rice, only to have her siblings eat it raw, and immediately throw up before she could cook it because they were so hungry.

When she became pregnant with me, and it became obvious that my American soldier biological father had no intention of marrying/supporting us, she and my grandmother made the decision that they could not feed one more mouth. Despite the efforts of one of the many back alley "clinics" available to girls in her situation, I survived and entered this earth underdeveloped and into a family that was already stretched to provide for the current members.

The following two years, things got a little better for my family. We lived in a small village and apparently, I would wander about and visit all the neighbors with my favorite toy -- a bowl and spoon :) Around dinner time, they would call for me and a neighbor would say "she's here" and send me home. From looking at the pictures, I was a very sturdy toddler and obviously loved and fed.

My mother met someone else and got pregnant again with my younger sister, Paula. She married the man and went to the United States while very pregnant to have her in America. The idea was that they would send for me once she got established but that dream quickly was squashed. One day, she got a letter from her sister telling her that I had eaten 6 eggs in a row! That was when she made the decision to put me up for adoption because she never wanted me to go hungry the way she had. I was adopted fairly quickly and into a good family in Pennsylvania. Of course, my adopted mother had many of the eating issues of middle-class white women of her era and my relationship with food continued to develop along its twisted path.

So here I am now and I am grateful for all I have learned about my long ago past and the lessons I have gained from years of endurance training. This will be my biggest endurance event yet and I am going to cross that finish line.