He’s Alive

Tis the Season, tax season that is.  The past two weeks have been busy.  If your not in the accounting world its hard to understand quite what goes on behind the scenes.  One of the hardest thing to explain to your clients is just how much work it takes to provide a complete an accurate tax return.  Sure a lot of people’s returns like myself only take a few minutes to complete, however we are not in service to prepare returns like that.  Instead we handle the large clients, the ones with complex issues, the ones that require many many forms to be completed.  We plan, we analyze, we run scenarios.  What it all boils down to is usually a couple numbers on a piece of paper.  Here’s what you owe to the Fed and here’s what you owe to NYS.  What a lot of clients don’t know is that by harvesting losses, or deferring income, or taking credit that they just may have saved $20,000.  Its not always easy to get this message across to the client without sounding like a outlandish showoff.  Would you want your accountant, the person who handles all your finances’s going around telling the world how great he is so?  I wouldn’t, that would be unprofessional.  Anyway, I write this because its something a bit different than triathlon, this is a part of my life that I partake in usually 5 days a week and for about 4 months every year its 7days a week for anywhere between 9-13 hours a day.  We don’t get the glory that the other professions get like Doctors and we aren’t as cool as a polished lawyer in the court room, but our job is demanding all the same.

For those who know me personally and know what my working life has been like over the past couple of years you know that it has had its ups and downs.  Just like the nature of the accounting business we have peak times and we have down times.  In all honesty I like this.  The tax seasons hit at the right time for me.  Even though I would love to be skiing at Bristol and enjoying the winter I would much rather have the free time during the long days of summer.  It allows me ample time to travel to races, go home to stay at Keuka Lake, travel to Syracuse for training weekends with Mike, etc…So last summer I switched employers, I went from Big to Small.  Both places have their positives and their negatives.  For anyone who has worked in Public Accounting you know what thats like.  However, I must say that since I made the switch its been good.  I have my own desk, Im doing work that I am comfortable with.  Its hard and takes time and effort but I am comfortable that if I put in the time I will get to the right answer.  At times when you are doing work where you are floundering around like a fish out of water it can be the most frustrating thing in the world because you have no one to help you and people are expecting answers pronto!  Sure experiences like that can be extremely valuable but when they are occurring on a daily basis is can pretty much be a recipe for a breakdown.  This is something that I haven’t been dealing with at my new place.  I am learning here, people are helping me along the path.  Its refreshing, it feels like I am truly on a team and the people want to make me better because if  I do better work it makes their job a hell of a lot easier, and as  a bonus if I do a good job I am going to be rewarded.  It’s a win win situation.

So..with that said it my busy season ends on Monday.  It has killed the past two weeks of training and turned this week into one long recovery week.  Some may find it strange but I haven’t rode my bike since last Sunday…call it a quarter season break if you will.  Maybe it’s good for me?  Giving me a chance to let the previous 3 and a half months training soak in a bit.  The only bad part is that I miss going to masters and miss seeing everyone on the morning, they probably think I’ve either become a lazy bum or decided I didn’t like them anymore, however none of that is true, I just need those couple extra hours of sleep since I have been getting home a little later than usual.  I feel fat and lazy, I think I literally felt myself getting fatter and loosing fitness all week when I was SITTING at my desk all day.  But moving along…regression is progression..meaning that you need to take 1 step back in order to take 2 forward.  Rest is never a bad thing and can only help the body perform at a higher level in the future.

So looking forward I am positive about the next couple of months which will bring me to about 4-5 opening races.  I am starting out the year with Travis Earley and bunch of other great guys in a 7 man 77 mile relay race around Seneca Lake on Apr 30th, then the next weekend I am opening the run-bike-run season with a Duathlon on Cusetri’s home turf, he might have a bit more fitness than I but if I don’t let him take off to much on the bike I just might be able to chase him down on foot 🙂 haha…that race is going to hurt..I can already taste it.  Then the rest of May will yield me about 3 weeks to get 1 last build phase in before i head to the TTT race weekend in Ohio.  It is going to be a blast!  Traveling and staying with buds, racing are butts off for 3 straight days, and I get to race as a team with super fast Kristen Roe.  We are going to take on the male-female division competitors and try to lay down the law.  It will be interesting to see how everything unfolds.  After that I am going to head to Lake Placid for Memorial Day/My Birthday weekend.  I will be celebrating a quarter century on this planet with good friends and great surroundings.   And then two weeks after that I am hoping to be rested up for my home town triathlon at Keuka Lake.  This is where it all started for me when I was a senior in highschool, little did I know that 6 years after that initial race I would again come back to it and find my true passion in athletics.  So I am eager to take on the Keuka sprint tri this year.  I am going to be fitter, faster, and stronger and can’t wait to unleash some fury.

Speaking of getting fitter, faster and stronger I need to go start working off these love handles that I have accumulated over the past two weeks. Time to go for a little job in the great outdoors..so beautifully gloomy out at the moment 🙂

3 more days to go, then Turbeau will resurface for air.

Until then train and rest hard

-Matt