go play outside

"biologist tim clark says at the heart of good biology is a central core of imagination. it is the basis for responsible science. and it has everything to do with intimacy, spending time outside.

but we forget because we spend so much time inside--inside offices, inside boardrooms, inside universities, inside hearings, inside eating power breakfasts, power lunches, dinners and drinks.

to protect what we love outside, we are inside scheming, talking, telephoning, writing, granting, faxing memos, memos, memos, memos to them, to us; inside to protect what we love outside.

there is no defense against an open heart and a supple body in dialogue with wildness. internal strength is an absorption of the external landscape. we are informed by beauty, raw and sensual. through an erotics of place our sensitivity becomes our sensibility."

~from an unspoken hunger by terry tempest williams


the guiding thought in my life recently: go play outside. i have been plagued with an inability to sit still. i'm supposed to be taking time "off" to let my knee fully heal. i suppose its been a couple weeks, which is good, but i'm itching to get going again. using a car to do errands is driving me nuts (no pun intended), and i can only read so many books before i start thinking i should be doing stuff instead of reading about it (i read mostly non-fiction lately). i'm excited for tahoe and spending all day outside. less than 2 days to go!

sf update

i have all of this time on my hands being on vacation and all, yet i seem to be posting less frequently. the past week or so has gone by pretty quickly. my youngest brother and his fiancee arrived with their dog. it was great to hang out with them though it was only for a few days. they brought their dog with them, and it was just nice to have a dog around again.

i picked up my other brother at the airport at midnight on christmas day, which means my whole (immediate) family was actually together for christmas this year--for the first time in about three years. my mom had been discussing pre-making part of the traditional christmas morning apple strudel. my brother and i wanted none of that and promptly told my mother so...and then we went on to kick her out of the kitchen the next morning so we could make it. evidently she trained us well because the strudel turned out perfectly. the rest of the day was pretty low key, which was nice.

the day after christmas, i pulled out my skis in preparation for the tahoe trip. now, the last time i went skiing was my senior year in college when john and i got season passes to a couple resorts in new hampshire and would just go on the weekends. since then my skis have just been sitting unused in the garages in ohio and (after my parents moved) in california while i have been off galavanting in the tropics. i had been debating just renting skis, but after doing some homework realized that that could be expensive...so i decided to risk it. i took my skis to a local ski shop, silently praying that the people who worked there wouldn't laugh at me and tell me to throw them out and rent. much to my delight, the guy at the shop looked at them and said the base wax layer was in great condition and that the skis only needed a minor tuneup. yes! so it cost me $35 to fix my skis. i have to pick them up on monday.

this brings me up to today. today, i woke up with sun coming through my window, so i laced up my shoes and went out for a quick 4-miler to assess the weather. it was gorgeous--a little cold, but otherwise clear skies and nothing but sun. i decided it was time for another cycling adventure. i have been wanting to explore the routes to ride over the mountains from my parents house into oakland and berkeley. in studying maps recently i found a redwood park at the top of the mountain above oakland...and that there was a road from the east side of the mountains going up it. so i made it my ride.

the first 10 miles or so were relatively uneventful. i avoided the streets for the most part by jumping on the regional bikepaths. when the bike path ended i think i made a wrong turn, but fortunately a very nice young man about my age rode up next to me on a very nice carbon bike. i decided to pick his brain. he pointed me in the right direction and then we stood there talking for a bit about good routes in the area, so now i have a few more ideas up my sleeve! i got back on the road and it wasn't too much further until i was out of town and heading uphill.

after wandering through a couple different hills and past the redwood park entrance, i found myself on skyline blvd in oakland. skyline, as the name would suggest, runs along (near) the top of the mountains, so as soon as i got on the road, i had a fantastic view of the bay area. i continued along skyline until it turned joaquim miller (?) and it started heading downhill. after a nice 11% grade downhill, i found myself in front of the lds oakland temple (if you've ever flown into oakland, you can see this when you're landing...its near the top of the hill/mountain), so i stopped to check it out. from there it was about six miles or so to berkeley and mostly downhill. i met my parents and one of my brothers for lunch at jupiter and then drove back to danville with them. in total i think i rode about 30 miles (maybe more?) with some nice long hills.

when i have not been running or riding my bike this vacation, i've been doing a lot of reading. lately i have received several good book recommendations. several days ago, i finished the china study. if you haven't read that and are interested in the science of nutrition, i'd highly recommend it. be aware, however, that it will make you think twice about the food guide pyramid and how much animal product you're consuming (regardless of whether or not you're a vegetarian). yesterday i finished kitchen confidential by anthony bourdain, and i'd recommend it. it will definitely make you think twice about opening you're own restaurant, ordering the fish special on monday or asking for anything "well done." i'm currently working on another one of bourdain's books and another book by terry tempest williams--she wrote refuge, which i mentioned on my blog several months ago.

live from sf

i arrived safely in san francisco last night. my bike also appears to have arrived safely, but i'd like to put out a word of warning. if you're flying out of austin with your bike and you see two women at the "oversized baggage" drop off (who may or may not be looking at golf clubs like they're weapons of mass destruction), i recommend you stick around and watch them open your stuff...so that you can make sure they put it back properly.

when i got my bike box back in sf, one of my wheels was partly out of the box...i looked at it confused because i'm generally pretty anal about making sure something like that doesn't happen. i opened my bike box to discover a flier from the tsa saying that they had done an inspection. i was annoyed to put it politely. if you're going to open people's stuff, for goodness sakes, at least try to put it back properly so it doesn't get damaged. my rear wheel is fairly untrued at the moment though not unrideable. before you think i improperly packed my bike in the first place, i should say that i travel with my bikes in an ironcase, a special, reusable plastic box made for travelling with your bike that has lots of padding so nothing moves or gets scratched or bent. i've lost track of how many times i've taken the thing on flights interisland, to the mainland and on the mainland. nothing has ever gotten damaged. grrr.

anywho, onto happier things, my bike is together and i rode down to the bike shop to pick up a few more spare tubes and co2 cartridges. i have my t4k bike with me, the one i rode to alaska, and because i was missing a skewer for the front wheel until last week, i hadn't ridden it since getting to anchorage. it was nice to be back on it today, although it reminded me how stretched out on it i am. thank goodness for long arms!

it was a little overcast and rainy today, but the sun eventually peeked out. i am hoping that it does the same only stays out a little longer tomorrow. we decided to go north instead of south, so tomorrow we'll be heading out over the golden gate bridge and then hoping on route 1 to start riding up the coast. we'll be staying at the point reyes hostel in point reyes national seashore, so we'll be getting two days of nothing but saltwater (insert huge smile here). from what the guy in the bike shop told me today, the last 10 miles or so out to the hostel make you feel like you're riding into nothing before the hostel pops up out of the nothingness. he also said the (cross)wind is ridiculous on the stretch. having experienced some pretty brutal winds this summer, i'm looking forward to seeing what california has to offer. hopefully i'm regretting that statement tomorrow afternoon!

statistics

at the risk of being morbid, apparently the american heart association says there is 1 in 50,000 chance of having a heart problem during an endurance race. there was a triathlete from austin who died during the dallas marathon on sunday. i didn't know her, but apparently some friends of a friend did, which was how i heard about it. before my parents start freaking out and attempt to make me stop all things endurance (i won't, sorry), the chance of dying in a car accident is 1 in 18,585 or from dying of a fall of any kind is 1 in 20,666 (other odds/chances, maybe not the most scientific reference, but i digress). when i hear about young people, who clearly are trained for the event, it makes me wonder what exactly is (or is not) happening in the human body that goes awry. how can we monitor stuff like that? is it predictable? can we prevent it from happening?

i am starting to plan my next adventure. this weekend, a friend from college (mark) and i are going to explore the northern california coast by bike. we're either going from san francisco north to point reyes or south to santa cruz. if you have any experience taking either of these routes (both are mostly along pch--route 1) and have a preference for which is nicer let me know. there are hostels near the ocean in both places. however, going north would put is in a national park (seashore) and going south would put us in a city (i've heard something about a hottub on a cliff overlooking the ocean). i'm excited about the ocean, but am a little concerned about how cold it might be given the generally cold tempteratures around the country at present. yesterday, i don't know that it go above 35 degrees F in austin! i live in texas for crying out loud!

really done

the marathon went pretty well yesterday. my final time was 3:33:50, which is an 8:10/mile pace. at the half, i was on pace to run a pr...and then we turned and started heading south. there was a fairly ridiculous headwind, which was so strong people were actually drafting off of each other. i would like to take a moment to remind the ready that we were RUNNING. if there were cyclists, they probably would not have been cycling much faster than we were running. anywho, i felt like i was dragging pretty much the entire second half of the race, so that wasn't much fun. however, i'm qualified for boston 2010, which is good. my knee didn't bother me at all during the race, and its feeling fine now, which is also good. my legs aren't as sore as they have been in the past after a hard marathon either...yeah!

in dallas i stayed with becca, a friend from the ride this summer, and it was great to be able to catch up. then today i had lunch with todd, another friend from the ride. its funny because i spent such a huge amount of time with all these people last year and over the summer, and have seen very few of them in the months since returning to austin. it leaves me with a feeling sometimes of, did that even happen? was it all a dream? but catching up with them is like seeing a friend i haven't seen in a long time (as opposed to just a few months). its fun.

my roommates and i were planning to ride the trail of lights in zilker park this evening...however its been in the 30s all day and now its starting to rain. so let's suffice it say the plan has gotten nixed. if its below 40 and raining, none of us want to be riding. the tacky christmas sweater party we through on friday was a success...although i've decided its more fun to go to end-of-the-term parties when you don't have to go to bed early to get up to race or drive to a race and you can stay up talking to people.

done!!

i'm done with finals! yeah!

on a completely unrelated note, it snowed here last night, and when i woke up this morning there was still snow on the roof of the building just outside my window! brrr....despite this, weather.com is predicting mid-70s for this weekend with lows in the low 60s...perfect marathon weather!

the studyfest continues with just over 24 hours to go before my final. i'm antsy as all get out. this is the first year in six years that i haven't had a marathon to run BEFORE my final(s). generally at this time of year, i start tapering during the last week of classes, which is convenient because there are lots of deadlines and i need more time to work. then, i get to race and recovering from the race makes me want to sit and study. the late thanksgiving holiday this year messed with the schedule, although as i'm able to sleep 9 hours a night right now, i can't complain too much.

i saw the doctor today and got cleared to run on sunday with the understanding that i was to recover properly afterwards for the sake of my knee. she seems to think the bump is going to go away and that the irritation is due to having moved everything a tad out of place when i fell. she said i can ski...as long as i don't fall. i'm looking forward to sunday, but i can tell i'm still in the midst of a taper because my legs feel heavy when i run.

for the anatomy nerds, here was the interesting thing from that visit that i hadn't noticed. your muscles can start to atrophy (shrink) after 72 hours if not used. my muscles have been shrinking all fall just because i've been running so much (some people have fat and skinny jeans...i have cycling and running jeans because my legs are different sizes depending on which i'm doing more of). well, dr. merket and i sat and looked at my vastus medialis and vastus lateralis (two sections of your quad located on the "inside" and "outside" of your thigh, respectively). though you have to look closely and know what your'e looking for to see it, my right side is visably smaller than my left now. despite not taking time off to recover from falling, the muscle on the injured side still atrophied. i must have been using it differently than i was before. spending time in the gym and on my bike will fix the problem in no time, but i was pretty shocked to see that my muscle could change that much in a month despite not decreasing my activity level.

happy finals week to all! and now back to studying...

don't worry be happy

we'll i figured out why being around my roommates makes me happy. happiness is apparently contagious. apparently the researchers in the article are also doing an experiment on facebook too looking at who smiles in their profile pictures. within my own network of friends the trend is quite interesting--the people i hang out with the most all have smiling pictures, which is what they predict.

its been nothing but studying the last couple days and i'm still going strong. i finally bought my plane tickets for winter break. i'll be in sf 12/18-1/6, so if you're there during those times, let me know. i'll be bringing a bike with me so if you're in town and want to ride, that would be swell.

six more days until dallas.

congrats to julia and chris!

my little brother and his girlfriend got engaged today! i'm very excited for them!

before that excitement today, there was other completely unrelated fun to be had. brooke, jason and i went on a bike ride down to buda. on the way back we stopped at the cathedral of junk, a fortress made of, well, junk, in south austin. vince, the creator and owner, was home at the time too, so we got to talk to him for awhile about his creation. basically, it started as a shrine, of sorts, and then it got bigger. now people bring him stuff to use. the structure itself is multi-level and has just about everything you can imagine it--from old skiis and car fenders to cds, computers and bottles. its impressive. the next time i go, i'll try to bring a camera.

ut winter graduation was also today, so now i'm off for graduation celebrations. i would like to be able to say 'go mizzou!' but i was reading the paper this morning and discovered that if ou wins, it would likely mean texas went to the fiest bowl...to play ohio state. that is a game i have been wanting to see for the last year and a half. i think i will have to do some pretty deep soul searching about where my alliances lie though. i grew up in buckeye country, but never went to ohio state and now i'm in school at texas, but not from here. maybe i should cut two shirts in half and sew them together...blend my worlds.

final stretch

all i have left is to print out and turn in a paper tomorrow and one final next week. yeah! tomorrow is basically holiday parties and master's presentations. funny how that works.

i made an appointment to see the doctor again about my knee. let's suffice it say that it hasn't gotten better and i think its becoming more sore. as someone who studies walking, this is sending chills through my spine and thoughts of not being able to run 50 years from now. not good. the bump hasn't gone away, and i think it might be starting to rub my femur (thigh bone) the wrong way. so i'm going to try and get them to x-ray and mri the heck out of it and tell me exactly what's happening. all i can feel is that something is wrong. hopefully this doesn't me i can't run the marathon in a week and half, but i suppose that would be small price to pay.

anyone interested in roadtripping from austin to sf in december? or the reverse in january? i was doing a cost-benefit analysis and with gas prices as they are right now, it costs about as much to drive as to fly. however, i've been thinking about taking one of the bikes i have here to sf with me and i would want to bring both it and my skiis back in january...which would get rather expensive. i suppose i'll worry more about this next week though when i'm actually done with the term.

party in the moonlight, dance until the sunrise

unfortunately that's not what i've been doing lately. its the last week of classes and i'm trying to finish my two term projects. this should be easy, yeah? well, i was sitting in the airport sunday night waiting for my flight back to texas and working on one of my papers. my power adaptor fell off the arm rest of the chair i was sitting in and all of a sudden, both the adaptor and my computer went black...and my computer wouldn't turn back on. i almost had a heart attack. i let my computer rest for about 15 minutes, at which point it still wouldn't turn on, so i started calling people i knew who might have some idea of what happened. while on the phone with my brother i decided to just take the battery out and put it back in (i didn't blow on it though). whatever was wrong was solved by this remove and return to previous position technique.

last night, i got home from class and am all set to work and then my adaptor stops working. less than 45 minutes later, at 8:45p, my laptop battery runs out. i sigh, hoping i can fix my adaptor, but it doesn't start working again until sometime this morning. in the interim, i realized that i hadn't emailed myself the most recent version of the paper, and thus, all my work was on a computer that couldn't turn on. well, the adaptor magically worked today during class when i needed it too. whew!

last weekend was both a good and a bad thing. it was nice to see friends from college; however, it also made me grateful for something i had been not liking for the last couple months. i had wanted time (if only a few days) to chill out before school had started but i didn't get it. well, being away from here made me realize what that would have been like. i'd have had time to think. not good. i brood over things, which is a terrible habit, and going non-stop with school and being constantly doing something with my roommates has actually been really good for me.

i did a brief cost-benefit analysis of plane tickets for winter break the other day. the result was that i think i should just drive to california. that way i can take a bike with me and bring both the bike and my skiis back with me in january. it might take a bit longer to drive, but i could stop a couple places along the way and maybe actually get to see zion national park...or stop in colorado and ski too! the mainland made me restless again. go figure.

i'm focusing. really, i am.

exclamation point day

recently i have been having more frequent "exclamation point" days, defined as those days which are so great that they need to be described with excessive use of exclamation points. yesterday was one of those days. i picked up my friend mark from the train station and we went straight to mt. diablo and started hiking. afterwards, we headed to berkeley for lunch at one of my favorite restaurants before getting back onto the train and heading into san francisco. we wandered around on a self-made scavenger hunt (the fao schwartz branch in the macy's in union square does not have one of the keyboards you can dance on!) and then watched the union square tree lighting ceremony. in the background, the windows of the macy's were lit up and from our perspective you couldn't tell how they lights were done, so we wandered into the store for closer examination (leds and a white screen...and lest i be accused of dragging someone along in such a nerdy endeavor, mark is a friend from college so we're on the same page as far as curiosity about things like that). then we headed to north beach for italian. the place we were going to go to was closed, so instead we went to an irish pub that specializes in indian food. odd, yes, but the food was delicious (ironically some other friends and i had wandered into the same pub a couple years ago but i hadn't noticed the restaurant part of it at the time). after dinner we continued walking around and stumbled upon city lights, a famous san francisco bookstore. inside we read poetry books, and i discovered that modern poetry is a lot more accessible (to me at least) than the poetry we were forced to read in high school (which had turned me off of poetry entirely). i made it back to my parents house sometime before midnight happily exhausted. i think we're going to ride out to mt. tam in a couple weeks when i'm back in sf and hike it.

in running news, check out this video from brooks. i've been wearing their running shoes since college, if not before. the company just seems to get it.

the weather here (sf) is gorgeous right now. i'm sitting outside on the deck at my parents house working on my term projects. part of me should probably be stressing about getting everything done, but somewhere in the back of my head i know that it will all get done, so i might as well enjoy the weather while my code is compiling!

thanksgiving begins

my house started celebrating thanksgiving on saturday night. we had 30 or so people over for a potluck...and we were all ready for a nap by 7p. my contribution? apple pies from scratch. none of this pre-made crust business. lindsay's pumpkin pies are also on the tray in the picture at left, lest you think i made particularly pumpkin-colored apple pies.

on sunday, emily, usama and i attended the thanksgiving celebration hosted by the austin area interreligious ministries. there was a non-denominational service followed by a reception. this year, the methodist church downtown hosted it. i ran into one of my professors at the reception and he mentioned that he and his wife had been attending it for years. from the name, one would think that this organization would be filled with people wanting to work together, but my professor had an interesting story to share. apparently last year, the hyde park baptist church was supposed to host but when the congregation found out there would be muslims praying in the church they said no...one week before thanksgiving celebration was supposed to happen. one of the synagogues in the area stepped in and hosted it at the last minute. the thanksgiving celebration last year ended up with the largest attendance ever and the whole story was written up in the local papers. ouch. anyhow, the service was a sing-a-long of sorts in various languages and it was pretty cool. various organizations had booths set up at the reception afterwards with info on service opportunities available in the area. i got information for one that runs a farm (that grows plants not animals). another one of my roommates has volunteered with them before and says they're a really good group, so i'm going to try and go out sometime in the spring.

i just finished another lab report and problem set. this leaves me with one lab report and two term projects to finish between now and next friday 12/5. its still a lot, but feels a lot more doable than it did about a week ago. maybe its because i'm working more, but i am beginning to miss this summer. i'm missing being outside 24/7. it was dark when i started running this morning. the temperature, i found out after the fact, was in the 40s and the sky was clear. you could see the stars clearly despite the fact that i live in a city. i slowed down a bit and started looking up. when you live on an island, you only have to look out to gain perspective. here i have to look up. regardless, the view is amazing. i am really excited for new years and skiing, and i'm excited for hiking on friday.

tahoe!!

the last several years (at least) i have met up with friends from college somewhere in the country to ring in the new year. today, it was determined that new years 2009 will be at lake tahoe with all the associated skiing and cold weather antics. the cabin (with hot tub) has been rented. its all downhill (or nordic) from here. skiing! snow! yeah!

dancing in the kitchen

lately, i catch myself in the act of doing something and then realize one of two things, either a) i'm back or b) my hair is short. i have to clean the kitchen once a week as my chore at my co-op, and this past monday, someone started playing the ps i love you soundtrack really loudly. my response? i started dancing while washing, drying and putting away the dishes and doing various other cleaning-type things. at one point, i distincltly remember thinking, ah yes, there is the girl i remember. she's different from the sad one that had been dwelling in my body lately.

i've been getting the same feeling while running. about 7 miles into my run every morning, i feel like i'm on top of the world. the last 3 miles always fly by and its a bummer to have to stop. i think part of this feeling is wrapped up in this other feeling i've been having--that my body works. i'm leaner than i've been in years and my body just feels like it works better. its nice to have that combined feeling of health and happiness. its nice to feel like my old self.

with respect to the other realization, this morning i started chuckling after i got out of the shower. with long hair, its easier to bend over and dry your hair (so its off your back and neck) and then stand back up after you've toweled it sort of dry. well, i had long hair for so long, i still do that, despite not having long hair at the moment. this morning, i even went to do the little hair flip one does after the whole drying thing. my hair is longer than it was, but it has not yet arrived at flipping length.

so the conclusion i've come to, which i sort of already knew, is that ridiculously simple things (like fresh air, a flower, walking to school, dancing in the kitchen) make me smile. last sunday was also a good example. i came back from a walk around the neighborhood to find a couple of my housemates hanging out on our front lawn. so i laid down in the grass and soaked up some sunshine. it felt amazing.

on an unrelated note, in thinking about all this stuff from the past, i think the take-home message from my life so far is: go after what you want. don't be afraid of failure and don't be afraid to be yourself. find other people who also enjoy the little things--laying the grass and smelling the roses with a couple friends makes the experience even better.

parents

i didn't get in trouble much at school when i was little. i remember in first grade the teacher yelled at me for shouting once. evidently i was traumatized because i didn't really speak up again until college. however, from a rather young age, i decided that to be rebellious i had to think everything the opposite of my parents. in second grade, i changed the spelling of my name. seriously. i just think i liked the other spelling better, so i decided to disagree with the spelling they had given me and use a different one. it stuck. a couple years ago my mother spelled my name the 'old' way on something, and even my little brother's girlfriend new it was wrong. we all gave her (my mom) a hard time about that, but i digress.

recently, i was talking to my mother on the phone and my dad was saying something in the background. my mother tells me to hang on a second and that my father needs to give me his opinion on something on the latest political dilemma in california. so my dad gets on the phone and proceeds to rant for a good 15 or 20 minutes. meanwhile i listen on the other end shocked to discover that i actually share my father's point of view on this particular subject. then something completely horrifying begins to cross my mind--maybe my parents are a bit more liberal than i thought they were and *gasp* my plan to be rebellious is no longer working. crap!

in general, parents seem to go through a particularly long uncool phase. it starts when you're in your early teens and lasts sometime into your 20s. my parents started to come out of their uncool phase a bunch of years ago now, but today my father really stepped up his game. he invited me to join his linkedin network. dear goodness, my father is on a networking site that i don't even use that much (but which definitely is trendy)!

this gives me hope. the way i figure it, this is a good sign that one of these days i will be able to successfully teach my parents how to take the pictures off their digital camera...really this is completely selfish because if i teach them this maybe they'll actually post pictures of their adventures. you see, my parents also happen to have a phone which takes pictures and from time to time they try to send me a picture. my phone? well, i can't even receive picture messages, let alone take them.

i'm afraid i'm starting to fall behind on the technology front here folks. i'm going back to coding.

lost in the past

i've mentioned that i had been spending a lot of time thinking about the past recently. today my thoughts have wandered even farther back. i checked my email this morning and found an email from a high school classmate. katie, a woman i grew up with and who i can't remember not knowing, was killed in a car crash yesterday. she was a single mother of three and had started nursing school a few weeks ago. honestly, at this point, i have no idea where to even begin processing margaret and katie's deaths. they were both so young.

emotions are such powerful things. removing yourself from them makes sad or difficult times much easier to deal with; however, experiencing them seems to not necessarily be a bad thing. i will be the first to admit that in my last relationship, i fell hard, and this is probably what made the separation (emotionally) so hard when it was over. if i think about it for too long, it still brings me to tears. i didn't know i was capable of liking someone that much. emotions seem to be a good thing in that both the good and the bad can teach you so much about yourself--how you deal with joy, sorrow, loss, anger, whatever. i'm not sure i've necessarily dealt with all those things well in my life, but i can say i'm learning a lot and hopefully dealing with them better now than i did before.

i'm sad i haven't kept in better touch with people. its definitely something i need to make a better effort to do. though its not possible to keep in touch with everyone, i'm realizing i at least need to remember, and express gratitude, more often for all the friends i've made and people i've met along the way who have made my experiences as rich as they have been.

traffic lights

traffic lights are the enemy of the cold runner. i had been hearing rumors that it was supposed to get "cold" here this weekend. i headed out the door for my run this morning in tri shorts, a tshirt and a long sleeve dri fit top. i was chilly but comfortable for the first mile, until i had to stop and wait for a traffic light to change. brrr! i run in place or up and down the sidewalk while waiting for traffic lights to change, but holy smokes am i glad it wasn't colder!

today has been turning out to be one of those beautiful fall days. the leaves are definitely now changing colors. i'm seeing more red and yellow everyday, and i can definitely enjoy a warm cup of tea at noon and not feeling like i'm going to overheat. its kind of fun. the topics for our tea conversation today: interracial/cultural marriages and secularism (or lack there of) in europe and the us.

i have this stubborn personality quirk that if i've committed to doing something, i want to see it through and do it to the best of my ability. well, i finally decided that sometimes, its just not worth it. i was supposed to be at a meeting tomorrow night and really not looking forward to it. so i finally just contacted the person running the meeting and said i'm happy to be a resource in the future, but i'm not coming. my attendance simply would not be good for me right now...that and i have a ton of work to do. i'm only down one problem set and one lab report since the last work update and am currently trying to finish up another of each. back to work for me!

piano music

internet radio is a great thing. i recently discovered a site that plays piano music and have been listening to it while i'm at work. i love it. a couple of my housemates are in a turkish band and are having their fall concert (bereket--the ut middle eastern ensemble). i've been told they're quite good and that there's also supposed to be some good piano music as well. a bunch of my other housemates and i are going to attend. i'm pretty excited about it.

i think its getting to be that season or point in the semester again where everyone starts to get sick. i think i may be on the verge. i went to bed at 9p last night and slept for 9 hours straight. apparently i was tired. i think one thing i keep learning (or re-realizing) about this summer was just how exhausted and run down i was the whole time. i can see myself getting a bit tired at the moment from work and training--i'm taking a full course load and running 60-65 miles a week--but its not nearly to the same degree.

i apologize for continuing to bring up this summer on my blog. its a general point of frustration with me everytime i think about it, so i generally try not too. every once and awhile though i notice something and it reminds me of something that happened or sheds some light on something else. there were definitely points this summer, at the top of one particularly large mountain in colorado, for example, where i can honestly say i felt like myself. in those moments or hours, i think my soul soared. then again, that's why i have the lifestyle i do and why i can't say i was too disappointed about my summer. the ride is the kind of thing i do. any frustrations are simply part of the experience (though in the short term they're not exactly pleasant). in the end, i hope that these moments of clarity about who i am and what i enjoy will be the memories about this summer that survive.

fracture

i will be the first to admit...the word strikes terror into me. i had a stress fracture once in college once and it is not something i ever want to repeat. i called my mother (who's a nurse) last night after discovering that the bump on my knee didn't seem to be getting any smaller and asked her what i should do. she mentioned something about potentially fracturing something in passing and i think pretty much stopped listening after that. like i said, i'm not exactly a fan of that word.

knowing that my knee didn't hurt when running but still fearing the worst, i went into see one of the sports med docs at university health services. does this hurt? no. how about this? nope. and this? yeah, no. she (the doctor) said either the bursa is inflamed or its a hemotoma (basically a bruise, though this one is far enough below the surface that it doesn't/may never have the color of what you normally think of as a bruise). the solution? (i love this) ice. that's it. i asked if i should be taking anti-inflammatories and she said, nope, the ice will do more good. and she said nothing about running less (since it doesn't hurt when i run) though i did tell her what my weekly mileage looks like right now.

so i'm going to revert back to not being concerned now. if anyone is interested in talking about how cell receptors and ligands cluster, i'd be happy to oblige. welcome to my latest problem set.

internal alarm clocks

they're good for some things. however, when you go to bed at 5:30a and said internal clock buzzes sometime before 8a as usual, it is highly unfortunate. my co-op has a big party once per semester (there are a bunch of smaller ones too, but i digress), and we held the fall party last night. technically it started at 10p, but there were definitely more people here between 3 and 4a then there were at midnight. rumor has it there were still people here at 7a, though i think most people left between 5 and 6a.

i invited some of the people i rode with this summer, and one of the younger ones made an interesting observation. we were standing on the porch talking and he looked over at a bunch of people and said he felt like a lot of the people there could be his ta. i scanned the crowd, recognizing phd students from physics and various engineering disciplines. and laughed. yes, the crowd on the porch was definitely grad student heavy (most of the undergrads were inside). i turned around later and was surprised to see 1/3 to 1/2 of the first and second year bme grad students playing flip cup on the front lawn. i'll see them all in class tomorrow. i'm generally not a fan of huge parties, but i will be the first to admit that everytime i've gone out with my housemates or hung out at one of our house parties, i have thoroughly enjoyed myself.

yesterday evening (and this morning) taught me something very important. if you find something that makes you feel like a million dollars, get it...and then make sure you wear it. three of my roommates and i had gone shopping yesterday afternoon for fun clothes to wear for the party. in one of the stores, i stumbed upon a clearance rack i hadn't noticed before and decided to sort check it out. not too long later, i found it...the perfect little black dress. it was strapless, fitted and came down approximately to the middle of my knee. the top section across the bust was a black satiny fabric bunched together and the rest of the dress was matte black. i tried it on, and it fit perfectly. i stood in the dressing room debating whether or not i actually had something to wear it too, and finally i just decided to go for it. i'm glad i made that decision. several other roommates ended up getting decked out as well.

i have a weakness for cocktail and formal dresses and love getting dressed up. i was reading one of the nytimes blogs a few weeks ago, and the author was talking about the unspoken thing that women wear when they go out--confidence. although it may sound silly, i think sporting that special outfit, piece of jewelry, pair of underwear, color of lipstick or whatever sometimes gives you that confidence that makes you glow. i can definitely see it in my friends and, last night, felt it in myself.

shakespeare

to thine own self be true.
~shakespeare

someone mentioned the above line in a discussion earlier this week and i've been turning it over in my mind ever since. what does it mean to really live authentically? being true to yourself and your beliefs, whatever those may be? and how do you know whether or not you actually are living authentically?

i think i am still figuring out who i am and what i believe. in reflecting on the past though recently, i have been realizing there are people who have been with me through all of it--the major/career changes, the injuries, the religious confusion, the list goes on. in many cases, i suspect these individuals had a better idea of who i am/was than i did, and i find myself wishing i had spent more time with some of them when we were geographically close and hoping that one day we may be again.

injury update: my hands are healing quite nicely and the pain in my arm is not nearly as acute as it was a couple days ago. i can almost do arm circles without my deltoid hurting. my knees are still bruised, but they don't get stiff everytime i stand up anymore. my stride is back to normal when i'm running, though i've been working on shorter strides just to decrease the impact force, and consequently the force, on knees experience. i'm going out for a 20-miler in the morning, so i guess that will be the real test.

for anyone who has seen the article (in the nytimes) about stretching and how it can actually make your muscles more tired, its true. we've known this for awhile. the article contains a pretty good (i.e. basic) physiological explanation of why. here's another interesting tidbit: if you're a distance runner, it has been shown that there is a greater likelihood of injury if you stretch before a marathon than if you don't. david lally, a professor of physiology at univ. of hawaii, performed the study in the early 90s.

correction

i miscounted on my to-do list yesterday. its 5 lab reports, 3 problem sets, 2 term projects, 1 term project update and 1 take-home exam. when the numbers get too large, i just lose count.

i'm currently working on one of those term projects. i have to say, it's rather depressing when you run out of things to look up on the internet while waiting for your code to compile. i was going to work on the other project simultaneously until i realized that in my zeal to get everything off my computer and onto my new external hard drive, i removed some of the files i need (namely the code). oops.

on a different note, i'm the type of person who gets incredibly happy over the little things in life. lately, i have been particularly attached to evenings. i walk back to my house slowly after class and then get to enjoy dinner with 10-20 friends, depending on who's home on a given night. there's something very comforting to me in listening to people talk over dinner and hear about their days. its nice to be part of a community.

one month to go

as i sat in class today listening to a professor describe the problem set he is going to give us in the next week, my mind started to wander to my school to-do list for the remainder of the semester. by december 5, which is 30 days from today, i will have to complete 4 lab reports, 1 take-home exam, 2 problem sets and 2 final projects. lest you think my semester will be done after completing this to-do list, never fear. on december 10th, i have a final. sigh. when december 5 hits though, my attention will be able to turn back to research. i need to write a paper that will likely be submitted for pulication sometime in january. way to start the new year running!

speaking of running, i didn't do my morning run this morning. yesterday my leg got more and more stiff and painful as the day went on, and i think i pulled my deltoid muscle too because i couldn't take notes in certain positions because it made my arm hurt. walking across campus after class was one of the least pleasant experiences i've had in awhile and confirmed that i was no longer going to go out with people to watch the election coverage. instead, i hobbled home and glued myself to the tv with some of my housemates. an early night to bed and a slightly later wake up time this morning did a world of good though. i woke up not stiff and in a lot less discomfort than i was in yesterday. i went for a run this evening, and though it was slow, i finished with no problem. the body's ability to heal itself is a constant source of amazement to me.

yeah obama!

face plant

the last couple weeks i have spent a lot of time thinking about the possibility of tripping while i'm running. i do this for two main reasons: 1) i'm running in the dark and can't see anything and 2) i study tripping so i just think its interesting. the more you're out running (or walking) the more likely you are to trip because there are just that many more opportunities to do so.

well this morning my steps were up. i had gone too many without falling, so it was time. i tripped over a crack in the sidewalk running across the i-35 bridge on 7 mile town lake loop. it was light out. i could see where i was going, but evidently i missed the unevenness of the pavement. it hurt like the dickens, but i got back up and kept running because that was the fastest way to get back to my house. hydrogen peroxide didn't bother the rather deep gash on my knee, but holy smokes, i do not recommend putting it on even a minor scratch on your palms--ouch!

today's lesson: watch where you're going and don't think that just because its light out you can pay less attention.

long day

i got an email this morning from marissa, one of my teammates from college. margaret, another one of our teammates, passed away from brain cancer last week. neither marissa or i had had any idea she had cancer. i sat re-reading the email for awhile. i tried working again, but found i was unable to concentrate. i'd go back and re-read the email.

i can only remember margaret being happy and healthy. we were teammates on the cross-country, track and crew teams, so my memories of her are filled with many a long run, pasta party or bus ride to a meet. the fall that we started rowing, the coaches basically pitted us against each other because we could out pull girls a lot heavier than us on an erg and definitely out run them...so we were left to push each other. i'm grateful for her presence as a role model and am glad i got to be her teammate.

although i realize its dangerous to dwell too much on the past, i spent a lot of today thinking about it. sometimes i wonder how life would have worked out if things had happened some other way, but then if they did, maybe i would never have gone to mit or moved to hawaii or come to texas or met any of the people that i have along the way. i wouldn't give up the people. the challenge is to stay in touch with everyone to help celebrate, support, grieve, whenever its most needed and to let them know how much they're valued and loved.

mixing of worlds

i have been running into people from the ride this summer more and more frequently (though randomly) around town. its been a good thing too as i think it has helped give me perspective. i mentioned earlier that i had felt pretty isolated and rather unliked or unloved this summer, namely because people just seemed to be annoyed with me all the time for one thing or another. recently several people have helped me to see i wasn't necessarily the cause of the annoyance though i may have been the one it was taken out on. its a subtle difference, but it definitely explains a number of things.

yesterday i had a pretty cool experience of the mixing of my worlds. the paulists, an order of catholic priests, were started in the us 150 years ago this year. the first place they started a campus ministry was at the university of california (berkeley), and the second? well, it was here in austin at ut. this year marks the 100th anniversary of the paulists being at ut, so there has been much celebration. last night, the 5p mass at the ut catholic center was presided over by the cardinal for the region. people came to mass in tuxes as they were going to a black tie optional affair for the celebration following the mass. it was pretty neat to see people that dressed up at mass. priests from all over the area and who had served at ut in the past were present, and it seemed a very festive occasion.

on to the mixing of worlds though, the interfaith panel for the university was invited. members of this panel are from the various religious organizations at ut. i have been taking a class at the lds institute of religion across the street from house one night a week, and the instructor for the class happens to be the lds representative on the panel. he mentioned that he was going the other night in class and seemed pretty excited about it. i haven't seen him since just before the mass, but i'm looking forward to hearing his thoughts this week. he said he and his wife had been to a mass before though he wasn't super familiar with it. this mass was a little different because there was a cardinal saying it, so the details are a little different than what you would see on your average weekend. i haven't seen my teacher since last night on the way over to mass, but i am looking forward to hearing his thoughts. i've never had any of my lds friends come to mass with me (though i don't know that i've ever specifically invited any of them to join me either). i like the services of both churches (catholic and lds) for different reasons. i've never really talked about those reasons with anyone as i don't know anyone else who is familiar with both faith traditions.

maybe in contrast to one of my earlier posts i'm not 'not religious' but rather am struggling with the desire for a system of beliefs while trying to discern exactly what to (and what i) believe. meanwhile, there is also this pull to try and understand how two faith traditions have influenced my life (albeit one for a much longer period of time than the other).

the last two weeks i have been trying to embrace this concept of a day of rest from work. actually, i'm rather enjoying it. i haven't done any school work. last sunday i wrote thank you notes for texas 4000 (that would be volunteer work, not "work" per se) and today i have been reading for pleasure and talking to my roommates. earlier i was laying in the grass in front of my house reading and sleeping (not at the same time), and it was nice to be outside just being. there's a calm to the weekends in our part of the weekend...assuming there isn't a home football game.

which leads me to the football game last night. ouch. the hail mary pass got a new usage in my opinion. the pass wasn't as long, but holy smokes. with just a few seconds to go in the game, texas tech scores on a pass the quarterback didn't even really seem to think would work. the result was a touchdown and one second left on the clock. its a bummer the longhorns lost, but well played texas tech.

congrats to michael for finishing his first marathon today (nyc marathon)!

bzzzzzzz

bees! the bee costumes were a great success. we swarmed over to another co-op for a little bit last night and then headed south to check out 6th street. i'd never been to 6th street before, let alone on halloween, so it was quite the experience. think waikiki at midnight, but instead of just the sidewalks being packed, the whole street is closed off...and packed. crazy! after wandering around there for a little bit, we headed further south to 4th street where i ran into daniel and kacie and got to talk to them for a little bit. in the wee hours of this morning, we walked back up towards campus and headed to kerbey lane for some late night queso. so the take home message is that i had a lot of fun skipping and buzzing about and am glad i got to hang out with my roommates!

i have no problem running marathons, but walking about all night is just downright exhausting. my legs were sore before i even started my 20 mile run this morning. time-wise, the run wasn't super slow, but my legs are currently toast. i'm glad i have a day off tomorrow!

in other tri related news, my friends michelle and michael g. are currently racing ironman florida. michelle flew on the bike, averaging over 20 mph and is looking strong on the run so far. the splits are looking like im pr material. her husband michael isn't too far behind, but he wasn't able to train quite as much. he's a pretty strong runner though, so hopefully the marathon is easy (relatively speaking of course). michael b. is tackling the nyc marathon tomorrow morning. it will be his first marathon--good luck michael!

sports injuries

one of the main questions that lead me to study what i do (and keeps me doing what i'm doing) is 'why do some people get injured while others do not?' while this is definitely a feature piece, there is an interesting article in the ny times today (read it here) which talks about how little we know about injury. the author gives an example of three different athletes who all do fairly high volume training (or at least two do) but whose injury records are very different. what makes some people fragile while others are able to just pound out the miles in worn out shoes? and is the difference only physical? or is some of it mental as well? and can fragility/durability change over time?

on a completely unrelated note, i've been dreaming lately, which is weird. i can't remember the last semester i had where i actually had dreams during the term. i always dream after the term is over and i start sleeping more. right now, however, its the middle of the semester too because in them friends from all different parts/times in my life are saying the things i have been thinking lately though they may not (in reality) actually know the person, do the activity, have the opinion, etc, they're talking about (though i do). so i think all the running i'm doing such that when i sleep, i sleep really well.

it is almost halloween. yeah!

a monster!

it is pretty dark in the morning here. i was finishing my 10 mile run this morning (all of which was done in the dark) when i heard a gurgling sound to my right. i think my blood pressure spiked for a few moments before i realized it was someone's sprinkler system. phew!

on a very random note, congrats to chris and julia on buying their first house. my little brother is all grown up! my friend michael told me not too long ago that i was falling behind...everyone else seemed to be buying houses, getting engaged, having kids, etc, etc. so michael, i think this means that NOW i am officially behind (i wasn't yesterday), but i am okay with that. their house looks awesome...they can see the rockies from their bedroom window.

and in other unrelated news, everyone seems to be coming to austin in february. a friend from the ride will be running the marathon (i've promised to pace), and michael and his gf will be coming to do the half-marathon. that will be one exciting weekend!

i am happy to report that i survived my midterms. i got back the grade for the one i thought i failed, and it turned out i didn't do nearly that bad. in discussing the exam yesterday the professor told us that his class and one other that we took last spring were supposed to be the equivalent of our qualifying exams...so they should be difficult. i hadn't realized that, but somehow this small bit of knowledge (about what our classes were supposed to be) helped me put things into perspective. despite the fact that the class is hard, i admit that i'm learning and being challenged. i like that.

its funny how your expectations about things (classes, people, trips, whatever) can make you see those things in a different light. my class, as i mentioned, makes more sense knowing that its supposed to replace my qualifying exam. i had a lot of expectations going into this past summer, and then the summer turned out to be not at all what i expected. i was also expecting the return to research to be a breeze, but many days, i just want to go outside and actually feel the breeze.

i'm currently realizing too that my classes are permeating my ability to live and think about things other than school. either that or its just making my curiosity level about everything around me in a scientific sense, increase. i lead a discussion this morning in my lab meeting on a paper modeling the probability of tripping. as i was reading the paper in preparation i was thinking about how it related to everything i was studying in biostats and the concept that if you increase the frequency of something minor, something major is also more likely to occur. for example, if you walk more often, you're more likely to trip. if you trip more frequently, there's a higher probability that you'll fall...simply because you trip more often. my headlamp is mia at the moment, so as i was running in the dark this morning, thinking about how i couldn't see, it was a logical next step (no pun intended) to start thinking about the probability of me tripping on an unseen object...i could model this.

saturday...work?

i had this great idea to finish my take-home exam by this evening. it could still happen. instead of getting straight to work though i had adventures, and that was significantly more interesting.

i rolled out of bed around 7:30 this morning and was on the road for a nice 20-miler before 8a. i was running loops around town lake so i could watch the regatta. i have no idea how many teams there were, but people were racing the entire time i was out there. i think i even saw brian racing up and down the shore coaching (or maybe just watching today?).

as i mentioned in an earlier post, the goal of this week was to jump my run mileage up. in the past when i have done this, i've generally been moving pretty slowly on my long run at the end of the week. today i finished, stretched, then looked at the clock and sat there wondering if the batteries were dying. despite the fact that i felt like crap for most of the summer, i am a lot stronger because of it. and its not just on the bike. i think its time to make the run mileage go even higher and see what happens. i need to find another ultra to enter too.

anyways, after my run and a quick lunch, my roommates and i went shopping. i am happy to report i actually found things i like and have something to wear at the GHaus party in a couple weeks! i have also discovered halter tops look good with short hair. as an aside, the hairdresser yesterday informed me that i now officially have a pixie hair cut. apparently this was a necessary step in the process of re-growing out my hair, but i thought i might fall out of the chair when i saw how much of my hair she was cutting. yikes!

and now i return my thoughts to generalized stokes equations and the finer points of the relationship between laplace and fourier transforms.

halloween preparations

the midterm didn't go so well. it was supposed to be a 75 minute test, but after 90 minutes, no one in the room had even budged. there were two problems. i didn't finish the second. several people turned in extra sheets of paper. the derivations were long and not something any of us do regularly in our research. i was pretty upset upon leaving the test, and to make matters worse, 30 minutes after the in-class exam, the take-home portion of the exam went out. ugh. its due on monday, but i have it pretty much done now. i think i'm going to turn it in tomorrow just so i can have a day to relax this weekend.

fortunately, this week saw my training go up. by the end of my run tomorrow morning, i'll have logged 60 miles this week. my legs actually feel pretty good. its less than 2 months to go before dallas...which also means less than 2 months to go before my semester ends.

i ran into a friend from the summer ride today. she too is swamped with work this semester. we were laughing about counting down days until its over. i suppose this isn't the best way to go about one's semester, but what can you do. i had a meeting with my advisor yesterday and as there do not seem to be classes offered which would be particularly useful for me, he thought it might be good for me to just not take classes. so it appears that i will be signed up for the department seminar and 8 units of research credit.

thoughts of traveling are dancing through my head as a result of the possibility of a classless term. i know of a group going to hike camino de santiago in spain in the spring (for a week) and dropped someone an email to find out more about it.

mostly when i think about this past summer now, my initial thought is always, what in the world happened? and my answer to myself is, i don't know and then for while afterwards i tend to feel like a freshly healed wound was just re-opened (as i currently actually have such a wound from testing out new running gear last weekend, i can assure you that it is on my top ten list of things i don't really want to keep experiencing). i think what makes it most difficult is the not knowing. i don't even know where to start trying. i think the weirdest thing too is that i invested so much time and energy into making that trip happen that i didn't have time for much else. when i arrived back in austin, i suddenly didn't have the person i was closest to, and i felt like i was starting again from ground zero, despite having supposedly lived here for the better part of a year. i'm not sure i've really even had time to process that either because of the jump right back into school! one step at a time i suppose!

in the meantime, i have more important (?) things to worry about: pumpkin carving and halloween costumes. the carving festivites are supposed to commence early next week after dinner one night with my housemates. the artist in the house has even started coaching us about drawing our design the day before or earlier in the day and then coming back to it to make sure we like it before fully committing (sheesh!). honestly, i'll probably dive right in anyways. several of us are working on matching costumes. mine may in part be influenced by my hair. i'm off to try a friend's hairdresser and see if she can do something for my rather spikey do!

mid-term fun

the craziness that is mid-terms is almost over. i spent the entire weekend save a 3 hour run and a walk to the library inside doing homework and studying. ugh. fortunately, however, i think this means my brain finally turned back on. yeah! i can now tell you more than you'd ever like to know about how to build a model to show that tumors grow assymetrically (writing the code for it was my saturday afternoon project), how you can analyze a bunch of genetic data using anova and what population dynamics for wolves and bunnies look like.

for my exam tomorrow, the professor came up with a profound insight on what to study for the exam: how to solve any order of differential equation without a computer. the class's response to this? um, shouldn't we have to know the stuff from our class notes? apparently not. we just have to know how to solve math problems. given what the problem sets have looked like so far in this class, i think the class (myself included) is rather scared. the professor gave us feedback forms yesterday to fill out so we could comment on how we thought the class was going so far for the semester. he sent out an email within an hour of the end of class clearly concerned with the feedback he got. as i discovered earlier today, i had forgotten to turn mine in, so evidently my classmates are deriving about the same amount of joy out of this class as i am.

in running news, its less than two months until dallas. i decided that recovery from travel and my last race had gone on long enough, so this week starts back to two-a-days a couple days a week. i'm still not quite on this time zone (its really easy to stay up really late, but harder to get up early in the morning), so mornings are a little rough, but after i start actually running, i'm feeling pretty good.

fall!

on the plane on tuesday as we were landing in denver, the pilot announced that it was 2 degrees C or approximately 36 degrees F. i remember being shocked and thinking, its october! how can that be?! thank goodness i'm coming from somewhere it was 90+ degrees and going somewhere were it is also 90+ degrees.

well, apparently someone switched the fall button on yesterday morning in austin. wednesday it was still in the 90s, and yesterday it wasn't. today, i'm walking around in jeans and a sweater and wishing i was wearing another layer. the leaves are still green, but maybe they will change soon too. i'll have to find a pumpkin to carve or something. in any case, it is great weather for running.

back in texas

i'm not sure putting words to my weekend would do it justice at this point. my roommates pointed out that i have a smile on my face again, so that i think sums up my trip.

congrats to heidi and jon on their marriage!

congrats to neil and nick on successful im kona finishes!

i arrived back in texas and went from the airport straight to class. i even walked in carrying my bag. the next eight days or so are going to be crazy busy with work...yeah midterms.

meetings

http://indexed.blogspot.com/2008/10/trapped.html

5:17

that would be my finish time from yesterday. it is 21 minutes faster than my previous half-im time. my swim split was 32 minutes and change (we think the swim was short, either that or there was a ridiculous current when coming down the back stretch). my bike split was 2:43, which is an average of 20.3 mph, and my run split was 1:53, which is 8:41/mi pace. this race was the perfect reminder of how endurance races are really just tests of how well you can control/deal with your emotions and how well you feed yourself.

the swim: this swim confirmed something i had long suspected but haven't really tested much. i am terrified of fresh water--lakes, rivers, etc. i think they're gross, and the general murkiness just freaks me out, much the same way i think some people feel about the ocean. i've done a fair amount of open water swimming, but it has always been in the ocean. anyways, the race was held in a reservoir in austin. after having decided that i was winging this race anyways, i didn't bother to do any practice open water swims. i think i had a panic attack in the first 200m because the water was so dark and there were plants wrapping around my arms. i took a couple strokes breast stroke style, calmed myself down and moved to the outside of the pack. i had to swim farther, but that was okay. a few hundred meters of this, and i got used to the darkness and was able to move back into the pack.

the race did end up being wetsuit legal. i think this is because the race officials deliberately went to find the coldest part of the lake and then took the water temperature there. i was expecting the water to be frigid, so i went to put my feet in the water to prepare myself. the water felt great though, and actually, by the last couple hundred meters i was sweating during the swim. i remember swimming along wondering how the people in full wetsuits were surviving because the water was so warm (i was wearing tri shorts and a sleeveless tri top).

the bike: i was a little worried about the bike at first for a couple reasons. first, the last time i raced on this bike was kona...where i had the misfortune to get 3 flats. well, when i got to transition yesterday morning, my rear tire was completely flat, and as luck would have it, i only had one spare tube on me that had a long stem valve. the mavic people gave me an extra tube though, and i changed my tube out before the race started. the other reason i was worried, which was related, was that i only had one spare tube and one CO2 cartridge in my saddle bag. again, i thought i had more at home, but i couldn't find anything as i was packing saturday night. knowing what happened the last time i had raced on the bike, i knew that one set of flat fixing essentials might not be good. since i didn't have the option to buy more at that point, i figured i would just hope for the best. i am happy to report, i had no flats.

my other issue with the bike was related to timing. i don't have a computer on my tri bike because i like to race by feel. however, i also haven't been wearing a watch since i lost it somewhere in alaska. as a result, i had no way of knowing what time it was to keep myself on track with calories and fluids on the bike. i had maybe 500 calories total and about 72 oz of fluids (some of which were also the calories). in short, i was definitely below where i should have been, but i didn't really know. i sort of gauged it on distance, but again, i had no idea how fast i was going. maybe it is time to get a watch.

after the panic attack on the swim, i got on the bike thinking, you know, i have no expectations for this race, and i just rode my bike to alaska. why not time trial the bike? i have always raced conservatively, and it just seemed like it might be fun to, well, not. so that's what i did. women didn't pass me, though there were a couple around me that were going about the same pace as me, and i spent most of the ride with the guys, which was a lot of fun. i think it was at the point when i was looking at the people riding around me that i realized maybe i had gotten a bit stronger at cycling.

the run: despite saying i wasn't going to ride conservatively, i think i did to some extent, because otherwise i have no way of explaining my run. i started running and felt alright, but i started to feel great about 5 miles in after having gone up a hill they named 'quadzilla.' i started picking up the pace again, but by about mile 10, i was starting to get tired. my nutrition was still pretty bad because i just didn't want to eat or drink anything. i tried forcing down gels and gatorade and definitely got calories and fluids in, but not as much as i needed. the last two miles or so, i think i was nearing the bonk zone. the cloud cover had cleared so it was just sunny and hot and the course was exposed. i passed leya at the turn around in the expo center on my second lap, and then leya passed me going up quadzilla (my second time, her first time) a few miles later (i was coaching leya and her husband gerald when they met several years ago in honolulu. they moved to austin about a year before i did).

i picked up the pace for the last couple hundred meters or so, as much as one could pick up the pace when one is that tired. there is a clock above the finish line that is set to the time when the first wave starts the race, so it was about 14 minutes faster then my chip time. i remember as i was starting my second lap (and near the finish line) hearing the announcer say something about it being a little before 4:30 race time and thinking, maybe i should stop and tell him his clock must be wrong. there is no way i could be going that fast. well, when i was crossing the finish line, the time said 5:30, which even without adjusting for my start time was faster than my previous half-im pr. i was pretty stoked when i crossed the finish line.

after the race, i got food and a massage and hung out with some friends...and apparently the guy who won the race. the field of pros was stacked, which was kind of exciting, although i never really saw them because of the course layout. i was kind of surprised that there were that many people there given that kona is next weekend.

one thing that this weekend brought back to me was my sense of competition. i don't think of myself as a particularly competitive person. i went to go pick up my packet on friday night though and thoughts of splits and paces danced through my head. i didn't have an expectation for the race, as i mentioned, but that doesn't necessarily, in my mind at least, equate to going out with the intention to sandbag it. for me, as i mentioned in at least one earlier post, the race was an attempt to get some of myself back, and i wanted to be completely exhausted at the end of it, regardless of how fast or slow i had to go to achieve that. i suppose when i race, i always go out in search of a pr, though i don't really know enough of the field in this area yet to be able to say i want to be faster than a particular person. what can i say--type a triathlete, at your service.

i just got asked to start coaching again too, something i haven't done since moving to texas, though its something i have definitely been missing. i think in someways not doing it has made all the sports med related stuff more appealing--a subconscious effort to get involved with the things that got me interested in what i do in the first place.

race update

the last rumor i heard was that there were 2300 athletes. this may not seem like a very large number to those unfamiliar with the sport, but i'll try to help you understand. have you ever seen a koi pond? when you drop a piece of bread into the water, the fish swim over each other in a frenzy trying to get to the bread. now imagine that instead of fish, there were people. ironman races have "mass starts" which means that everyone starts at the same time. so, this weekend, when the gun goes off, 2300 people will all start swimming at the same time, in the same small bit of water on the most direct route possible to the next buoy on the course. talk about an adrenaline rush.

i have been really happy lately and, in the last couple of days, find myself smiling for no reason at all. honestly, i'm not sure what the cause of this is. i'm not sure if it was evident from the descriptions i have written, but i've been getting that high during my workouts, for example, despite the fact that my workouts are shorter because of the taper. maybe though it is also a product of being excited about the next week and half. one week from today i'll be in hawaii!

but apparently my brother will be

i made a post yesterday with a cartoon about the economy crisis. my brother (who is a trader) then calls me last night and says yeah, so we thought they weren't do any layoffs in my department, but i may not have a job by the end of the week. i was going to try and be consoling, but then he told me that if that happens he's going to try and play professional volleyball in europe for a bit. while i would never hope for anyone to lose their job, my brother sounds pretty excited about his backup plan and i can't exactly say i'm not supportive of the idea. in fact, i think he'd really enjoy it. so now i'll just hope that whatever happens this week happens for the best.

while we on the phone i told him about a bit of a pickle i seem to have gotten myself into. actually, it would probably be more correct to say i've been in this pickle for a couple years it just didn't occur to me that i should be concerned until recently. regardless, this incident confirmed a suspicion i had. sometimes a cup of tea will not solve every problem. however, talking to your sibling and having them make fun of the whole thing and how you got yourself into whatever pickle you're in in the first place will. i went to sleep last night chuckling at the ridiculousness (at times) that is my life.

only four days left until the half-ironman. the last report i heard was that the water was still too warm to wear wetsuits (yeah!). i've been keeping an eye on the weather though and the highs for the day seem to be dropping heading into the weekend. if we get weather in the low to mid 80s (which at this point is what is predicted) i'll be thrilled. my taper seems to be going well. my legs feel alright and i feel smooth in the water. arguably i should have done some open water swims in freshwater (all my open water swimming has been in the ocean), but i'm not out to set any records on sunday, so it'll be a good learning experience.

i won't be affected by the current economy crisis

why? because i'm a grad student and according to phd comics's handy decision chart, i will be remaining in the protective academic cocoon.

check out the comic strip here

exhausting but exhilarating

a couple weeks ago i was talking to my friend rory and told him that i had signed up for a half-ironman to distract myself, and his response to my comment was something to the effect of 'oh, so you mean you signed up for it so you have lots of time on the bike to think about things?' my response to that was, hm, oops, you've definitely got a point.

my workout yesterday was awesome. we did 109 miles in six hours. i thought we were only going to be doing six 20' intervals at race pace, but it turned out we were doing eight. so my six hour ride was actually about two hours of warm up and four hours of intervals at a pace that was roughly between olympic and half-ironman distance paces. in other words, it was fast. it was really fast. and when we were done riding, we ran about 4.75 miles. it was hot. i felt fine when i got off the bike, but about a mile into the run i started to feel really tired. i wasn't running with a watch so i had no idea how fast or slow i was running. all i knew was that i felt like i was crawling. when i got done and found out how far we'd gone in how much time though, i realized that i had been running at an 8 something per mile pace and decided i should be okay for next weekend (if not more than okay). this was probably the hardest workout i've done in a couple years. laying on the cold tile floor at my friends' house afterward felt like heaven.

i just finished another book. this one was called surprised by god and it was written by a woman named danya ruttenberg. she was raised a cultural jew, became an atheist at age 13, studied philosophy and religion in college and then in her early 30s became a rabbi. the book is about her spiritual maturation. through the first half or so of the book i would barely get through a couple pages before i'd stop and, in my head, say 'YES! that is exactly i have/am experiencing/struggling with/etc.' she spends quite a bit of time talking about what is in essence meshing worlds--friends, family, lifestyle from all parts of one's life. in my opinion at least, this extends beyond just one's religious beliefs. for a few years i think i struggled with this from a religious perspective, but for even longer, i've struggled with it from the perspective of an athlete. honestly, i don't feel like i've made any progress from where i started my freshman year in college. sometimes, i really think it would be fun to go out more. i don't though because my experiences have taught me that getting up and going riding or running with people (or by myself) is more fun for me. i'm still torn over that decision most weekends, then i get up and do something like i did yesterday morning though and i feel empowered...though just as exhausted as if i had stayed up until the wee hours hanging out, if not more so.

what i'm doing when i graduate

i'm going to work for these guys and study human biomechanics AND physiology...oh, and running.

born to run

music

its amazing how listening to music can completely change my mood. i don't mean changing it from a good mood or a bad mood either. its something more subtle. it can make me go from bored to interested, if that makes sense. i'm in the process of pulling out all my data for some research i need to write a paper on, and its gorgeous outside. i'd really just rather be out there. that said, the right music playing on my ipod can get me back in the working groove, which is a good thing when i'm at work.

this week is flying by, which is good because i'm really excited for the weekend. training is getting easier as the workouts are getting harder. this saturday some friends and i are doing a six hour ride (with intervals) followed by a 5 mile run and then i'll do a long run on sunday morning. i mentioned awhile back that i signed up for this half-ironman in an effort to sort of get my life back. i knew i enjoyed training and figured that if i gave myself something to train for it would get me out of the funk i was in. i wasn't really sure that it was working for a bit, but in the past week or so i have found myself really glad i gave myself that race goal. it has made me go through the motions until i rediscovered (or maybe just reminded me) why i enjoy all things endurance. the training has also given me a weekend social outlet with others who are just as crazy and given me the time and space to sort out things in my head that needed some sorting.

running feels great. i'm finding that i need to hold myself back in terms of distance right now. since i didn't run regularly over the summer, i want to avoid ramping the mileage up too fast, so i've been slowly building up again. by the end of this week i'll be back around 40 miles/wk, which is a good starting point to build from just under 2.5 months out from dallas. i'm really enjoying being out on my bike too. i've been doing a trainer workout each week too just because of the whole daylight-work combination which sometimes gets me home a little too late to do a decent ride. i was avoiding the pool for a bit while my cough went away, but even that is going alright...just keep your fingers crossed that the hot weather continues so we don't have to wear wetsuits next weekend for the race!

police

i saw the funniest thing on the way to class this morning. there was a cop on campus standing at the corner of speedway and 24th street trying to direct traffic, mostly pedestrian traffic. she kept telling people to get on the sidewalk and cross the street in the crosswalk. i wanted to stop and say to her 'lady, do you have any idea what you're trying to do? just look at the number of people walking through this intersection and then look at the size of the sidewalk.' there is clearly not enough space to handle the volume of pedestrian traffic that goes through that intersection on a given school day. it would be much easier to close off the roads to cars and let people walk/bike/etc. i almost felt sympathy for the cop, but then i didn't...because the whole effort was just silly.

say what you need say

these are the lyrics to the song i happen to have been listening to a lot lately. sometimes i listen to songs just because i like the sound of them without actually paying much attention to what they're saying. a friend called me on this a few years ago and i started paying more attention. i started listening to this song because i liked the sound, but then i found that the lyrics actually provided some wisdom.

in the last five (or more) years, i think i have been slowly learning that i tend to bottle things up--both positive and negative. running gets most pent up anything out of my system, but not every problem or success can be solved or celebrated alone. it is at that point that words seem to come in handy though they frequently come out in random orders and don't adequately express my opinion. for example, for me to write political commentary on this blog would be fruitless. i just don't know where to begin with my dislike of half of a particular party's presidential ticket...but i digress.

the lyrics apply more on a personal level, in my opinion, of expressing oneself and the frustration associated with not being able to. for your reading pleasure 'say what you need to say' by john mayer (and yes, i listen to pop music sometimes):

Take all of your wasted honor
Every little past frustration
Take all of your so-called problems
Better put them in quotations

Say what you need to say...

Walking like a one man army
Fighting with the shadows in your head
Living out the same old moment
Knowing you’d be better off instead
If you could only

Say what you need to say...

Have no fear for giving in
Have no fear for giving over
You better know that in the end
It’s better to say too much
Than never to say what you need to say again

Even if your hands are shaking
And your faith is broken
Even as the eyes are closing
Do it with a heart wide open

Say what you need to say...

the kite runner

i finished the book this afternoon when i got home from work. i was a little concerned a few days ago that i wasn't going to finish it. i got bored somewhere in the first half of the book, but i decided to keep reading anyways. while i don't think i will read it again, it is very well written and the story will suck you in if you let it.

in completely unrelated news, i did something i didn't think would happen anytime soon. i got the new $150k camera system in my lab up and running. i'm not collecting data yet, and won't be until after i write a paper about my other data, but i'm happy to report that i got it working...which means now i have something for my undergrad to do. soon we will be through the training phase and then i can set him lose with some data.

i was sitting in the computer lab last night finishing up a problem set that was due earlier today while instant messaging with my friend matt. i told him that i felt at home sitting in the computer science (cs) lab working though i was not exactly a cs type. he informed me i was in denial and wrote me the following code to prove it:

if(Patricia.IsInDenial)
{
Matt.Intervention(Patricia);
}
else
{
Patricia.EatDeliciousCake();
}

let's suffice it to say that i didn't get to eat delicious cake, but i can tell you how to write that code in another computing language. point matt.

its amazing what the passage of time can do. or maybe its amazing how distractions can make time pass so quickly. its been just over a month since we finished the bike ride to alaska, but it feels like longer. i don't see anyone from the trip on a regular basis, though i run into people randomly on campus every couple days. the friend i was studying with last night asked at one point if i thought i had finally started to decompress from the summer (or if i was at least slightly less angry about the whole experience). i laughed. i'm not exactly an angry or pessimistic person, so being too bent out of shape about the whole thing for any extended length of time is kind of against my nature.

i mentioned recently that i think things happen for a reason, and i think things happened this summer the way they did for a reason. lately, i'll be doing something completely random and one of those reasons will pop into my head. i think many (most?) of those insights have had something to do with being aware of the presence or absence of someone in my life. namely though they are making me more and more grateful for presence of my family and friends.

sunrise

the following is from a friend's blog:

"Knowing someone well is a privilege. Consider it, someone lets you into their world and shares with you the thoughts and feelings that drives their soul. It’s a pretty spectacular journey to say the least. And it’s even better when you come to know that person better, from the inside out, and you realize they form goodness. It’s simply awesome. To see someone not because of the qualities outside or the accomplishments they champion, but rather to view that person from a perspective only your internal senses can pick up. That connection serves to jump start all of our mortal senses to a new plane. A playing field where you actually can experience the sensation of toes tingling and hearts racing at the mere perception of that someone. Those perceptions, those sensations, seem to be from a different realm, a more hallowed and exclusive place of clarity. It’s a good thing."

i suppose there are only a few people in life you really get to know THAT well, and i feel pretty blessed to have people in my life for whom love has only grown over time. i think i'm also very fortunate to have a group of friends who will give me crap when that's what i need to be given but still love me despite my faults.

i had a pretty rough night last night. i was exhausted and feeling slightly under the weather in the afternoon, so i went to bed pretty early. i just lay there and tossed and turned with my mind replaying things over and over again before i finally fell asleep. it wasn't restful at all really, but i still jumped out of bed when my alarm went off at 5:45a this morning so i could go ride with some friends. i guess i just wanted to be up.

we had wheels on the road by 7:15a. the sun wasn't quite up yet, but the sky was light enough. five miles or so into the ride and the sun appeared. i haven't seen a sunrise like this in awhile, and it was beautiful. i was taught from a young age (intentionally or not i don't know) that sitting down with a cup of tea can solve basically every problem, and i've had a lot of tea to drink in the last couple months (a box of mixed herbal teas now resides in my desk drawer at work). this morning, however, i was reminded that a lot of rest and a beautiful sunrise can work just as well.

ladera repeats

i would not recommend doing them on a tri bike...especially one that has a gear combination like mine. you might just fall over. for those who aren't familiar, ladera = rather sizable (short but steep) hill. fortunately, i didn't fall over, but there was one point on the first repeat that i thought i was going to. next time, i'll bring a different bike to do that workout.

i decided to take a religion class for fun on wednesday evening and i went for the first time last night. i was debating whether or not i should go not wanting to add more stuff to my schedule, but in the end i decided it wouldn't hurt to go once and see what it was like. within 15 minutes of being there though i was glad i went. the teacher, who is actually also a phd student at ut, is very good. he knows his stuff, and he also seems to know how to connect with his audience (university age folks). i don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but at one point he gave an example that went something like this: you know when your alarm clock goes off in the morning and you get up and turn it off...but then your bed says 'i love you' and you respond (with open arms) 'i love you too' and crawl back under the covers. i (and most of the other students) just about fell off my chair laughing as i listened to him animatedly share the example. i knew exactly what he was talking about because yesterday morning i had that exact conversation with my bed and crawled back under my covers for another 15 minutes after shutting off my alarm.

and now for something completely different: two of my roommates just got engaged. actually, i found out this morning, they got engaged five weeks ago, but they just told the rest of us two nights ago. they're getting married in the next few days i think because we're having a bachelorette party for emily this evening after dinner. in some circles of my friends, if people told me they were getting married six months after starting to date, i probably wouldn't blink. however, this couple isn't in one of those circles, so i was really surprised when they told me. they both seem really happy and excited (and a bit scared) about it, which is always good. i'm not sure we've had a married couple in the house before so it should be interesting!

pistachio pudding

yes, the color is a little odd, but don't be put off by it. it tastes delicious on a hot day after a long workout. i went out for a 4.75 hour ride this morning and followed it up with a 3 mile run. i did the ride continuously, which was a nice change from what was happening this summer on my adventure, on 1.5 big bottles of water, 1 bottle of gatorade and half a peanut butter sandwich. i thought that after stopping every 20 miles it would be hard for me to get back in the habit of not stopping that frequently. turns out i was wrong.

there was a headwind the whole second half of the ride and the heat kept climbing. i'm enjoying the heat, but i regularly find myself one step behind in the fluids department and constantly craving salt. that and i know i'm not getting enough calories when i go out for long workouts. these problems are quickly bringing to light some of the things missing from life, particularly gels and Perpetuem.

speaking of cravings, i've found that when i crave certain things, there is usually a reason for it. for example, when i start craving sweets, its generally because i'm not getting enough protein. i'm sure my body was left with all sorts of nutritional deficiencies this summer, but i'm eating better now. the latest craving though has been cheese. i did some research the other day and found out this is generally associated with the need for protein, fat, vitamin b12 and/or calcium. increasing the milk intake (hence pistachio pudding) has made the craving go away, but i hadn't thought of vitamin b12. i probably had about a week's worth of my rda in the last couple months, though (maybe not ironically) i've had an affinity towards spinach (good source of vitamin b12) ever since finishing the ride. its funny how your body works.

in case you were concerned about how austin did with respect to ike, don't worry. the sky to the east of us was overcast yesterday afternoon, but that was the worst of it. we didn't get rain or thunderstorms though we were looking forward to the cooler weather the former in particular would have brought. my house had it's cleanup day yesterday actually, and in anticipation of rain, all of the projects were done inside the house, so i spent the whole day installing linoleum (we have a new kitchen floor now!). the one thing the storm did bring to austin was humidity. we were dripping with sweat all day. when i went for my long run last night, i overheard someone say that it was 95 degrees...at 7:30p, and honestly, i didn't know it was possible to sweat as much as i had been all day and still sweat during my run. i'll be keeping my eyes peeled to see how they're asking people to get involved with recovery efforts for where the storm did hit though. galveston looks pretty bad from all the pictures i've seen.

yIKEs!

apparently the world might end in the next day or two. you know how i know that? ut postponed the football game. no, there will not be football in austin this weekend. i am currently taking this as a sign that i'm not yet supposed to see a ut football game in person. a couple of my roommates and i had tickets to this particular game, which was supposed to be my first.

fortunately, my other roommates have deemed all of this reason to celebrate. the "older" ladies in the house (aka the female grad students) have decided to have a few glasses (or bottles) of wine on the porch while watching the rain. my only concern about this plan of attack is with regards to the rain. we're so far inland, i will be interested to see how badly we actually get hit.

last night, i finished Brida, paulo coehlo's latest book about an irish girl searching for knowledge and her soul mate who seems to have trouble committing to things. ironic, yeah? i wouldn't consider myself a particularly religious person as far as subscribing to a particular one, though religion fascinates me and i enjoy seeing different religious ceremonies/church services/etc. i do believe things happen for a reason and that people come into and out of one's life to teach us things. i first saw this book (brida) in the amsterdam airport on my way back to the us in may and thought it looked intriguing. i spent a lot of time this summer wanting to get my hands on a copy, but when i looked at a bookstore in laramie, they didn't have it. later when i looked in other stores i realized that the book was only available in hardback, or in other words, it was more expensive than my grad student income was interested in. so, i waited until i got back to ut and could take it out of the library.

brida, it turns out, is a witch, and the story relates her coming into that knowledge. while i'm not sure i'm exactly a witch (though i'm sure i have my moments), some of the experiences discussed in the book, i could relate to. in one moment in particular, she realizes that at some point every person, regardless of whether or not he or she is a witch, will realize (1) the majesty of the world we live in, if only for a second, and (2) who exactly he or she is.

with respect to the former, i can think of two places where i have realized how beautiful my surroundings are. the first was in gombe stream national park, tanzania. its the area in which jane goodall did all her chimpanzee research. i was hiking with some of my traveling companions, and i remember being overwhelmed by everything around me. i also remember knowing exactly who i was and what i liked. it was just a moment and then it was gone.

the reason that i bring this up has to do with my hair. a couple months before going to tanzania, i cut my hair shorter than it ever had been for no particular reason. right now however, its even shorter (this time cut for a reason). while your hair doesn't change who you are, when you look in the mirror, you don't necessarily recognize yourself if you drastically change the way you look. the last month or two, i have been thinking a lot about who i am and how i define myself because the reflection in the mirror is so different. my sense of self as a woman, an athlete and an engineer (among other things) have become stronger.

when i was in college and injured, i realized that i had always defined myself as a runner. everyone knew that i ran, and i think that people who know me well now would also describe me as that. however, when i couldn't run, i felt a bit lost, and i struggled to figure out who i was if i was not a runner. ultimately, i was able to run again, but my relationship with the sport has changed. i feel like every time i get to go is a gift, and it makes me happy that i have another opportunity to do it. the same i think might be said for being an 'engineer.' i didn't really understand that adjective until i stopped studying engineering for a time and came back to it. i like finding solutions.

the other experience, which is actually a recurring experience, of perceiving the beauty around me was living in hawaii. even after living there for years, i'd still get up in the morning and be in awe of the mountains and the ocean. i wouldn't say i wake up every morning like that in austin, but there have been several times here where i have been caught off guard by how pretty it is. i am excited for fall and the changing of the leaves. though honestly, i'm more excited to be in hawaii in a few weeks.

returning to the belief that things happen for a reason, i'm not sure i would have appreciated brida if i had read it a few months ago. aside from discussing relationships with one's surroundings, it talks about relationships with people, and i think i needed to hear what the book had to say. i will leave it to you to read the book and find out what i'm talking about though so i don't spoil anything. in the end, the book spoke to me about things i needed to hear at this particular point in my life.

i have woken up the past couple days before my alarm clock. i think i'm finally starting to be rested. my swim felt great yesterday morning and my runs the last three days have felt great. i went running last night with my mp3 player (not something i make a habit of running with). if you've never run listening to enya, i suggest trying it. its weird. i didn't do it intentionally, but when it came on it felt odd to be running to something that would normally make me mellow. this weekend i'll be doing my long run tomorrow before my house work day, and then barring problems with the weather, i'm going to do a long brick on sunday morning. the latter in particular i am really looking forward to.