brrr...no....wait....warm!

this morning started off rather chilly and i was sporting two layers of clothing, fleece gloves and a headband when i headed out to help teach the new texas 4000 riders how to ride. two hours later i was down to my jersey, bike shorts and arm warmers, and the latter were only necessary because i didn't have sunscreen on my arms. it had warmed up about 25 degrees in a 2.5 hour period. nice.

michelle and i went out on a 3.5 hour ride after the teaching session. during this ride we decided we were both terribly out of cycling shape (we've both been running focused lately). that and neither of had eaten or drank enough relative to the amount of exercise and temperature. i haven't really bonked in a workout in awhile, but i think the last hour of this ride discontinued this streak.

on a completely different note, i went to the opening of bass concert hall last night. we heard the ut symphony, a couple of opera singers, the ut jazz ensemble....and then ghostland observatory played...with the jazz ensemble...and then the ut marching band came parading in. it was awesome. we were dancing in the aisles. ghostland observatory is synthesizer and one singer meet smoke, lasers and lights. i wish i could have gone to a whole concert where they only played music like those last 15 minutes. they were great.

it never goes away

warning: there is an unusually high sap content in this entry, so if that sort of thing upsets your stomach, i'd suggest waiting until the next post.

i was in yoga this evening and the teacher did something i have never experienced before in a class. normally if there is music playing in the background, it is instrumental or may have some chanting. well, this instructor played songs with words. all of the songs were pretty mellow, but gave the whole class a different feel for me. one of the early songs really struck me, so i asked the teacher about it after the class. its called 'the fear you won't fall' by joshua radin.

i looked it up on youtube when i got home, and the video that i happened to choose flashed a series of quotes on the screen. some of the quotes were lyrics from the song and others just made you pause. this one made me pause:

"the first time you fall in love, it changes your life, and no matter how hard you try, it never goes away."

ah. that explains it.

what the world needs

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Howard Thurman

this morning i heard about a potential 50-miler. its part of the jemez mt. trail series and is run in los alamos, nm in may. the entire course is between 7000 and 10000+ ft and apparently has ridiculous amounts of climbing. i'm trying to find out more.

snack food stadium

one of my housemates found this architectural gem, which you too can apparently make for your super bowl party. i'm not sure we'll be having at our place though...

i finally got my data all cleaned up at work today. its been a bit of a luxury doing this because the code takes awhile to run so i have had ample time to read random stuff online or just talk to my labmates (productive, i know). its probably a good thing that i have to actually do more work now!

also, its been out for awhile, but i finally got my hands on a copy of this month's issue of wired. the future is on the early detection of cancer, check it out.

a brand new day

and boy is it sunny! yeah! the forecast last night was for freezing rain. this area was receiving all sorts of winter weather advisories and people were worried the city was going to shut down today. as someone who spent the first (almost) 22 years of life in colder climates, i found this highly amusing.

i had a very satisfying evening yesterday. i was making dinner for my co-op and attempted baking bread for the first time--from scratch! and it worked! and people said they liked it! and it wasn't just because they were trying to be polite! i took pictures and will try to get one up soon.

i also got my first taste at grading last night. my advisor has 23 students in one of his grad classes so he's making his post-doc, one of his other students and i help with the grading. i've never had to ta or anything so i suppose this is my introduction. i have quickly developed an affinity towards students who actually complete the whole assignment and who clearly label their answers.

my friend eric and i have lived in the same city for about the last 10 years. it has been unintentional and highly amusing. we met in college (in boston). i moved to hawaii the year after he did and he moved to austin the day after i did. we currently live about 8 blocks from each other. well, i found out earlier this week that eric's leaving austin next week. i (jokingly) confronted him about this as i'm still going to be here for another 2 years and therefore can't follow him wherever. he said he wasn't worried about it as we'd likely be meeting again in hawaii in a couple years before we moved on to our next place. i told him 2.5 years, not that i was counting and he said he didn't think a little counting was a bad thing. i've decided i agree.

i'm going to try and make it out for 90ish minute run tonight with the ultra team. its a no-drop run, meaning no one gets left behind. it should be a good opportunity to meet a bunch of people. i'm excited...but also concerned that we're starting (and finishing) at a hill named the "hill of life." generally if hills here have names, they are something to be reckoned with...

while this is my blog and i shouldn't necessarily apologize for expressing my opinions, i apologize for the uncharacteristic anger/frustration in the tone of yesterday's post. as i said, a bunch of memories came back and combined with other things that had happened recently and a complete lack of sleep, it was kind of a rough patch. i'm happy again now :O)

fog

i'm not living in it at the moment, but it is foggy outside. have you ever had something happen where in a single moment you see things as they are? i had one of those moments yesterday. i'll be honest. this particular moment caused a lot of memories that had been happily buried in the recesses of my mind to come back to life, and it made several months of my life look like some sort of joke. i love feeling like i'm an inch tall. oh, and please, stick the knife in a little deeper...now twist--man does that feel good! on a less sarcastic note, thank you gokce, hilda and lindsay for listening to why something so stupid could hurt so deeply.

after that moment of clarity, i left work, went for a walk, had a root beer and somehow managed to get myself into a contest with one of my (male) housemates to see who could have better abs by june 1 (oops). due to various forms of stress, we've both lost a bunch of weight in the last 6 months, so really this is a contest to see who can do the most hard core workouts. several other housemates heard about it and want to join in or serve as judges, so now the pressure is on! ironically (or not?), hilda baked delicious oatmeal cookies last night to start us on our way.

despite not much sleep last night (i had to ask people to stop singing outside my window at 3:15 AM), i actually had a really great run this morning. it was only 7 miles, but the weather was great (the cold front hadn't reached austin yet). as of this morning, i also now have someone with whom to run the austin marathon in a couple weeks. leya, one of the women i used to coach in hawaii, lives here in austin with her husband gerald and their son maika now, and i'm going to pace her. i'm looking forward to it as we'll have some time to catch up!

quotes

what started out as a pretty good monday, quickly turned not-so-happy. i would just like to say that facebook tells me more bad news than good lately, and i will leave it at that.

here are a couple quotes that i've come across recently that in some way, shape or form have resonated with me:

"I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt." - J. West

"Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together." - Marilyn Monroe

"Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all of his strength." - Hasidic saying

27.5

yesterday was my 27.5 birthday. i went to a "sport yoga" class in the evening...and promptly got my butt kicked. i enjoyed the class--it was a good challenge, but afterwards when i was trying to drink a glass of water my arms felt like rubber. i'll be back again next weekend.

life this week is starting off much better. everyone in my house seems to be fighting colds, fevers and the like. friday and saturday nights i was sleeping about 10 hours per night and wanting to take naps in the afternoons. i had clearly started fighting what everyone else had, but i'm feeling much better now...only wishing the weather would change to match my mood! its ridiculously foggy outside at the moment.

i'm now about 3/4 of the way through balance, the book i mentioned last week, and its really got me thinking. while most people associate runner's high with endorphins, i'm starting to wonder if physics has something to do with it too. humans, particularly babies, seem to have an affinity towards rocking--being rocked in a parents arms, being on boats (assuming you're not seasick), cars, etc. the reason is that the motion stimulates your vestibular system--you're inner ear. without getting to into detail, i'm starting to wonder if the rocking motion of running is partly responsible for why diehard runners tell you that running is like meditating. one study mentioned in the book looked at how older people reported feeling more calm, less agitated, etc, if they rocked in a rocking chair. apparently there was a correlation between the calming affect and the amount of time spent rocking. though it sounds silly, i wonder what would happen if you incorporated rocking in a rocking chair into an injured runner's recovery/rehab plan. obviously it would not provide cardiovascular benefit or the endorphin rush, but i wonder if the stimulation of the vestibular system would help alleviate some of the withdrawl, if you will, from the motion while working back up to running. just a thought.

oh, and i finally joined the local trail and ultrarunning group. the first meeting is next week. the guy that's speaking is apparently my age and has been organizing an ultra somewhere in south america and apparently raising money for the local community there. i'll keep you posted...on that and future trail adventures...and maybe i'll buy a rocking chair.

plane tickets

its a good thing i like jet setting. i just bought my tickets to denver. i'll be there from the evening of march 6 until the evening of march 14th. ideally there will be much skiing and outdoor merriment on 3/7-8, who knows what on 3/9, conference fun 3/10-3/13 and hopefully more outdoor fun the morning of 3/14. if you'll be in the area, let me know.

art and lab

not taking classes is both a good and a bad thing. its good because i have no homework. its bad because i don't have as many excuses to go outside or get up and walk around throughout the day. the university sends an email out every couple of days about all of the events happening on campus, and yesterday i received one that said there was a talk at the blanton art museum, which is located on campus, about a particular piece of art. having never seen the inside of the museum, i decided that attending the talk would be a good excuse to peak inside.

the talk was on a piece called Missao/Misses [How to Build a Cathedral] by the brazilian artist cildo meireles. if you ever have the opportunity to see it, do...and then let me know what you think. i thought it was pretty cool. the museum in general was pretty cool and i'd like to go back and spend a bit more time there, particularly after they finish the new installation in the front entry way...you feel like you're walking into the ocean!

yoga!

so i've been doing yoga on and off for about 10 years now. when i moved to texas, i stopped because there were just not enough hours in the day. with my new found freedom from homework though i have been looking forward to restarting. the rec center at ut offers a $70 pass that entitles you to unlimited fitness classes, which happen to include a bunch of different types of yoga. one of my housemates has recently been getting into yoga so she decided she'd get one of the passes too. this morning i checked out the 7a hatha flow class. its actually exactly what what i wanted in terms of the types of things we're doing. however, i'm realizing that i was spoiled by koa, my last yoga teacher.

koa was this rail thin women in her 50s or 60s, very blunt and a little rough around the edges. she also happens to be one of the best yoga instructors i've ever encountered. she was very good at correcting posture and pushing you a bit. i was always tired by the time her classes were over. my instructor this morning (amy) didn't do position adjustments. maybe she's not supposed to at this point, i'm not really sure, but hopefully that changes in the future. anyways, the years with koa made me very aware of what i should be paying attention to in the poses, so i can kind of self-correct, just because i can feel it.

i'm signed up for an introductory rock climbing class too. it starts in about two weeks and is supposed to teach the basics. as i seem to have a lot of friends who climb, i figure i should learn so i can join them sometimes.

on a different note, i was trail running for a few hours on monday morning (yeah for holidays!), and discovered a new series of trails for me to explore along the greenbelt. the weather here earlier in the week was simply gorgeous. its still sunny, but the temperature has dropped quite a bit.

here is a link to a blog i follow. i found the most recent entry amusing (indexed). my friend chris invited me to go to his church a couple months ago and i finally got around to going. the denomination is reformed presbyterian. they're calvinist in their beliefs and the services (in my opinion) see to be some sort of hybrid of mormon and catholic services. anyways, in sunday school they're teaching the five points of calvinist doctrine. while i'd heard of calvinism, i had never really explored it in depth. i was raised catholic, but in many ways, i think i know more about mormon theology (which i came to know as an adult). calvinism kind of flies in the face of everything i have learned, so its been kind of interesting to try and wrap my head around it. i knew there were differences between the various sects of christianity (in the broadest sense of the word), but i'm beginning to understand better where some of these differences originate and why.

on another completely different note, i just found a book called balance by scott mccredie. its about balancing in the 'stand on one foot and don't fall' sense, not the feng shui sense, so its related to my research. one of the applications of my research is to falling in the elderly, and the book made me start thinking about degradation of the inner ear (one's balance center, if you will) with aging and how that might contribute to instability when walking or standing. i've also been pondering why/how you can train yourself to have been balance--for general walking...or maybe for trailing running and scrambling over rocks quickly...is it just practice? or can you physiologically train something to make yourself have been balance and in theory, fall less frequently?

half day?

i showed up at work this morning to find a couple of electricians working in our lab. conveniently, they had all of the computers unplugged, so i wasn't able to start doing anything. after talking to my advisor for a few minutes i crossed my fingers and headed to cvs to pick up my pictures.

yes, i have a digital camera, but i have a thing for film...i also have a fully manual camera with which you can take some pretty amazing pictures (assuming you know how to use it). well, i accidentally exposed the film last week while rewinding it. oops! fortunately, however, aside from one or two of the photos, nothing was affected. my light meter was being a bit finicky, so i had to go on experience with shutter speed and f-stop settings when i was taking the pictures. i'm going to try and scan some of them tonight, but in general everything turned out great. i was pretty happy with the pictures from the vineyard that chris, julia, my mom and i visited. i didn't have my tripod with me and to get a picture of the cellar (where they are thinking about getting married) i had to expose the film for 1 sec (if you've never worked with film before, 1 sec is a very long time to be exposing film, especially without a tripod). the pictures turned out significantly better than the digital photos i took of the same area, so i was pretty pleased. otherwise, i had just been playing when i was taking the photos--focusing on different objects in the foreground and background, trying to capture detail. i'll try to scan some of the pictures tonight and post them.

unhappy news

one of my training buddies and teammates from the tri team in hawaii died in a motorcycle accident in china. i just got the news this morning. i'm still not sure what to say...things like this seem to be blindsiding me recently. adam, you will be missed.

big check

have you ever seen one of those check presentations on tv in which someone receives a 5' long check for some very large some of money? we presented a check for $175k to MD Anderson Cancer Hospital from texas 4000 yesterday. this was the first year the president of the hospital was there to receive the check. the whole event was scheduled very last minute because the president has been flying back and forth between houston and dubai a lot lately as apparently MD Anderson is opening a dubai branch of the hospital. pretty neat!

anyways, we arrived at the hospital had lunch, took lots of pictures with our board of director, dr. mendelson (the president) and the large check and then we went on a tour of the facility. we wrapped up the day with a visit to the children's ward again and had an ice cream social with a bunch of the patients and their families, which was a lot of fun.

i should say we wrapped up the day, or so i thought though because it turned out my day was not quite over. i had always wondered when the actual money exchanged hands when donations were made--if it was actually during all the handshakes and speeches and pictures with the 5' long check. well, after the ice cream social we were walking back to the main lobby and chris, the executive director of texas 4000, handed me two slips of paper saying, i need you to give these to bill, one of the people who organized our visit. i looked down at the two slips of paper in my hand and realized they were checks. both were written out to MD Anderson. the first was for $125k and earmarked for an endowed professorship and the other was for $50k and earmarked for research of cancer in adolescents. so in the end, it wasn't the bigwigs that gave the hospital the money. it was me.

i'm not sure why chris gave me the checks. he could have just handed them to bill himself...but i was glad he didn't. when i returned to austin at the end of the summer, i couldn't think about the ride without crying, so at some point, i just told myself to stop thinking about it. yesterday was the first time i had spent any amount of time talking to the people with whom i rode all summer (ie people from the route i was on) for more than just a few minutes...at this point it has been almost 5 months, and honestly, i almost backed out at the last minute for fear that i would just become the shadow of myself that i was when i first arrived back in austin by seeing everyone. that's terrible, isn't it? the extremes to which one will go to protect themselves?

marissa, one of the patients i was talking to, was 16 years old and had been battling osteosarcomma for the last three years. her mom told me that she was going to have her leg amputated because the various treatments she'd received had killed all the tissue in her lower leg. marissa was actually excited about it as she reasoned that then she could get on with her life and start walking again. having worked with some very gung-ho amputees, i suspect marissa will be one of those who is up and walking in no time. her story puts my experience with riding into perspective. i had needed to be reminded that my own discomfort was relatively silly in the bigger picture of what the we were doing.

when i handed bill the checks it was almost as if everything had been forgotten. this was why we (i) had done the ride--to enable cancer research and researchers to move forward. now that the money has been given, it (they) can...and now we start again...moving back to the daily basics of figuring out what people are wearing on the ride this summer, who is borrowing which jersey for the 2009 kickoff and how we can get that one slow rider in better shape and ready for june.

enchanted rock

this weekend, some friends and i ventured out to enchanted rock. people told me it was like half dome in yosemite only smaller. as i haven't been to half dome, i wasn't sure what to expect, but i was excited for the opportunity to hike a bit. it took us almost two uneventful hours by car to get out to the park. we seemed to pass every other park in that i've heard of in the area on the way out...pedernales, pace bend, hamilton pool, lbj national park and the list goes on. now, i have lots of ideas for summer adventures!

the hike to the top of enchanted rock is fairly short, but you'll get your stairmaster workout in for the day because you are basically hiking straight up the side of the rock. as you get closer to the top, the wind gets pretty crazy, but the view is gorgeous. despite being in all that cold weather skiing, i have problems dealing with the cold in texas and was constantly putting layers on and taking them back off. instead of taking the proper trail down, we just started wandering and ended up switchbacking down a rather steep portion of rock between enchanted rock and little rock. there were repelers going down the opposing face, who were kind of coolt o watch. though we didn't hike it, there's a four mile trail that goes around enchanted rock (and associated smaller rocks) that i'd like to go back and run. once we got back to ground level, we hiked around for awhile and found a nice sunny spot to have a picnic. we finished the day by scrambling up turkey peak.

on the way home, emily and i discovered that hilda, taeson and hossein didn't know what a chinese fire drill was. so we initiated the. there was a picnic area coming up, so i pulled off the road, put the car in park and we all hopped out, ran around like crazy people and got back in the car. it wasn't at a stop light, but we figured that it was better to initiate the uninitiated without the added stress of the light turning green. they passed, so i think we can move onto the actual stop light next time.

the day i became a mac user

yep, that's right. i bought a macbook today and am happily playing with my new toy. i have had my other laptop for about five and a half years now, and it has served me well. i was talking to a few people over break who said i could wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything and that this might give me another year out of it. otherwise, i should start thinking about getting a new one. thank goodness for sales at the ut computing center though because i went in expecting to pay a hefty chunk of change and left with several hundred dollars still in my pocket which i hadn't anticipated. even the sales guy looked surprised when he rang me up.

anyhow, as you may have guessed, this trip to the ut computing store does indeed mean that i made it safely back to texas. the sun is shining and the temperature is generally fantastic. i'm thoroughly enjoying seeing everyone again. last night i cleaned up a pile of papers that has been living underneath (and on?) my desk since...somtime early last year. it got packed for the summer, but came back in force as soon as the fall semester started. today has been a lot of running errands and i'm currently hanging out at the house waiting for someone to come do an inspection of our stove hood. yeah for errands and chores upon returning from vacation!

playing outside

it has been a fantastic last few days in tahoe! we arrived on the 31st and went skiing at boreal, a small hill right off of i-80. it was the perfect place to get my legs used to skis again after a six years (!!!) of not skiing. we laid low on new years and after watching the ball drop and toasting each other, we all passed out immediately.

on new year's day we were up early and went to squaw valley. while one would expect the slopes to be packed on a holiday, it wasn't actually too bad. unfortunately, however, nicole took a bit of a spill coming off the lift mid-day and ended up being taken out of commission for the rest of the trip. while she was waiting for x-rays and such in the clinic, the rest of us took a few more runs and then we all headed back to the cabin.

our cabin, i should say, was great. it was a 3-bedroom, 2-bath place in truckee and had a large family room with a stove fireplace in the middle. when the fire was roaring, it was over 80 degrees in the room at any given time. the kitchen was pretty big, which was good because we cooked all our breakfasts and dinners in, and there was a hot tub on the back porch, although we only got in once because it was too hot after about 5 minutes.

we took january 2 "off" to give our legs a rest. this ended up being perfect because the weather was pretty crappy. i woke up early and realized there was some sort of precipitation falling outside. it started as rain and then progressed to snow. thinking that it would be cool to have a picture of the cabin in the snow, i rushed outside to take a picture. at that point, the house looked something like this:

i think i was a bit too eager though because less than an hour late, the cabin looked like this:

it was a pretty nice treat to actually be in snow while it was snowing! that afternoon we went to explore king's beach and incline village. after dinner, we we made smores with our stove fireplace.

yesterday, we spent the day skiing at alpine meadows, and i had a really great day. i spent the morning skiing with jeremy, ginger and scott (three of the people i was skiing with all weekend), and i met up with kristie, one of my roommates from college, for lunch. she had other mit friends with her as well who ended up knowing mark, the friend that i went cycling up to point reyes with a couple weeks ago. small world. the picture to the left was taken yesterday on the trail (i don't recall its name) which leads from the front to the backside of alpine meadows. if you're into ungroomed, powdery terrain, i highly recommend getting to the sherwood lift at alpine meadows--it services the backside of the mountain and after discovering it, we spent most of our time over there.

i was a little annoyed because i didn't bring my cross country skis up with me and after arriving, i discovered that there was a fairly sizeable cross country area three miles down the street from the cabin. i know now for next time. otherwise, as i said, i had a great weekend. it was nice to see friends from college, and i loved being outside all day. i discovered that i can still tolerate cold weather...as long as i put on enough layers (i wore running tights, long johns and ski pants all at once, but hey, at least i wasn't cold).

i'm looking forward to heading back to austin on tuesday. i feel like i haven't seen my friends there in forever, and i'm excited to sleep in my own bed. i'm also looking forward to getting back into training. at this point i've had a few weeks off, and i'm itching to be working towards something again. i'm signed up for boston, but i also want to do a couple ultras this year. i'm kicking around the idea of joining a local ultrarunning club to meet people and learn the trails in the area.

last year had some really high highs and some not so fun lows in various aspects of life, and i'm glad to be moving forward. i'm excited for 2009 and all of the adventures that will be had. happy new years everyone!