walking on air

today is the first day of lent. i decided that i'd try to give up doing picture free blogs (not that i was doing them intentionally in the first place, but i digress). it will probably take awhile to cut out all the words, but i'll work on it.

the party at my house this weekend was a blast. though i live with a bunch of other people, we are rarely all in the same place at the same time and not doing work or sitting through a house meeting. almost half of us are shown to the right prior to all the craziness that ensued. i also really enjoying seeing everyone's friends at the house. i get to put names with faces which is always fun. during the last two parties i've also gotten to hang out with people from my department who i don't normally see outside of class or lab.

sunday was party recovery day and was very relaxing. monday and tuesday of this week found me more able to concentrate at work than i had been for weeks which has been rather refreshing. and last night we had the final check presentation for texas 4000 to the american cancer society. afterward, brooke, david, christy and i went out for thai food and caught up on life, and i discovered i wasn't the only one who has had my head spinning the last few weeks.

today is the start of recruitment weekend for my department. all of the admitted students come to visit and the department organizes all sorts of dinners and events to get the students to accept their offers of admission. before that though we are apparently having a meeting about how they (the department) are changing the phd qualifying exams...hopefully the news will not betoo bad (or affect me as i should be grandfathered into the old rules anyway). we will see!

epic ride

my training buddy michelle and i decided to crash the t3 workout this morning. t3 is one of the local triathlon groups and they have a long brick workout basically every saturday. the goal was to do a 70 mile ride and follow it up with a 3 mile run. as this is a rather typical saturday morning activity for all of us, it didn't seem too daunting.

michelle and i met up with michelle l. and after debating about how many layers of clothing to wear (it was cold and overcast, but it would get warm, right?) we hit the road. about an hour or so into the ride it started to get colder and windier and then it started raining. awesome. over the next hour or so we begin to lose feeling in our hands and we're soaked to the bone...but we're long distance triathletes, so we don't complain (see my post from a year ago about dating a triathlete and what the deal is with being a wimp in "weather").

then i get a flat. the michelle's stand there shivering as i try to change my tire with hands that i can't exactly close anymore. i get the tube replaced and start filling it up. the first c02 fills the tire up, but it goes flat almost immediately. thinking that maybe i did something wrong, i try another co2. the tire goes flat again almost immediately. great. now here was where it got amusing. i was only carrying one spare tube, and i had apparently damaged it while changing out the old one. and the michelle's are both riding bikes with 650 wheels (mine has 700)...so between the three of us we have no more 700 tubes. and i can't patch because its so wet, its not going to stick anyways. there's a nursing home about 200m up the road, so the michelle's start heading back to the cars (which are about 20 miles away) and i head to the nursing home to stay warm.

i spent 2.5 hours this morning in that nursing home talking to the residents. i quite enjoyed myself. for the first hour or so that i was there, aubrey filled me in on the local gossip and for the second hour or so i mostly talked to phyllis who filled me on her life in houston and working for her father. as the end of the second hour was nearing, one of the nurses came by and asked if my friends had forgotten about me. she then said, wait, don't you cyclists carry pumps on your bike? my stomach flipped over. i have my frame pump on the bike i was riding. i could have just come inside, patched my tube, pumped up the tire with the frame pump and been on my way.

i'm glad i didn't think of that sooner though. michelle arrived to pick me up and we started driving back to my car. it turned out that about 2 miles from the nursing home, the bridge we were supposed to have crossed was out...so the michelle's had had to go a different way. i'm not familiar with the area, so i would most likely have gotten rather lost if i'd tried to find my way around.

michelle also told me that when she and the other michelle had gotten back to the parking lot, our three cars were the only ones left...apparently everyone else (~40 other people) had cut the ride short because of the weather and only ended up doing 43 miles (and no run). one of the guys who had ridden with us for a mile or two at the beginning had fallen, dislocated his shoulder and had to go to the hospital and some other girl had also taken a fall. so it apparently it had been a pretty epic day.

when i got back to my house (in austin), my roommates informed me it hadn't even rained here. ugh. i guess that's what we get for wanting to ride fast and flat terrain east of austin. regardless, the day was not all lost. my friend leya made me fresh mochi (!!) and tonight is the german haus party. look out world!

trail

i don't speak german, but i'm beginning to think i should learn. one of the people on the hctr people just sent around a link to trail, a german trail running magazine. i recognize the names of runners and races. the trails i used to run on in hawaii are featured in some of the pictures as is the bandera course with some of the folks on the ultra team here. i'd like to be able to read the articles though. regardless, the interface for the website is pretty cool.

my new running shoes arrived yesterday and i took them out on a nice 10-miler this morning. i felt like i was running on cushions. new shoes always feel weird.

tripping

as i have mentioned before, i spend my days studying how and why people remain on their feet when walking. i'm currently working on building a device to trip people, so i can study how they recover from tripping. in trying to find the best parts for the device, i've been looking through a lot websites and talking to a lot of people about what i want to do and how best to do it...but trying to explain to someone that you want to trip people is proving highly amusing. that and trying to explain my budget. they seem to have trouble understanding that i cannot spend $7000 on a load cell when my budget for the whole device (including multiple load cells) is $8000.

i've been having a rather odd week and haven't really been able to put my finger on why. my alarm went off at 5a at which point i decided to get another hour of sleep and just run after yoga as i hadn't really slept well (think loud music, lights and people doing construction outside your room at midnight). i then proceeded to wake up every 15 or 20 minutes in a panic that i had overslept at which point i would get up and run across my room to look at my clock only to discover that it wasn't even 6a yet. oops. evidently i'm worried about something (or maybe the lack of something?), but i have yet to figure out exactly what that something is. i will keep you posted if i begin to figure out what exactly it is. normally this type of thing starts to happen when i'm tapering...but i'm definitly not tapering at the moment. then this evening, i think i saw a ghost. my heart started racing and i promptly turned and started walking quickly in the other direction. it was weird. i'm still processing that one.

on a different note, if you have never been to a sing-a-long, i highly recommend going. some of my roommates and i attended an aladdin sing-a-long last night. imagine wailing the lyrics to 'a whole new world' at the top of your lungs in a crowded theater with everyone else doing the same thing and you'll understand what last night sounded like. i like disney movies, but there were some diehard disney aficionados here and hearing them repeat not just the lyrics but the words to the whole movie too, were rather impressive. if you're in the austin area, they're doing another sing-a-long on thursday to singing in the rain.

magnolia's

my friend michael and his girlfriend sarah came to town this weekend to run the austin half-marathon yesterday. they got in on friday and organized a get-together at buffalo billiards on 6th street. i had never been down to 6th street before on a regular weekend night (i went on halloween this past year), so i was kind of excited. i got impatient waiting for the bus, so i decided to start walking. a few blocks later i was glad i started walking because i bumped into ivan (one of the guys i rode to alaska with) and he hopped off his bike and started walking with me. i love random encounters with friends!

buffalo billiards was fun. i got to see michael and brian, our other friend from college, and i got to meet raudel, another current austinite and mit alum. apparently raudel and i lived a couple blocks from each other at mit, were the same year in school and had mutual friends. its funny how you can cross lives with other people and yet never meet or in this case meet thousands of miles away, years after your lives probably had a higher probability of crossing paths.

the marathon went well yesterday. i was pacing leya, a friend from hawaii. we finished in ~4:00:20, which was a pr for leya by more than 20 minutes. because we were both running it bandit, her husband gerald set up aid stations for us every 3 miles. it was fun to see their son maika (almost 2) get excited every time we'd run up. the conditions were great for running as it was cool and overcast for most of the day. i only took my long sleeve shirt off for the last 3 miles or so at which point the sun was out.

the one (unappreciated) surprise was the course change. apparently because bill clinton was doing something on campus on sunday they had to re-route the course around campus...so instead of running straight from duval onto san jacinto on the flat ground past the stadium, we had to run up the rather respectable hill on dean keeton...at mile 24.5 of the marathon. ouch. many a groan was heard and we definitely people walking.

i wanted to ride my bike for awhile after the run, but i restrained myself and went shopping instead. after three hours of shopping though, i was tired. but i have new jeans! and they fit! i still haven't quite figured out this energy phenomenon. it happened last year too. i paced my friends and then went out and rode bikes for a few hours with the texas 4000 people. i just felt like i'd done a long training run, not like i'd run a marathon. it actually just woke me up. the point of expressing surpise about this anyways is that i feel normal, and it feels nice to be reminded of that every once in awhile after being so shaken up by the end of last summer. two months to go until boston!

i had lunch today at magnolia cafe on lake austin blvd with michael, sarah and the austin mit posse. although i've ridden and run past the restaurant a bunch of times, i had never eaten there. i think i may have found a new best-place-for-queso in austin!

core workout

one of the local bike/tri shops offers free core workouts on monday and wednesday nights. i went last night for the first time. during the workout, i found myself thinking that it was a good thing i was doing yoga again because otherwise i probably wouldn't have lasted through the whole workout. i ran home when we were done and as i was eating dinner my arms started feeling like rubber. at that point, i just thought it was amusing that my arms were tired but my abs weren't.

well, this afternoon, my abs started hurting. i'm still getting over a cold and coughing is more unpleasant than normal with sore abs. even moving to some degree makes me able to feel that they got a good workout. my friend claims that the monday workouts focus more on the upper body, so apparently i should be looking forward to having tired arms (from that workout) and legs (from the marathon) by monday night.

i had lunch today with a couple t4k people who i hadn't seen since...october? or maybe septemeber? regardless, it was fun to catch up and see how they were doing. we've basically decided to start a regular thursday lunch on campus, so i should get to see more of everyone. i went out with a few other people from the ride on monday night following a meeting we all attended and rode with some others on tuesday afternoon. i mentioned in an earlier post that seeing (t4k) people in the last few weeks had made me start crying again...but it (crying) started happening less and now its not happening anymore at all. its good. actually, its great.

visitors!

aside from the sore throat and lack of voice this morning, i have been feeling like a kid in a candy shop lately. michael and his gf sarah are coming to austin this weekend to run the half-marathon. rory will be here in may and just dropped me a note saying he'll be here at the end of the month for a day as well. makana was checking his schedule for dates to potentially visit. a bunch of friends from college have been shooting emails back and forth and it looks like we're all going to go to seattle for a weekend in august. and i'll be in denver in a couple weeks to see my brother and his fiancee and one of the guys i rode with this summer. so there are lots of people to see in the next couple months.

i have to admit. life without classes is awesome.

its looking like we're going to be shooting for a 3:50-3:55 finish time on sunday for the austin marathon. that's leya's (the friend i'm pacing) goal time and the time that i paced my roommates to last year, so it should be a nice training run for me (i realize that i run--far--a lot but it still sounds ridiculous to me that i run marathons as training runs). hopefully the morning weather will stay like it has been the last couple mornings--great running weather.

in preparation for sunday, the current plan for saturday is to take it easy--maybe ride with the new texas 4000 riders in the morning. then a bunch of us are going to try and watch mj's rugby game (mj is one of the girls i rode with this summer and i and a bunch of other riders have been wanting to go see her in her element). then the plan is to have a pasta party at my place for people who are running on sunday (or people who just want to hang out with people who are running on sunday). if you'll be around and want to join us, let me know.

now to make this cold go away...

weekend update

so i caught up with katherine, a friend from t4k, on saturday morning. she asked about how school was going and about what i was writing. she then forwarded me this rather awesome link containing a meditation on academic writing. good grief, i hope my stuff is never that boring! this was the first time i had caught up with katherine since the ride ended, and she helped me to put a number of things into perspective. i think she had a really good idea of some of things i had been struggling with and it was good for me to see that someone else noticed many of the same things i did. it kind of makes you feel less crazy when someone else notices cliques, habits, whatever, that you thought you were only imagining. anyways, this was another of what has turned out to be an onslaught of texas 4000 memories and processing in the last couple weeks. many tears have been shed as the memories come back, but they have been followed by a feeling of calm and understanding. its good.

as for the saturday ride, it was much better than last week. last week and this week have been exercises in how to prepare for a long workout which begins at 12noon. last week, i didn't eat enough in advance and was bonking with about an hour (or more?) to go (in a 3.5 hour ride) while michelle was flying up the hills. this week, michelle was struggling through and i was feeling pretty fantastic (after a good breakfast). averaging over both workouts, we decided maybe we weren't as out of cycling shape as originally thought. yesterday was great too because it ended up being a ~4 hour ride with some ridiculous headwind, followed by a ~2.5 mile transition run (~8mi/hr pace). i haven't done a long brick in awhile, so it felt nice (that being a relative term of course) to be running right off the bike again.

today was a 13 mile run...i'm sort of tapering for next weekend (pacing a friend through the austin marathon)...and i just got back from my sport yoga class. one of the best things about yoga is watching how strong you get as weeks pass. there are always more ways to challenge yourself with in class--improving your form, deeping the pose, etc--but just feeling that your shoulders, arms, whatever, aren't getting fatigued the way they were a couple weeks prior is pretty cool.

i got fit for rock climbing shoes today too. i'm supposed to go climb on tuesday with one of my housemates at gregory. i'm hoping to get to go outside sometime soon. yeah!

7 marathons, 7 continents, less than one week

someone from hctr sent an interesting link to the list today. a man ran 7 marathons, one on each continent in less than one week. he's the head of ultrarunning ireland. pretty cool.

i was out celebrating a couple friends birthdays last night and was asked at one point if i would be interested in helping to organize the tribute dinner for texas 4000. at this point another friend stepped in and said no and we got into a discussion on the ability to not do everything all the time. i have been struggling lately with the lack of structure in my life. i'm so used to being overscheduled that i don't know how to deal with not being overscheduled.

i'm sleeping less and feel more awake in the morning than i did a month ago. i'm running more, doing more yoga and started climbing. most nights i go do stuff with people after work. i will admit, i don't know what to do right now. i've figured out over the years that i have to exercise enough that i can actually sit still at work and concentrate. by shear numbers, i should be okay to work, but i'm struggling to not be moving constantly...

when the sun comes up, you'd better be running

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will die. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle; when the sun comes up, you'd better be running." ~unknown

actually, when the sun came up this morning, i was in yoga. my teacher decided to focus on the benefits of plank position this morning. lucky for me i was climbing less than 48 hours ago...which means i'm the midst of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). my upper body is not particularly thrilled with me today and its probably going to be even less happy with me when i get back from climbing tonight.

i went to my first meeting for the hill country trail runners (hctr) last night. that is the name of the ultra/trail running group i recently joined. the guy presenting last night talked about the ultra he organized in nicaragua in december. it looked and sounded awesome. don't be surpised if in the next 9 months or so, you hear that i'm headed to nicaragua to run a 100k.

oh, and in case you were worried about me not running when the sun came up, don't. i went out for a nice 10-miler after yoga.

rock climbing

uh oh. i think i may have found a new activity. i went to my first rock climbing class last night and it was awesome. we spent the first hour bouldering and the second hour learning how to belay and climbing with a harness. someone had warned me a week or two ago that the class might be super crowded, but there are only four of us. its actually quite nice because none of us have climbed before but we all got the hang of it pretty quickly. the next class is tomorrow night and i'm looking forward to it.

for all the scientists out there, i hope your job is not on this list. my sincere apologies to all of the theoretical physicists out there (ironically, i seem to know quite a few).

where you are and where you want to be

the latest indexed entry sums it up quite well.

another random quote i ran across today, which is in line with the john francis talk i mentioned this weekend:

the extent to which you stay inside your comfort zone is the extent to which it controls you. (unknown)

airbags

that's it. i'm quitting my phd program. who needs to study the mechanics of walking, tripping and falling when you could just focus on designing fasionable, protective attire?

i appreciate the line of research, but do they really think people will wear airbags around?

what is your prison?

i stopped eating chocolate five years ago this past week. let's suffice it say i had been eating a lot of it, and i decided i should stop. i told my roommate kehau and she took one look at me and said, 'you won't last a week.' so every year when the last week of january rolls around, i take stock and then just keep going. chocolate lost its appeal to me years ago.

well, over the last couple months, i have been reflecting on how sometimes the rules i make for myself, for whatever reason, prevent me from fully engaging with people. i don't like that. so this year, when my no-chocolate anniversary rolled around, i decided that it might be time to get rid of this, for lack of a better world, rule.

my roommates and i went down to central market (think whole foods or trader joe's) and perused the chocolate section. i decided that if i was going to eat chocolate, it might as well be darn good chocolate. i got a bar of lindt milk chocolate and a bar of dagoba 58% organic dark chocolate.

when we got back to the house, my friend jonathan and his girlfriend lauren came by, and jonathan asked why i was going to stop not eating chocolate. i explained what i mentioned above (among other things) and he took one look at me and asked if i had heard about john francis. i hadn't. he (jonathan) said my response to his question reminded him of a talk francis had given for TED entitled John Francis Walks the Earth.

francis didn't talk for 17 years and gave up riding or driving motor vehicles for even longer. he speaks on behalf of the environment (which includes trees, people, air, etc). before you think it's just plain crazy and not responsible to not talk or drive cars for decades, know that he got an undergrad, a master's, a phd and became a un ambassador at the same time. the talk he gave for TED was about 19 minutes long and you can get to it from the above link. i highly recommend it.

francis concludes his talk by asking the audience, what is your prison? what is it that prevents you from fully engaging in your environment? with the people around you? look what one man accomplished (and is still accomplising) by releasing himself from his prisons.

yesterday i learned that i don't like milk chocolate anymore. its too sweet, and the kind that i tried is apparently not as sweet as other milk chocolates. after a square i'd had enough and my housemates happily helped with the rest. dark chocolate, on the other hand, is great, but a small square is more than enough flavor to satisfy. if you want to know more about the non-superficial lessons learned from this little experiment though, you'll have to ask me in person.