cross fit

it turns out that the new instructor for the core workouts at jack & adam's is a cross fit instructor. its been difficult to sit the last two days because of all the lunges!

i went for my first run with the leadville training group last night. we did a two-hour run out and back on the trails. fortunately, jack had also done the cross fit workout on wednesday night, so i wasn't the only one whose legs felt a little rubbery!

the first hour or so of the run was in the daylight, and the second half we were running with headlamps. if you've never trail run in the dark before (and you like running), i'd recommend it. the experience is a bit surreal. all you can see is the circle of light in front of you thrown by your headlamp, meanwhile, you're still running. you have to respond to things very quickly.

i was reading a paper recently by grimmer et al. which talks about self-stability during running. self-stability is a mechanical property of a system which enables the system to adjust to a perturbation without actually sensing the perturbation itself. so basically, if you are a system that has self-stability, you can run on uneven ground without paying attention to the unevenness of the ground (because you're human, you also exert some active neuromuscular control, but i digress). one way you might respond to the unevenness of the ground is by changing the stiffness of your leg (i.e. bending your knees more or less). so really, i wasn't on a training run last night at all...i was simply doing "field research" on how people respond to perturbations when ambulating. i love what i do.

i'm excited to run with this group more. i liked the company and the pace. jack said there are some more young (young in this sport = late 20s, early 30s) ultra runners in the area to whom i need to be introduced as well. a few conversations from the run last night have made me start thinking more about how i'm training and how, given my current fitness, i should probably re-assess my goals (and make them more difficult). never underestimate the power of a supportive community.

friends and nature

i had a fantastic weekend. watching the race on monday was a lot of fun, but most importantly i got to spend more time with ben and rory. it turns out we'll all be in seattle in mid-august too, so i'll get to see them again soon. yeah! there were also a bunch of t4k-ers out there and a lot of them were doing their first triathlon. congrats to all!

one of the blogs i follow recently posted a link to this video on ultrarunning. i realize a lot of people think its crazy to run that far, but at least the courses are pretty! i'm thinking i should run with a camera in august.

back in austin

i got back to austin late last night. after 5 hours of sleep i got up for an easy 15mi and then went to breakfast at austin java. the legs are feeling o.k. after a week of relative rest but i can still feel a bit of fatigue on practically non-existent hills.

i saw an article about a guy named huston smith in the san francisco chronicle last week. he's one of the world's foremost religious scholars. he was raised by missionary parents in china and is a practicing methodist. along the way he spent 10 years also being hindu, 10 years following islam and 10 years studying zen buddhism. he's very well published and, according to makana who saw him speak at a conference recently, also very down to earth. i got excited by his background (and am generally interested in his research) and picked up his book the world's religions, which i have barely been able to put down. i would love to be able to sit down and chat with this man. he's fascinating.

the official results for hogs hunt are:
finish time: 4:48:45 (9:15 min/mi)
place overall (men and women): 8th
female overall: 2nd

pasty kids

the original pasty kids

if you've ever seen my name in gchat (or gmail), the picture in my profile has three heads in the color of the irish flag on a black background. in very small print underneath the heads, it reads 'pasty kid productions.' i made the logo a few years ago for rory sort of as a joke. the heads in the image are mine, rory's and ben's (from left to right).

ben, rory and mojdeh are in austin right now for the race this coming monday. i got to spend some quality time with them eating watermelon and laughing until i cried before leaving for san francisco this morning. i am thinking i might have to cut my stay in here (sf) short to go back and see (and run, bike and swim with) them some more before they leave austin!

ben, me and mojdeh eating delicious watermelon...i think rory said 'on the count of three everyone make an awkward face' before taking this picture, or at least that's what it looks like.

hogs hunt race report

camping friday night was awesome. the weather was relatively cool. the skies were clear. i rolled out my sleeping pad on the concrete slab at the campsite and curled up in my sleeping bag on top of it. no tent. no bugs (at least in my opinion). it was great.

saturday morning, the race went well. it was cool at the start, and fortunately, it was light enough that we didn't have to use headlamps. less than 3 miles into the race i was third female overall, which was kind of cool, until i reminded myself that there were still 28+ miles to go. the course was fairly flat. there was a lot of jeep road, sandy trails and a couple boardwalks through swamp area.

about 5 miles into the race, i tripped on a root and face planted. i had been running along thinking how great it was to be running on trails and out in nature, when all of a sudden i was on the ground giving the earth a big ol' hug. the fall re-opened the scar on my right knee from when i took a bad spill back in november, but the ground was really soft, so it felt more like falling on a firm mattress.

the course was 2 laps. i finished the first lap in about 2:23 or so, took a quick pit stop and headed back out. by this point it was starting to warm up a bit, and i decided to do something i hadn't done in a very long time and never done while racing. i decided to run in just my sports bra. all the other girls in front of me had done it, so why not (peer pressure in its oddest form, right?). while this may seem rather silly, putting on weight in college made me ridiculously self-conscious, so i just always run with something on and usually the something is not form fitting on top. the temperature difference without the extra layer was awesome (look at that smile!) and eventually i just stopped being self-conscious (the shirt went back on immediately after finishing).

there was a long out and back in the first 5 miles of the course, and on my second loop, i was able to see how far behind the other women (and men for that matter) i was. it can be really tough mentally running on out and backs, especially when there's so much sand, but it was nice to see people. we were cheering for each other, which is an aspect of ultrarunning i really like--you support your competitors. that's just what you do. that's what everyone does.

about 6 miles into the second loop, i passed the second place female. and then i just seemed to pick up the pace. i started passing guys. when i got to the last aid station, someone told me they thought i was in 6th place overall (men and women). i thought that was kind of cool, and i knew there was another guy not too far in front of me, so i hurried through the aid station and went on my way.

i crossed the finish line in about 4:48. the guy who finished not too far in front of me was about my age. he congratulated me and then said he ran the last couple miles scared because he'd seen the look on my face when i came into the last aid station and knew i was coming after him. i found that amusing, as i hadn't thought i'd be able to catch him, but i did think that seeing a cute boy with nice legs in front me would distract me and make the last couple miles go faster.

the official results still have yet to be posted. they should be up later this week. physically i think it was a good race. the splits for the two laps are more or less dead on. i felt strong. mentally, i think it was a great race, which was really what i was going for. nothing seemed to bother me. falling, tight quads, rolling ankles, drinking too much (which makes the ol' stomach very unhappy) was just par for the course. it all goes away. you take what happens, good or bad, and just keep moving. positive thinking is a very powerful thing...as are massages immediately following race completion.

ben got into town yesterday and rory gets into town today. i'm a little bummed i won't get to race with them this weekend, but it'll be great to see them!

friends

“No two friends are the same. Each has his or her own gift for us. When we expect one friend to have all we need, we will always be hypercritical, never completely happy with what he or she does have. One friend may offer us affection, another may stimulate our minds, another may strengthen our souls. The more able we are to receive different gifts our friends have to give us, the more able we will be to offer our own unique but limited gifts. Thus, friendships create a beautiful tapestry of love.”

-- Henry J. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey

summer fun

you know its summer when:

1. you have to bring long pants and a polar fleece to work so you don't turn purple in lab. brrr.

2. your legs are covered in mosquito bites after a single dinner/bbq outside.

3. watermelon becomes a dietary stable.

4. you have to apply spf white kid to every exposed part of your body before leaving the house.

5. your hair starts getting lighter because its finally seeing real sun (YES!).

6. jumping into a pool with all your clothes on is a perfectly logical thing to do.

7. strawberries are on sale everywhere.

these are just some of the things that have had me smiling the last couple days.

that and i signed up for my first 50-mile run. it will be in the marin headlands on 8/8.

happy summer everyone!

urban hiking

its been nice outside, and by that i mean, in the 90s with humidity. while it doesn't feel great to be moving particularly fast, a little bit of movement feels a lot better than just sitting.

yesterday, i went for a run and breakfast with some of the hctr folks. most of us are either racing next weekend at huntsville (tx) or jemez, which is near los alamos, nm. afterward, i finished reading outliers by malcom gladwell (two thumbs up!) and then headed down to brew-b-q to watch some chihuahua racing. brew-b-q turned into actually bbq-ing at a friends, followed by the obiligatory jump in the pool fully clothed and then ice cream and moving watching in a very air conditioned house. all in all, it was a very enjoyable day.

this morning i woke up and went for a quick 5-miler and then decided i wanted to do some urban hiking. i wandered down to the austin botanical gardens, and would share pictures, but it was a huge failure on my part not to check the camera batteries before i left and it turned out they were dead. oops! it was beautiful though.

its amazing what you start to notice when you move a little slower and pay attention to your surroundings. i found several yoga studios and a whole series of trails i had never noticed before...and i run by all of them every day!

tuning my ukulele is giving me more problems than playing it. i'm starting to play somewhere over the rainbow, but it takes me a good 30 minutes or so to get the thing tuned. i know what its supposed to sound like and i have a pitch pipe (not to mention online resources). i think i get the tuning right though and go to play a song only to find out that i haven't tuned correctly. i guess that's just part of the learning process!

quarter-life crisis

there have been two interesting reads which gave me pause in the last few days.

my friend jonathan came across an article discussing the quarter-life crisis. basically the theory goes that this tends to happen in the mid- to late-20s, and is the result of this generation having too much freedom to do what they want. the world is open to them, but they (we) don't know what they want so they bumble around trying lots of things when they get fed up with dealing with other things. its a pretty interesting concept.

i like what i do, but at the end of the day, i'm still not sure what i want to do with the rest of my life. my housemate jakub and i were talking about what we thought we wanted to do after finishing our phds and i mentioned doing a post-doc. not as a criticism, but as an observation, he said, trish, you don't seem like the type (to do a post-doc). you seem like the type to start doing something (like a job or working for myself). i think he's probably right about the former. i'm ready to be done with school (on some level post-docs still are school, you just don't get a degree). i still don't know what i want to do when i graduate, though i definitely have a few ideas. in the closing words of the article i linked to above (pardon the french): "it might just be time to grow the f*** up."

another friend sent me an article about why the 21st century is making people miserable. in summary, we don't interact with people as much, so our ability to deal with annoying people, lines, emotion, etc, is not what it used to be, and on top of that, we don't have as many close friends. i was talking to someone about how i was becoming annoyed with texting, im-ing, and emailing because you could type one thing but you couldn't control how people interpreted what you said, whereas if the conversation was had in person you could observe or hear them (or they you) to get the real meaning from body language or intonation. i was annoyed because i felt like what i was saying was not being "heard" the way i intended it.

the other thing i had been pondering before my friend sent me this link was staying in my co-op versus moving out. i decided to come back to the house at the end of this summer because i think living with this many other people is good for me. it gets frustrating to see the kitchen dirty every day or listen to the same people making inflammatory comments in house meetings, but you learn to deal with it and work it out with people because...well, you live with them. you learn patience and how to live with people who are very different from you. and you learn how to find peace in the midst of the commotion of a busy house. that, for me, has been an invaluable lesson, but one that i know i'm still working on.

my ukulele arrived this weekend. i can play twinkle, twinkle little star now. i'm thoroughly enjoying myself.