little people

apparently i have reached that age in life at which lots of my friends are starting to have kids. my friends joann, lisa and carly each had a child earlier this year. i think anna michel had her son sometime this past week. michelle is due in about two months and leya is due sometime later this year. and that's only the beginning.

yesterday, i got to meet claire francis, the daughter of my friends david and christy. claire is about 5 weeks old. she is probably the smallest person i've ever met and just as cute as a button. i've always been kind of timid about holding really small kids, but they handed her over to me and had me figure out the rest. when she started fussing at one point i thought i should hand her back over (ah, she's crying! mom, do something!) but instead christy gave me all sorts of things to try to soothe her. so i got to sit there and try all sorts of things until little claire was happy again. unfortunately i forgot to take my camera out of my bag to get a snapshot of her as she fell asleep on my shoulder. so dang cute!

prank phone calls

yes, training finally caught up to me. i skipped my workout last night after being rather tired all day (and when i say tired, i mean really exhausted). i stayed at work a little later to work on my take-home final some more and finally got the answer to a problem i'd been spending a lot of time on (and the answer made sense). when i got home, i made myself some dinner and then spent the evening sitting around reading my book before going to bed at 9p. i actually slept all the way through the night except for one little hiccup.

at 4:15a my phone rings. i hear it and wake up, but don't go answer it. when i finally get out of bed (late) at 5:55a, i listen to the voicemail the person had left. the man said says he is calling from the doctor's office or hospital and that i am pregnant and that i need to come back into the hospital because i'm also hiv positive. he then goes on to add that i shouldn't worry because stuff like this happens all the time. the whole time i'm thinking, yeah...riiiight.

i haven't done anything that could make me pregnant or get hiv, and the guy was clearly not calling from a doctor's office because i'm pretty sure no medical professionals would leave voicemails of that nature unless they were trying to lose their jobs. so i'm pretty sure it was at the very least a wrong number. that said, can you imagine having just gone to get a pregnancy test and then receiving a prank call/voicemail like that shortly thereafter? i really don't know what i'd do.

the rest of my morning has been comparatively uneventful and very enjoyable. after listening to the voicemail i got in my car and drove down to barton springs to meet michelle for some aqua jogging. it took us about an hour to jog 0.5 miles. it turns out my trusty wetsuit allows me to be in that water longer than i ever have been without turning purple. michael, michelle's husband, who's going to be one of my pacers at the race next month, pointed out that my time in barton springs could be viewed as cold weather training. i agree, but i think i'll stick to the wetsuit for now. i still get cold, just not to the same extreme.

wetsuits, one of life's greatest joys

i've been swimming and water running a couple days a week recently over at barton springs with michelle (except for last week, but i digress). the last couple times, i've literally turned purple to the point where people comment on my odd hue. well, i finally remembered to bring my wetsuit this morning. holy. freakin. cow. i love my wetsuit. getting in the water was great! i just walked right in, put on my goggles and swam away. water running for half an hour? no problem. actually it was rather enjoyable, and if i didn't have to go land running and to work, i probably would have stayed in longer.

here's to extra insulation!

infinite distances

"Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky."

~Rilke

time to focus

yesterday was my 28th birthday. i went on a 30 mile run which involved 3 repeats of a 10 mile loop near my house for a total of ~10,000ft of climbing. between the running and the heat that came on at the start of the 3rd loop, i was ready to be done. afterward i went to get a massage, where the therapist may or may not have activated a trigger point for my right peroneous longus, making my ankle rather sore when i walked. not good, but at least it went away. for dinner, a bunch of friends came over to watch the tour and "roll your own" sushi. it was a great success. even more amazing in my opinion was the success of the mangoes with sticky rice we made for dessert...mmmm.

i've been mostly vegan lately for training and recovery purposes, so between the rootbeer and sushi last night and the lychee flavored mochi ice cream and queso i've had today, i think my body is headed into shock. its been delicious, but it also reminds me why i don't eat like this all the time. this has been a recovery weekend training-wise, so it works with the crappy eating i suppose. this will be the last reasonably big week of training for me before i start to taper.

and on a completely different note, ivan, kasaundra, mj, stella and i saw latest harry potter film today. i give it two thumbs up. people's hormones are out of control. the number of awkward scenes was awesome (in a cute sort of way).

work, run, eat, watch cycling, sleep, repeat

sushi making attempt #1...success!

i just finished a long training week. 97 miles. yep, i ran 97 miles between last saturday and last night. that's a lot. and while its tempting to say that all i've been doing of late is eating sleeping and running, that wouldn't exactly fit the situation. i can tell i'm at peak volume before my race. i think i'm ready, but i find myself needing an extra hour or two of sleep. unfortunately, however, coverage of the tour always happens to be on right about the time i get home from evening workouts, and i always stay up to watch it. what can i say, its exciting.

i got a good chunk of my dissertation proposal written this week. writing the background section in grant proposal format is actually pretty hard. you write a sentence and then back up what you're saying by citing other studies. to give you an idea, for one page of writing, i have close to 30 citations, and that's only to get me started. i'll go back and add more. to do that backing up, you have to go back through all the papers and make sure you're citing them appropriately. its a good exercise in general though as i'm finding new articles that just came out that are relevant...and a few that aren't but are still interesting (if you have knee problems and/or osteoarthritis runs in your family, do yourself a favor and stop wearing shoes, or at least start wearing them significantly less than you currently are and when you do where them, wear slippers/flipflops). although the proposal isn't completely done, i feel like i have a much better handle on what i need to get done in the next month or two so that quals, grant and fellowship applications get out on time and with my resume looking as awesome as possible.

my take-home final went out for my signal processing class last night, so this weekend is going to involve lots of running and homework...and tomorrow i've invited a few people over to watch the tour and try rolling our own sushi. as i have (had) never attempted to make sushi before, i decided to make a practice batch of rice and subsequently, a tofu, cucumber, avocado roll for dinner tonight so i have some idea of what i am doing tomorrow!

long run

i never thought i'd see the day where my training run mileage for a single day was more than i used to run in an entire week. yesterday, i ran 40 miles. while i realize that to most people this may sound a) boring or b) crazy, i can only confirm the latter. but the thing is, the miles just fly by when you're out on the trails, even if you're feeling sub-par.

there was a group of about 10 of us that started off together at 4am. despite the early hour everyone was rather chatty. running in the dark on trails is a pretty neat experience. you realize very quickly whether you have a good headlamp or not (i was using my backup which i now know for sure i don't want to use for the race) and your ability to respond to unevenness in the trail seems better (or maybe we're just moving that much slower that we're more stable). occasionally the group of 3 that i was running with would spread out for a few minutes (you could see the others' lights but not hear the sound of their feet on the gravel). in those moments, you hear the trees and feel the air (not to mention the presence of monsters) so much more than normal. its a pretty cool experience.

while on the one hand, i would think that all the running and training of late would be making me less focused on work and life. somehow though, it is having the complete opposite effect. i feel like i have been more able to concentrate on things that matter and figuring out what i want to do when i'm done with school.

i am also reading a new book. as many of you may (or may not) know i have something of an obsession with religion. one of the guys on the leadville team just finished his master's in divinity at austin presybterian theological seminary. during a run one day i asked him what he was doing now, what kinds of positions he was looking for and we got into a discussion about various denominations. he recommend the book 'american jesus' by stephen prothero. its basically an essay (a long essay) on how americans have interpreted the person of jesus (as opposed to his role as christ or messiah) and how this interpretation has both impacted and been impacted by american culture. i had no idea that thomas jefferson had made a bible and was something of a theologian himself.

some of my housemates at the co-op have mentioned that one of the biggest surprises they had coming to the us was how religious it was. my response has always been, well, you're in texas. but this book is making me realize that my housemates are probably onto something and its bigger than texas. i guess i just don't notice as much because this (the us) is where i have been raised.

i'm excited for the week ahead. its my last week of class and then all i have to do is a take-home examine. i also get to (finally) start writing my dissertation proposal. i've been reading a lot and have an outline of sorts, but i'm now actually excited to write. its probably a good thing too as the summer is passing by so quickly! but for now, i'll just catch up on today's stage of le tour. oh the joys of having a tv with versus!

papers, pacers and problem sets

don't get your hopes up too high for jaw dropping excitement, but its been an exciting 24 hours. first, this past saturday, my co-author who had been sitting on a draft of my paper for over a month, finally got his comments back to me. so yesterday, i made a few changes and finally (!!) sent the thing off to the journal. why is this exciting? well, this is my first biomechanics paper to go through the publication process. i now have to wait 1 - 3 months to get comments back from reviewers. the paper itself (assuming the reviewers don't destroy it) may not come out until next year, but its off my plate for the moment and that feels pretty good. now onto the dissertation proposal...i've been doing lots of reading and know what i'm doing for my project, but i just have to get it all down on paper.

the next exciting thing that happened was that i got an email back from my housemate jack (he's home in virginia for the summer). i sent jack an email a week or so and said, "so i'm doing this race. i can have pacers after 50 miles. pacing basically involves keeping me motivated while slowly running and aggressively hiking at ~10000 ft. elevation. you'll mostly be with me at night. we might get lost in the dark. sub-freezing temperatures are standard and rain and snow are possibilties. interested?" jack and i have lived together in the co-op for the last two years. he's part of my texas family and in the time i've known him, i've seen him go from a awkward, goofy, non-athlete to a focused, athletic, soon-to-be marine. we're supposed to do the muddy buddy together this fall--its a team race involving running and cyclocross, where teams of two alternate biking and running and hand off the bike to each other. when i started thinking about pacers for leadville, jack immediately came to mind. i don't think he'd quit if the conditions got bad. i don't think he'd let me quit either. maybe more importantly though, when he calls me crazy for wanting to do this, its more of along the lines of "that's crazy. what can i do to be a part of it?" jack emailed me yesterday to tell me that he would be coming to colorado to be one of my pacers.

as for the problem sets, i'm finishing up my last one for this class this week. next week is already the last week of lecture, and then all i have left is a take-home final!

this morning i was up before the sun for some running on town lake and a quick swim with michelle. sometimes, especially when the house thermostat is set to ideal sleeping conditions, i don't want to get out of bed when its still dark. this morning was one of the mornings, but i did anyway and rode my bike to barton springs . by the time i arrived, i was very happy to be up. the quiet of the morning hours is awesome. everything feels possible.

being alive

"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life... I think that what we're really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive."
-- Joseph Campbell

yesterday was my first 34 mile run in training for the 100 miler. i kept catching myself smiling while i was running. it was kind of funny. i guess you could say that in those moments, i was truly feeling alive!

i was running with about 10 other people from hill country trail runners out in bastrop state park. if you're looking for a convenient place to do 10 mile repeats with the option of hills, its a great place to go. i'm not sure if they allow mountain bikes on the trails, but if they do, it would be a good place for beginners to go.

i spent the afternoon today out at barton springs with a bunch of t4k-ers. i'm not a fan of having to pay to go into barton springs (its nature!), and conveniently, its normally free before 9a and after 9p, the times i'm normally there. after getting in the water in the heat of the day though, i've decided that its definitely worth the price. cool and refreshing!

perfect laughter

If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods. And the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.
~Charles Bukowski

4th of july weekend recap...in photos!

i found the cable to connect my camera to my computer! so here is the recap from last weekend (minus the part mentioned in my previous post).

first and foremost, i got to see my brothers and their better halves!

l to r: julia, chris, brittney, rob

pepperoni...the new cucumber, as demonstrated by my cousin bridey

godfather and goddaughter

i also had the good fortune to learn a few more things about my family this weekend:

chris apparently dances awkwardly, and julia is good at imitating.

none of us are capable of blowing up those long skinny balloons that clowns use to make balloon animals, as demonstrated by uncle george and rob.

the shovlin (mom's maiden name) clan is a pretty good looking crowd...its just difficult to get them all to sit still in a picture! most of us are in the picture above, but we're missing a couple aunts, uncles and cousins. and for those not familiar with how cameras work, low light = grainy picture...sorry about that, but we didn't get around to group photos until after dark!

we had brunch on the morning of the 4th of july at club in nyc...in their roof deck garden. my friend todd (from t4k) just moved to nyc and was able to join us...ask him about his lovely moving experience and you'll understand why he couldn't hang out more!

you can bring me to a nice restaurant, but you can't make me not burn the menu...oops!

here we are at rob's birthday dinner (his birthday is the 4th of july).

after dinner, we got to see the fireworks (sort of). then we all walked back across town to rob's place (where chris, julia and i were also staying). we ordered mangoes with sticky rice and had it delivered to the door. personally, i think this is one of the greatest things about nyc...mangoes with sticky rice on call. awesome.

i stayed up for awhile talking with chris and julia and then headed to bed. sunday morning had me up early and hiking to penn station to catch a train to the airport to fly back to austin. it was a super quick trip, but i had a great time seeing everyone!

born to run

well, i had grand plans to post pictures, but i haven't been able to find the cable that connects my camera to my computer. i spent last weekend in nj and nyc. my aunt and uncle bought a new house and it was my aunt's 50th birthday, so the entire extended family descended on nj on july 3rd. it was awesome to see everyone, and it was amazing to see how fast some of my little cousins had grown in the past couple years!

saturday morning (the 4th of july) i got up early and ran around the southern end of manhattan. i could see the statue of liberty and ellis island from the route i took, which reminded me (more than the fireworks) what the holiday is really about. as luck would have it, my brother's birthday is also the 4th of july, so there was much eating and merrymaking throughout the day.

that afternoon i got to spend an hour or two sitting in tryon park, catching up with alex and susan, two of my housemates from hawaii, and kakwira, another friend from hawaii and his girlfriend sarah.

i'm done traveling now for several weeks, but i have been grateful for all the reading time i've had lately while waiting on planes and flying. if you haven't read it yet, go read born to run. my father read a description of it in the newspaper and went out and bought it immediately (he's not a runner). after reading it, he sent me his copy and said that reading it helped him understand how i think and why i like to run so much. needless to say i was intrigued by this statement. that is until i read the book. yes dad, you're correct. there are a lot of other things i would like to say along these lines, but its probably all meant for a conversation off line. i definitely recommend the book, especially if you're interested in running or have a significant other who seems absorbed by it (for more than superficial reasons).

i just finished my mid-term exam for my digital signal processing class. the term is half over. i had a meeting with my advisor today, and its entirely possible that i won't have to take a class in the fall (even on pass/fail). maybe the flip side of that though is that there is so much to do!