family bonding

eric and i did the warrior dash yesterday morning. it was a ~3 mile run with obstacles. we ran on trails and up streams. we jumped/climbed over cars and walls. we crawled across and up cargo nets, jumped over fire and, as you might be able to tell from the picture, crawled through some mud. it was a lot of fun but over before we knew it! our clothes, however, are still recovering. they've been through the wash twice already and are still crusty...yikes!

all sort of settled with my phd. my committee approved the changes and i've made good progress on the work i proposed to do instead. i think i need to focus on writing statements of research and teaching interests now though so i can at least apply for a couple faculty positions. i've been reflecting more and more on what i should do next and am starting to come to grips with this whole moving into the real world business.

my knee has started to feel better too. i am thinking though that i will need to be cross training a lot in preparation for this race in february. regular longer practices of yoga have been helping too. i'm fortunate that eric puts up with me doing headstands in the living room and does not feel the need to knock me over everytime. its funny how greater practice makes your weaknesses become more apparent even as you are improving. i think this is the case in many aspects of life and maybe is what keeps us striving to always be better.

dissertation update!

it appears that my committee has approved the new direction of my dissertation without having to have another full blown meeting. solving the 5-body problem is tough (i.e. getting all 5 committee members in the same room at the same time) and i'm glad i get to put off doing it for another 6 months...at which point though, i should be defending my dissertation. the end is in sight but there is a lot to do between now and then.

i am really looking forward to thanksgiving next week. its been in the 40s here early in the morning when i go running and the leaves have changed to slightly more yellow, orange and red hues. so mentally, i think its starting to set it that its time the holidays. that and after next week we have one full week of class and then its finals...as i'm not taking finals anymore, i am "off" for winter break from 12/4 until sometime in late january, at which point i'm hoping to have most of my dissertation research done.

there's a possibility i will be spending a few weeks in europe next summer. the international society of biomechanics conference is being help held in brussels and a week later the dynamic walking conference is happening in jena, germany. keep your fingers crossed that funding works out for everything!

football

i have been enjoying doing observations with middle and high schoolers. they seem to be excited about everything and simply getting to compete...that and they will proudly display their bruise, cut, scar, staph infection, etc for you so you get to see and/or hear about a lot of different injuries, ailments, etc. eric forwarded me this video from a middle school football game. don't worry though. there are no injuries!

direction

my part of my life got some new direction yesterday. the device i had been working on with the mechanical engineering machine shop is almost done. the design and components are finally complete, but we're waiting for new parts to come in and tweaking some of the code used to control it. this is after over a year of waiting for it to be done. while its great that its finally done, its a tad too late for me to use it to do that part of my originally proposed dissertation and still graduate...so we scrapped 2 of the 3 aims i proposed for my dissertation.

i am now working on a revised dissertation proposal which i have to send around to my committee this week for their approval...and hopefully they do in fact approve it! its weird though to all of a sudden be doing something completely different from what i had been planning to do for a couple years now. at the very least, i am excited to be moving forward again as opposed to waiting on other people to get things done so that i can do what i need to do.

trail shoes

i just got an email informing that because of my place this weekend, i'd be getting a new pair of salomon trail running shoes. i thought it was only for the overall overall winners, but apparently they're giving it to the overall male and female finishers. what a cool surprise...especially given that my shoes are completely worn out!

cactus rose 50

cactus rose 50 was this past weekend. eric and i finally got out of town around 2p on friday and drove to bandera. we arrived at the park just in time for the race briefing. after the briefing, we found a place to set up our tent near the starting line. with a 5a start, i knew that driving to the race from home the day of wasn't going to be an option so i had started looking for places in the area. most places turned out to be dude ranches and the like, charging $150 or more per person per night. i'm a grad student. that price was also not an option. in the small print at the top of the accomodations page on the race website it said you could camp at the start/finish for $5. i like camping and decided to just go for that, figuring that we'd be some of the only people out there. wrong. the field at the start/finish was well populated by people in tents, campers and rvs on friday night. i love that other people also find camping followed by a day or more of continuous running to be a fabulous idea.

it was 34 degrees when we woke up saturday morning. my sleeping bag kept me nice and toasty but stepping out of it was rough. my alarm went off at 4a. i think i started getting out of bed at 4:15a. eric, awesome husband and crew that he is, boiled water so i could have oatmeal for breakfast while i sat in a warm car trying to pack my backpack for the day. a little hurried, but that was fine. i started the race in a polar fleece hat, gloves, running tights on over my tri shorts, an underarmour short sleeve shirt, my quik-dri boston marathon long sleeve shirt and my marmot rain jacket...and i was not warm. it was many hours before any of this started to come off.

about 7 miles into the race, i tripped over something and face planted. its dark. we're running with headlamps so this is to be expected. i picked myself up and ran it off, glad that i was wearing so many layers of clothing, thus preventing my skin from getting torn up. several miles later though i noticed my right knee hurting a bit. i don't have knee problems, so this was cause for concern. at this point, i knew that i would be on cruise control for the rest of the race. about 20 miles into the first loop, the course started to get hilly and the downhills, aside from being brutally technical, were making my knee get more and more uncomfortable. i finished the first loop (25 miles) stripped off a layer or two and headed back out.

this course was run "washing machine"-style. this means that it was a loop course with the first loop run in one direction, the second loop run in the opposite direction, the third loop in the first direction, etc. thus, miles 18 to 34 of my 50 miler contained the hills. i got to the first aid station on my second loop and stopped for aid. my knee froze up while standing there getting food. i knew that this next leg would make or break my race. i started away from the aid station and all of a sudden, my knee froze up completely. i was in tears i was in so much discomfort. not good. i knew though that movement made it loosen up. i stood at the start of the trail fidgeting for a minute or two trying to loosen my knee back up. i took a couple tender steps and as soon as i got a couple relatively pain-free consecutive steps, i decided it was time to get moving. i'm not a fan of giving up...that and technically, i had only 20 more miles to go and about 29 hours in which to do them...and i was second female overall at the turnaround.

i would march in place at the next aid stations so that my knee didn't freeze up again. it actually started to feel a lot better, in part i think because i just kept running. the temperature was slowly getting higher too. eric said the highest temperature he saw for the day on the car console was 81 degrees. it definitely felt hotter than that out on the trails. i was drinking water and miso soup (740 mg of sodium per serving!) and eating bananas (potassium) like crazy all day.

i finished with a smile on my face and a much happier knee in ~11:45. the picture above is of me about 25m before the finish line. i didn't set any speed records, but i was happy with how i managed my speed and how i was still running quickly in the last section. the heat (and dry air) more than anything seemed to take it out of me on the last segment. i didn't feel like my legs got fatigued the same way they did at headlands. its a different course, yes, but i also wonder if my body is just adapting. i did finish second place female overall in the end too. i'm not sure where i was in relation to the woman who finished first, but hopefully the official results will be up soon.

eric was a rockstar all weekend. he was spoon feeding me oatmeal for breakfast while i was frantically packing my bag before the race. the course led us into one aid station twice per loop and he had miso soup warmed and ready for me all four times i passed through as well as at the half way point. he had all my drop bags picked up and camp taken down by the time i finished so we could drive home after the race (he drove the whole way). and that's only the half of it. its great to have someone there supporting you even when you're lost in your own world of racing and can't seem to express enough appreciation.

recovery is going well so far. i'm not as still as normal. i wonder if in part that is because of backing off the pace. the goal this week is recovery, recovery, recovery. i think the plan is to attempt rocky raccoon 100 in february next...with bandera 100k as the last long run one month before. i'm debating that 100k though.

i don't know what is up with school at the moment. things move forward and then they stall. my device, which we thought was basically done is now not. my advisor threatened (the person who works at the machine shop) today that if it wasn't done in a week that we had to do something else. i look at that and think, please, don't mess with me like that--not doing this extra data collection would make MY life so much easier. it would be fantastic not to do it! my advisor also thought that getting this new software would make everyone's life easier...well, i'm the only one who has used it before and i'm the only one who would use that software who also knows how to code. it turns out that all the code we got from our collaborators (which my advisor thought we could just magically use) has to all be changed to do what we do in our lab...which means going through code line by line to change things. ah details. on the plus side, i think the revisions to one of my manuscripts are going in soon, which means hopefully i will have another paper being published soon. i am definitely understanding why people finishing their phds are so eager to just get done!