I’ve been “seriously” running for about three and a half years now. By seriously I mean that I go for a run at least three times a week (if not more) and I generally run between 4-12 km at a pace that is well under 6 min/km. My definition of serious is a lot more lax than most people’s. In the fall, I started to notice pain through my IT band (this is the ileotibial band, a wide, flat tendon that runs from your hip to just below your knee). Finally I learned that this was because my feet are kind of (really) flat and because of this I pronate. Now, when I first got a real pair of running shoes, they noticed this and put me in a motion control shoe, and I continued to get the same shoe, but I guess my motion wasn’t controlled enough.
I didn’t actually run in those socks, but I would have been cooler if I did
And so I sold my right leg and got orthotics (figuratively, since running with only one leg might pose a bigger problem than just orthotics can fix). Then of course I needed a different shoe, because insole + motion control shoe = way too much control. Having run in Nikes all this time I got a pair of Lunar Elite+ and I must say, they are darned pretty for running shoes (not that I’m a sucker for that kind of thing).
Ouuuuu, aaaaahhhh
Now I just need to see if they make my IT bands happier.
I while back I designed the logo for this year’s meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain Behaviour and Cognitive Science. The tote bag and the t-shirt both turned out very well, however Mike and I got around to using the tote bag for groceries before I could get a nice photo of it. So then last week comes around and I think “I should take a picture of that, too bad it’s so wrinkly.” So I did what any person would do with something wrinkly: iron it.
Bad, bad idea. I know that they’re made of polyester, and I had set the iron to an extra low setting, however when I just touched the iron to the bag they immediately became one. Thus I now needed a new bag and a new iron.
The new iron still needs to happen, but luckily Mike was able to snag an extra bag from the psychology department this week and I finally got around to taking a photo, no ironing required.
That’s right, I took the time to erase the background and make it fancy
Today I participated in my first dragon boat race. It’s a huge charity event to raise money for KidSport (a program that allows children from low income families to participate in organized sports). The race was really fun, even though we didn’t make it to the next round (but we were only 6 second off). The best part about the whole event (in my opinion) is the team names, there must have been over 50 teams competing, all with silly names (most of them puns).
We really weren’t as far behind as this photo makes us look. It just turns out that we were in one of the fastest qualifying heats. And yes, we are wearing scrub caps.
On the way back from my parents’ house (not that it was really on the way), Mike and I decided to make a pit stop in Fundy park to go kayaking since we hadn’t succeeded in going kayaking earlier this month with Mike’s lab (the weather was too gross). So we signed up for the half day kayak adventure, pretty ambitious considering Mike had never kayaked and it had been a while since I had. It was a great time though and the weather was perfect, albite a bit windy.
I have no photos of us in action because I wasn’t about to bring my iPhone onto the ocean with me. I’ve never tested it out, but I have a suspicion that it would never be waterproof nor float.
After the 4 hour kayak excursion we did two of the other best things to do in Alma, eat fried clams and sticky buns (supposedly world famous)
I may not normally be the biggest fan of deep fried food, but fresh fresh clams in tasty batter (especially after a long morning salty morning) is pretty hard to beat.
This is a TED talk by Hillel Cooperman about LEGO and how it’s not just for kids. I find it eerily similar to my childhood in the sense that Alex (my brother) and I were definitely lego rich. I think it was a ploy to make both of us engineers (my father being a civil engineer). It worked for one kid.
I wish I had some of those old photos to show here, but I think we must have around 2 cubic meters all, of course, excellently sorted. I wonder what kind of fighting will go down when it comes time to claim it out of our parents’ basement.
I’m always in a constant search for a project, so when I noticed that a ultra-cool kitchen faucet was on sale, I thought, “ooooo, I could use a fancier faucet.” A little frivolous, but wow, does it make a difference. It was also quite the experience switching faucets. Mike is becoming quite the handyman though (I helped, but he was the brave soul who got under the sink and did the wrenching).
I really can’t believe what a difference it makes!
Before and after:
We also got rid of the Moo (cat) on the counter
We’re eventually hoping to change the countertop and move to a single sink. I know, single sinks are the devil, but when you have the roughly 2 square feet of counterspace that we have, that extra foot makes a big difference.
That’s what I’ve been doing, running around. Mostly in the literal sense, but I suppose a little in the figurative sense as well (2 days to go until my final exam of the year!) Two weekends ago I ran my first 10km race of the year, with a less-than-stellar time. Not that it was a bad time, just not what I was aiming for. And then this weekend past I participated in a relay! Not just any relay but a 24 hour outdoor relay consisting of 17 legs and my team ran it with only 13 people (this is what happens when all 17 people on the team also happen to have an exam less than a week after, it’s like people think that studying is important or something crazy like that…) So 4 guys ran double legs, which normally might not be that bad except that there were parts of this race that were literally running up mountains (and running back down) and that the whole thing was done on very very very little sleep. I ran my leg at 0:37 (that’s not a typo, I didn’t mean to write 10:37, it was past midnight). 15.78km of “easy rolling hills” (which turns out is about as flat as any part of this race gets).
You might be thinking, “oh, that doesn’t look too bad, looks kind of flat.” but see that mountain in the distance? That’s where that leg of the race went up, let’s just say the car was having difficulties.
Something that no one ever wants to see when they need to restart their mac.
Thankfully, I somehow managed to get it restarted, something about resetting the VRAM a bunch of times. How this resolved the problem, I’m not sure, but I took the time I had to back up all of my photos and art work. Hopefully my computer is alright, since I’m not sure what crashed my computer. Fingers crossed that it doesn’t happen again.
In an unrelated note, training for my leg of the Cabot trail relay is going well. It’s 15.5 km, not a marathon by any stretch, but the longest I’ve ever run in one go. Plus my leg of the relay is at 5AM, adding to my hardcoreness.
For some reason we had spring (almost summer) weather and then, reality struck and it’s been a miserable last couple days weather-wise. So after a day of trying to learn cardiovascular drugs (and seeing a patient who was on a lot of them), I decided to unwind with some chai. Made on the stop top in milk no less (I’m pretty classy).
(yes, I realize that this photo doesn’t really show off what I was drinking)
Tomorrow I get to go talk to my new optometrist and ask why she gave me a cruddy new prescription (as in, less strong than my old one) and why they thought giving me contacts with less of an astigmatism correction was a smart idea. After tomorrow I don’t think I’ll be returning to this particular optometrist again.
Well, Moo is one of my cats (I only have two, not twenty, though I’m sure I’d have more if it was up to Mike). Both Moo and Brenda (his sister) are pretty odd cats. One, they fetch; two, thy steal things. The stealing of things seems unrelated to the size of the object…
I didn’t actually run in those socks, but I would have been cooler if I did
Ouuuuu, aaaaahhhh
