Medical Monday - Start of Medical School

After a long hiatus, I am back!

The last three months have been very fulfilling

I completed three runs - the 12K Bay to Breakers, the 10K Camp Pendleton Mud Run, and the 26K San Francisco marathon:

The super steep Hayes Street Hills

Bunch of Marines prior to the mud run

San Francisco Marathon starting line!

The sunrise that morning

The half marathon was a good run overall, but I was definitely starting to feel the burn during the uphill climb at the 10-11 mile mark. 

I started a new relationship over the summer, which is now a long-distance relationship. We'll see how that goes.

Annnnnnd since it's Medical Monday, I'm lukewarmly proud to say that I've now moved into my studio apartment to begin my first semester of medical school.

Woowooo!

I feel lukewarm about the whole matter, if only because I have underestimated the cost and difficulty of moving into a new place without a car. I'm tired of cleaning, or assembling furniture, of making frequent walking trips to the nearby (thank goodness it's nearby) Target, and scouring the internet to find the best deals on furniture. I still have a lot of things I need to buy - spices, a skillet, cooking utensils and more groceries so I am not eating the same things every day. There are also things I want to buy: rugs, another lamp, and a computer.

Ugh.

The stress and workload of moving into a new place has overridden my excitement of having my own place.

Orientation is this Wednesday. The current second years have organized several welcome week activities for us, so I'm looking forward to that as well. I built my desk, so I'm happy to finally have a table (instead of standing/sitting at my kitchen counter).

More updates to come!

Milestone

10 miles!! Coach said it was 9 but Google Maps says otherwise!

Here's my running route:
[IMG]http://i43.tinypic.com/359fp0m.jpg[/IMG]

It sucked. But it's motivating me to increase the intensity or duration of my own workouts. The first 7 miles was easy, which at least tells me that I'm ready for my own 12K in May. The last 3 miles sucked. I was able to keep up for another mile, but in the final two, my legs felt incredibly tight. My running mates were far ahead of me as I struggled to keep my legs moving. The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that my car was at the end point.

After the run, I bought The Stick and a new pair of running shorts to help massage my legs and celebrate my milestone. I'm also considering getting a new pair of shoes to rotate in/out of during the week, but good running shoes are expensive!

At any rate, I have been waking up early this week due to mornings being quite warm for San Francisco standards. The sucky part about that is I like to sleep in, but can't because my room gets too warm and stuffy. The great thing is that I now have ample time to eat a wholesome breakfast before hitting the gym or the pool. Let's hope I can maintain this routine.

I signed up for the Camp Pendleton Mud Run in June, which is a 10k obstacle course. Time to work on my upper body strength!

Run + Rain = Dumb

Welp, I've done it again.  Last Saturday's (March 30)  running workshop completely sucked because my GI tract was very, very, very angry at me - making the subsequent 4.5 mile run very difficult.  The night before that, I had one measley rum and coke during a friend's birthday bonanza and I think that my stomach and intestines didn't like it very much.  I think that my GI is still unhappy from the last time I screwed it up, which my doctor thinks is from interview-stress.  So - no more hard liquor for me.

This past Saturday, I was able to complete the 6-mile run just fine, which means I'm just about ready for the 12K run in May.  We averaged at about a 10-minute mile and I'm amazed that I was able to hold to that pace even during our uphill jobs.  Unfortunately, it started drizzling during our run and we were fairly soaked by the time we finished.  It got to the point where I was no longer sure if the moisture on my face was rain or sweat, and there was no point wiping it off because my shirt was wet too.

I went for a swim afterwards too.

And now I have a sore throat.

But it's pretty minor as sore throats go, so I'll be alright.  Swimming has really helped me learn how to control my breathing when I go running.  My friend/swim coach has me swimming in 12m stretches on one breath, and I've noticed that this torture exercise has made me a much more efficient breather when it comes to running as well.

Hopefully my sore throat gets better tomorrow, because tomorrow is speed-training for the run group.  I should avoid yelling at kids and invest in a whistle.

Fit & Healthy Friday Blog-hop

I decided to participate in a blog link-up. Woo-woooo. I've listed my general goals in March and how well I've been fulfilling each one. My schedule is kind of all over the place. The great thing about listing things like this is that I can then look at what I'm doing and fine-tune my schedule. I'm hoping to have more specific goals for April.

Goal One: Learn how to swim. Improve breast stroke, learn how to tread. Learn freestyle.
Goal Two: Fit in time for running somehow.

Week 1: 
Pass! Ran 12.5 miles, about 2.5 miles/day. Also did 45 minutes of weight-lifting over the span of 4 days. Two days of upper body, 2 days of lower-body. Core workouts combined with upper/lower body workouts. Used 10 and 12 lb weights.

Week 2: 
Pass! Ran 15 miles, about 3 miles/day. Same amount of time spent weight-lifting but increased the range of weights. Used 12, 15, and 17.5lb weights. Had my first swim lesson on Saturday.


Week 3: 
Pass! Swim 4 days each week for 1 hour. If flopping like a fish can be called swimming. Second swim lesson on Saturday. Learned how to tread! Kind of. Also learned freestyle. Attended first day of a friend's running workshop. Ran 4 miles in the sand. Died. 

Week 4: 
Planned to swim four days this week, but I overslept on Thursday and stayed home to take care of personal paperwork. Will have to cut swimming-time down to 3 days this week. Went swimming on Wednesday - working on freestyle, endurance, and breathing (note to self, remember to exhale under water).

Running: Pass. Day two of my running workshop. 4 miles in the park. 3 hill-sprints. Died. 
4-minute circuit: 10 push-ups, 5 frog-jumps, side-step in squat position about 10 meters, 10 crunches, side-step again 10 meters, 5 frog jumps, 10 burpies*.

On Saturday, coach will have us run a timed mile. I'll have a better idea of how I'm doing and can set a more specific goal for pacing after that. 

*Burpies = start from a crouch, jump up as high as possible, come back down for a push-up, start over. 

Adjustments: 
I think I'll start adding weight-lifting again in April. My arms and shoulders were fairly sore from swimming these last two weeks, but now that soreness is going away, which means I can consider being more rigorous in my workouts. 

If I'm going to be running this much, it would help to lose weight - something I never bothered keeping track of before. I'm going to start writing down what I eat and when so that I can re-evaluate my eating habits. According to my coach, we burned about 550 calories on yesterday's run. I'm not sure how many calories I'm burning during my swimming sessions...Hopefully 200? I'm hoping to continue this routine through May. In June, I'll have to figure out my gym membership situation. Blegh. 

Spring Break!

Spring break has begun for the San Francisco school system, which means I get time off too! Woooot.

I kicked off Day 1 with the most intense work out day. A 40-minute, 4 mile run on sand, cool down, home for a few hours, then a two hour swim lesson. I haven't run on sand in a long, long time. A friend/athletic trainer is leading a running workshop to prepare for the San Francisco Marathon in June. It's costing me about $100 for 24 running sessions, which is actually a really good rate. The whole idea of paying-to-run is kind of silly, I'll admit, but I'll be able to improve my time and running form. At the very least, running with other people will motivate me to run faster (I was dead last, yay me!!). When I run alone, I tend to settle into a comfort zone that lets me coast along nicely. I'd like to be able to run faster than a 10-minute mile - which I only do when I try really hard.

In reality, I'm doing alright for someone who spent most of February on a plane, eating airport food and drinking airport cocktails.

A few hours after that, I had my second swimming lesson with another friend. I learned that I don't know how to use a kickboard. I can kick just fine at the wall, but kick while holding onto a kickboard? Nope! Today I worked on my breast stroke form and learned freestyle. Once I learned how to kick, freestyle was pretty easy, and much more efficient as a swimming form than breast stroke. Even the lifeguard said I was doing pretty well...you know, swimming the 11 meters from the wall to the guard bench before I got tired.

Now that I can swim, though, I can work on my form and eventually swim longer distances.

I also learned how to tread. The biggest challenge was learning not to panic if my head sinks underwater.

I'm happy with my progress. My goal last week was to learn how to do all these things in the water before the end of this week, and I did!

Next goal: swim well enough to swim in the pool during lap-swim times. Also tread for 30 seconds without letting my head sink into the water.

I'm taking tomorrow off from any kind of exercise. My legs are killing me. Getting up hurts.

Bustin' the Booty

I signed up for the Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge on Sunday:

Participants can earn points for eating right or being active (running/walking/swimming/etcetc) and win prizes.  I only glanced over the points system briefly, but there are Advanced/Intermediate/Beginner levels, regular challenges for participants to earn extra points, and points for getting your daily value of fruits and veggies, among other things.  It's a kewl way to motivate myself to work out and track my progress.

Since I'm still in the initial phases of physical therapy (more on that later), I have to take it easy on the weights.  I realized that just the act of pumping my arms while running was very tiring after several minutes because it involved more movement than my left shoulder is accustomed to post-surgery...so no crazy arm-flailing sprints for a while :)

I ran 2 miles at a 2.0 incline on a treadmill and worked on my core for 20 minutes.  While I was proud of myself for being able to run that much after over a month of sitting on my butt, a 2.0 incline is not very impressive considering San Francisco has hills insane enough to hold an annual event like this:

(The video is from an event called Bring Your Own Big Wheel which is held on one of the city's more steep and twisty inclines.  It's basically a bunch of adults riding down a twisty hill on their kids'/nephews & neices'/best friend's kids' toy bicycle.  It's free and draws a huge crowd every year on Easter Sunday.  )

Photo of the Week #2

Foothill Regional Park.

During a run that was very grueling on the knees. need ice >_<