The attention deficit blogger

I have just no attention span for reading or writing anymore. I think it's probably the result of extreme sleep deprivation. So I think that I'm going with bullet-point blogs from now on. If one bullet is god-awful boring, you can always just skip to the next one.

Bullet One: Back in the pool today after a 30 day hiatus. After 4100 yards I got an urgent telegram delivered to me in the pool. It was from my shoulders. They officially resigned.

Bullet Two: The apartment experiment. For one year in my new cool place I have decided to live the simple life. No TV. Yes you read that right. I have no TV. No driving to the grocery unless I need dog food (it's about 0.5 miles down the road). No driving at all unless totally necessary. Bike to work as often as possible. No accumulating crap! You have absolutely no idea how much STUFF I threw out when I moved. Ugh

Bullet Three: A big congrats to Danny who nabbed a Kona slot at Buffalo Springs with a time of 4:28! Rockstar! And also to Tracy For dominating for 5th overall pro woman with a 4:37 and second fastest run split. Supastar! Andrew Hodges also grabbed 3rd overall pro at Spirit of Morgantown with a time of 4:12 (fastest run of the day at 1:19). It was a great day for the posse!

Bullet Four: A sneak peak



And to the person who suggested I was REPLACING Mike Honcho with Red. BLASPHEMY!

The Honch will always be my tri-racing machine and Red my dedicated roadie

:-)

Still alive!

OMG, what an insane adventure this week was! It was my last week of call for the rest of medical school and I had to move out of my house. Needless to say, there was little time for training. Here is the skinny on my week:




It's pretty awesome to be an athlete: I had to pick up a UHaul truck on Friday after work. I got it home and thought- now how in the hell am I going to get my car? RUN!!!!! So I ran from my house to the UHaul center. It would have been one very long walk...


Moving is SOOOO tiring: Yesterday I had about 3 hours to get all my stuff from my house to the apartment. Thankfully I had the help of 3 most excellent college students. My training buddies have some really wonderful kids. And they are happy to work for a little cash and Chipotle. Anywhoo, when I finally sat down for the first time yesterday at 10pm I felt like I had raced an Ironman. I had emptied all but 1 box. And had gone to the old house to clean. Man, I'm whooped.




Why don't you take a nap or something???: This was Paulo's response when I told him that I was going riding this morning. I hadn't been on my bike since Sunday so there was no way I was missing our group ride. It was one total ass-kicker though. Lots of elevation gain. There was one really long gradual grade that we hit at the 2:20 mark that we tackled at 23mph! My heart rate was >180 the whole way. I thought I was going to die! All in all I did 60 miles and it was no slow spin, that's for sure.



Holy crap, I hope that was fast...: After the ride I decided to do 1/2 of my friends Tony and Suneel's brick run. They were going out for an hour. The longest I have run since TTT is about 20 minutes so it was a challenge. It was SOOOO HARD! I was seriously dying. When I got back the curiosity got the best of me. I needed to google map the route, even though I knew that if I found out I was running 9 minute miles I would just cry. Thankfully we ran about 7:50 miles. That I can handle, although I wish I didn't feel like death doing it. That's near my goal pace for the half Ironman. Hmmm....

An announcement- I'm adding to my family: Tomorrow or Tuesday my baby will be shipped here from Austin Texas. His name is Red. And he's beautiful...



Pics and specs to come

You know you had a hard ride when...

You take a nap and then hop down the first stair and almost take a face plant down the whole flight of stairs because your legs give out. Ah, good times.

Went out for 120 hilly miles this morning. Did the first 112 faster than I did my Ironman last year. Hit the magic mark at 6:25 even with an hour of warm up through downtown Cleveland. It was just a fabulous morning. Tony and I started with a group of about 8 other riders and did Cleveland's wonderful Emerald necklace tour of the metroparks. Once we had traversed the whole park system at mile 80 it was just the two of us to battle the hills up in Holden. We both ended the ride feeling like we could keep going. It's taper time for my Undermedicated teammate. He is going to take IMLP by storm!



In other news I'm working my butt off here in my acting internship. 2 more on call days and I'm free. Unfortunately I just found out I have to move, so it will be a very hectic week between call and packing and moving. But I'll have the help of my dad who is coming to visit mid-week. Can't wait to see him!

Ok, time to go to a par-tay. For everyone racing in the next month:

Go out and get the work done!

:-)

Ugh

Going through post-race depression, which is compounded by working 160 hours in 2 weeks without a day off. Welcome to the life of an intern! Thankfully it's just for 4 weeks. Still, it's 7-30 hour shifts (and if the first one was any indication it's gonna be ROUGH- 30 minutes of sleep and no time to eat dinner). I've done almost no training this week. I did get a very nice 85 mile ride in on Sunday, though so that was solid. I also had a fabulous swim on Saturday. My hardest swim session since high school by a long shot. Just in time for a month where I won't have time to hit the pool. Damn it!

So a quick update on what I've been up to:

- After Triple T I arrived home to find this character on my doorstep. We had some great meals with my training buddies, hit the Chagrin Valley for a couple bike rides, drank lots of coffee and had some good laughs. The house is pretty lonely now!

- My knee has been pretty messed up. No running since the race. I'm going to try a very short jog tomorrow morning, but I don't have a lot of hope for a pain free jog. Last week I went to buy shoes and tried to run around the store and made it exactly 1 stride before stopping with serious pain. It has gotten progressively better, but more slowly than I had hoped.

- Started my last in-hospital call month of the year on Monday. Every 4th day I'm there for 30 hours. As a third year med student you get a fair bit of sleep on call because you aren't really an integral member of the team. As a 4th year things are different, or so I found out! At 4:30 am on my first call night I finally gave up and went to bed, despite not being done with my work, because I was useless. In the next 1:20 of "sleep" I got paged 6 times. Oh, the joys of medical training! On the positive side, I feel like I'm slowly getting more competent at this stuff, especially patient care. I don't break out into a cold sweat when I have to walk into a patient's room to tell him he probably has cancer anymore. There is still just so much to learn though that it's overwhelming. And my post-call days are so worthless. I was a total zombie the other day on the brink of complete and total breakdown. Met Lanny and some friends for a last dinner with Paulo and it seems like it was a dream. Paulo even changed his flight so that I could sleep for an extra 2 hours because he didn't have the heart to wake me up at 4am to take him to the airport. I am eternally grateful!

- Oh, and I sold my house- yay! An incoming medical student bought my house and I am now officially a tenant and not a home-owner. It's really nice because I know that I will be moving next May and will need to be able to pick up and go. Such a load off my mind!

- I am officially registered for the Official Ironman Sports Medicine Conference in Kona, Hawaii and am also going to be volunteering in the med-tent from 8pm-midnight for the big race. Now I just have to get a plane ticket. They are out of control!

Ok, time for bed. Sweet, sweet sleep. I told someone I was working all weekend and he said- "Well at least you'll be in air conditioning!" True dat. The glass is half full after all....