Oh, boy.... Here we go again

Camp wrap up

Back from camp today and I am exhausted! It was a great week with Lanny, Anita, Kathy and Jim. Lots of great workouts (220 miles of hard riding), great wine, great time with friends. We capped off hell week with my own favorite hell swim set:

500 warm up
10 x 50 with 10 situps in between each 50
200 easy
10 x 50 with 10 squat jumps between each one
200 easy
10 x 50 with 10 pushups between each one
200 easy

It is really fun. We told Anita all week that she had to bring an extra towel with her to hell-workout. I think she was quite intrigued. We had each other laughing so hard we almost peed ourselves during the situps. Then in the middle of the squat jumps, which look awfully hot in a speedo with a little extra love handles, Lanny informs me that behind the tinted windows immediately to our left is an exercise class that overlooks the pool. I hope they enjoyed the show.

Hard to thank Lanny and Anita (and Jim) enough for enduring every single workout with me and slowing down when I needed it. And Kathy for the overwhelming hospitality

But now I'm back in good ole Denver. It was nice to see the Mad-Dog and my friends at conference today. Trying to get into a good groove of training because my life is going to be pretty training-free from April 23-May 22. Hard to train when you work from 4am-6pm every day...

And my funny for the day

I'm in no shape for this...

I'm in Florida for my third annual training camp with my buddy Lanny (and his wonderful wife Kathy). I remember fondly the days when I could come here and hang with the riders here and Lanny and I could kick each others' butts in the pool. Those were the days when I wasn't fat, lazy and out of shape. However, it has been one fabulous week. Riding every single day, running and swimming on opposite days, all of which would have been so much better without bronchitis... but beggars can't be choosers.

The first day we went out with Naples Velo for their 24 hour mph ride. I was hanging on by the skin of my teeth with heart rates north of 190 when Lanny got a flat. I saw him drop back, but with the anoxic hit my brain was taking it took a good 2 minutes for me to figure out what just happened and turn around. I have never been so happy for a flat in my life. The flat happened near the turnaround for the ride. After we fixed it Lanny told me the horrible news: The pack would be back around to "pick us up" soon. Oh shit. And sure enough right when we turned at the light there were 25 testosterone charged pairs of quadriceps heading our way. So we got in line and prepared to be engulfed. And then I noticed something- "Lanny, your tool bag is open..." Within 30 seconds Lanny reached around to close his tool bag, knocked his multitool out of said bag, I ran over it and flatted my rear tire. Yet again, here I sat not exactly broken up not to have to grab onto the fast moving train with my dental floss level of fitness. 2 more guys stopped as they went by to help. With my flat now fixed we start riding home. With my naive brain I figured we would take it easy back to the cars. Oh no. Now that there was no pack to "limit" us to 24mph, why the hell not go back at 26? And that little story of my first workout pretty much sums up the whole week. Me redlining and going to bed at 8:30 so I can get my ass handed to me again in the morning.

I'm tired.

Oh, I am so, so tired.

And maybe it is this level of fatigue that has me thinking about maybe, just maybe signing up for IMWI 2011. But I do realize that it is a pipedream if for no other reason than me completely unable to get to Madison a year ahead of time to register. Grrrrr...

Anyway, other events of my most fabulous vacation week include bocce ball, kayaking, cooking, wine, and way more than my fair share of margaritas. Oh yeah, and there was that vodka night....



It is 8:41 and way, way past my bedtime. I was promised that tomorrow will be "hell day". And after the training is complete I'm getting a pedicure, damn it.



Hope you all enjoyed your Easter. (Code words for: I hope you all ate a ton of yummy chocolate)

Life is good...

Just sitting here doing laundry and drinking wine at midnight on a Monday night. You learn really fast when doing an emergency medicine residency that weekends don't exist. Neither do good night's sleep or business hours. But it also allows you to go to the pool at 11:30 am when no one is there and enjoy the gorgeous 70 degree sunny days in March in Denver. So no complaints.

Swimming by myself without my team has yet again re-exposed me to the awesomeness that is pool dynamics. I went to "lap swim" on Saturday to find that they had no intentions on putting the lane lines in. I spent 30 minutes dodging a group of kids playing water basketball before a couple of other guys jumped in. I had placed myself near one wall to best avoid being maimed by the round flying death ball. The kids quickly emptied out and the new guys, a couple ex-football players in bermuda shorts and big goggles situated themselves as they thought was appropriate. One jammed between me and the wall, and the other boxing me in on the other side. The great thing about all-muscle, all-testosterone swimmer is their utter inability to let anyone beat them in a sprint. So as I'm struggling to regain my endurance in the water with my flabby, no muscle arms, I have two guys timing their 25 yard all out sprints with when I push off the wall. After swallowing half the pool water from the wake I have now decided that I'm completely ready for another Ironman swim.

In the cycling front, yesterday I had a fabulous ride down to Morrison and through Red Rocks. I have a perfect cycling buddy who's training for Ride the Rockies. She's great and knows a bunch of beautiful routes. Denver is full of off road trails and hitting them, even if just for part of a ride is such a nice break from traffic. So today I went off on my own on the cherry creek bike path and was visited by the Karma police. I passed a middle aged lady who was well endowed from the backside wearing a tight fanny pack, fluorescent clothing and side-ways ponytail. I couldn't help but sing to myself: "You make the rockin' world go round". And for that lapse I have been plagued by Queen all day. All day. I will never think ill of you again, bright colored speed walker lady.

Headed out to Florida in 1 week for my annual- Let Lanny and Kathy (my best friends from Cleveland) kick the shit out of me every day and then get me fat and happy on great food and wine- training camp. I absolutely cannot wait. Riding and swimming every day (and running when I feel like it) surrounded by total relaxation. Maybe a pedicure thrown in, just to feel girlie. Just what an intern needs in April! And I even have another vacation left this year. Thinking of doing a 4 day backpacking trip with a 3 day spa indulgence on the end. Now that sounds faaaaabulous. And I did start looking at the Colorado race calender for the year. I think I will try to do some races this year. We shall see when the schedule comes out later next month.

And now for some ED stories...

I have been working in the pediatric ED for the past couple weeks. It's pretty awesome since I usually don't have drunk people spitting in my face and my weekly load of pelvic exams is greatly reduced. But as I said in my last post, Denver Health has the genius idea of putting the patient's own words on the ED board. Which gives me ample opportunities to take pictures of the chief complaints so that I don't forget them. One of my favorite pediatric chief complaints this week was:

"I smoked a bowl of chronic and picked up a bottle and started drinkin'"

By the looks of this 14 year old, that is something that he was going to regret. And for the record, he came in vomiting his guts out at 2pm on a Wednesday. I'm sure that the the fact that you can buy marijuana "legally" on every corner has NOTHING to do with the volume of sky high teenagers we are seeing. And I'm still trying to figure out what the 18 year old had ingested who came in actively hallucinating after watching the 3D version of Alice in Wonderland on my last shift. It was quite the sight with him still wearing his 3D glasses...

Then one day I walked over when my shift was done to talk to my friend Colleen. She was about to go see: "I am pretty sure there is a condom stuck up inside of me". We have such glorious jobs, let me tell you. I never did find out if she located the aforementioned foreign body...

OK, that is all. A couple of pics of long overdue visits with my Dad (here in Colorado) and my Mom (last week in South Carolina with my most awesome aunt and uncle). I wish I could see my family more often, but am so thankful for the moments that I do get to share with them.

On the Slopes at Breck. Buttering himself up for the mogul run in our future:



Irish bar in Charlotte, a couple days before St. Pattys. My mom, my aunt freenie and I. It was such a nice few days to catch up.



Enjoy this wonderful spring week! Summer is coming! :-)

Climbing out of a funk

I haven't posted here in about 6 months and still am not sure if I'll come back to it. But things are definitely looking up. I started intern year with about a 7 month stretch of very hard, stressful and time consuming rotations. I completely underestimated how hard it would be on my body (and the mental toll) to spend every third or fourth night in the hospital getting no sleep. I was mentally and physically spent. Didn't do any races after I moved here, and to be honest had very little motivation to train. But on the positive side I have learned so, so, so much. Going into the year I was terrified of how the schedule worked out. But I knew that once February came my life would get better. And here I am!

This past week the weather started getting better and I started to miss cycling (outside). I was feeling sorry for myself because I still didn't have a group of people to ride with. So one day I decided to be proactive about it. I started a cycling group and less than a week later it has 47 members. I went on a fabulous 56 mile ride with a new training buddy up into a canyon, Joined a pool, started running again and booked my flight for the first week of April to do a little training camp with my buddy Lanny in Florida. Not sure about racing this year since I have to see my schedule, but I'm doing the Copper Triangle bike ride in August (three mountain passes in one day). Hopefully some other races including one or two tris. Kicking around the idea of doing a half marathon the third weekend in April. Highly doubt I can get my flabby butt into shape that fast, but it could be fun to try. I didn't reapply to Timex for obvious reasons but I am really looking forward to getting back to doing what I love because I love it and not worrying about anything else. I want to swim, bike and run for the joy of it. Because let me tell you... it ain't gonna be fast!

Ok, to end on a funny note, here are some of my favorite quotes from the past few months...

ED board where patients chief complaints get put up for the docs and nurses to see:

"DOG ate toe"

Yup. Accurate statement, unfortunately

Overheard by chief resident before rounds when he didn't know that the whole department was listening in:

"She had the most perfect vagina!" (The backstory was that he did a speculum exam on a woman that used to be a man without knowing that little fact)

Leaving a patients room with a spanish translator:

Translator: You don't want to know what we just talked about

Me: Oh yes I do

Translator: She asked if condoms would prevent her and her husband from transmitting chlamydia back and forth...because even the XLs are too small for him.

And then I knew why he was sitting back smirking

Hope everyone out there is doing well!!!