Wow!

I think I just managed to get my motivation back. What an absolutely amazing athlete. I cried like a baby watching her celebrate the last 2 miles at Kona with the biggest smile I've ever seen. I think we are going to see a lot more of Chrissie Wellington.

Funny Thursday

Does anyone else really like...

Black and white photos? (you might need to click on them to really see the detail)

Day off thoughts

-I love my days off. Slept in, ate peanut butter toast and coffee, went for a 40 mile bike ride which was wonderful, did some shopping at Performance Bike, watched football, acted like a lazy POS all afternoon. What a perfect day!

-Learning a ton at work lately. One of my patients is a severely delusional homeless paranoid schizophrenic without a legal guardian who has a life threatening MRSA infection but refuses many treatments that we think may be necessary for his recovery. Very tricky situation...

-I am out of shape and feeling chubbier by the minute. Please give me some inspiration to turn this situation around. Just not really motivated lately

-My running parter is back! My absolute saint of a dad came into town, painted my windows and dropped off Maddie. She's laying right next to me right now. The house was so lonely without her.

-Go Indians!

-Went to see Into The Wild last night. Phenomenal movie. Visually stunning and wonderful screenplay. Makes me want to go to the mountains

Speaking of mountains, I said I would post pics of my Colorado trip but then I never did it. So here ya go!

Me, Colleen, and Justine were roommates together for 2 years (I lived with Justine for 3)



Yes, our condo had a hot tub!


Silly wedding photos. I was asking people to make stupid phases and/or do stupid things...

I was the worst. Whenever Justine would ask me to make a face for the camera I would bust out laughing...


These two were good. This is: "Pretend there is pepper in your wine"


Shanna is a saint for doing "Pick your nose and hope no one is looking"


Overly happy face


Show me: "I just got married!"


Another overly happy face moment



And some pics from Estes Park:








Time to study!

Accidental bits of wit and wisdom

Today brought to you by the weird podiatry student (wps) on our medicine team that didn't have the common sense to put his phone on vibrate when we were on rounds/in conference/with patients.

wps: Do you like country music?

me: No, not particularly

wps: Oh... well what kind of music do you listen to?

me: I listen to pretty mellow stuff. Like Jack Johnson, Norah Jones, Nick Drake, Elliot Smith, Ben Folds, Josh Rouse...

wps: Oh, like Easy Listening?

I died a little inside

Am I that old already??

More randomness and a product review

First, a product review.




I always thought a tire was a tire. I bought cheap ones and used them until flats were a common feature of my rides. Then this year I thought I would be racing on my clinchers. So I went out an bought a really nice set of tires. And I will NEVER go back. I picked up my Michelin Pro2Race tires in March. I rode the same set of tires until this morning when I get my new set in the mail. I don't count miles, but lets say the mileage on those babies is measured in the 1000's. Including a lot of miles on my trainer. In all those miles, I got a total of 1 flat. And it wasn't a puncture. It was a result of me running into a pothole that even Clevelanders would consider massive. Any bigger and there would have been 48 hour live coverage on CNN of the poor little tri-girl stuck down a hole. Last week went I went on my ride I checked out my tires first, since I was going out by myself for a very long ride. What I saw concerned me more than a little. The tires were D-One done. Many slashes and a lot of rear heat damage starting to show from my trainer hours. I thought there was no way I was going to make it through the ride. But alas, no worries. And when I took them off today, they were totally clean on the inside. None of the gashes were full thickness. They have also been shown to be among the fastest clincher tires on the market, and they ride like a dream. They grip the road really, really well in the rain and are smooth like silk. And no, I'm not sponsored by Michelin (I wish- those suckers are expensive!)

On to randomness...



Went to the pool this morning. The plan was swimming in the morning with Lanny and a ride in the afternoon with whoever in the gang wanted to go. We got there this morning and had the entire pool to ourselves. A 9 lane olympic sized pool (the above pic is actually our pool). SWEET! So we started our set. I am totally unconditioned for swimming, so Lanny was nice enough to lead the sets. Soon more people showed up. And then at 7 we were invaded by the munchkins. It's bad enough when you feel out of shape and have to deal with a clock staring you in the face. But it's just too much to be passed like you're standing still by an 8 year old half pint doing the one armed breaststroke with a pull buoy. These kids are seriously fast.

Another random note... Any bloggers out there wonder sometimes who exactly is reading their blogs? I used to have a nice anonymous blog. About 5 months ago, I became Googleable. Not sure how I feel about that.... Thankfully there are very few people in this world that can successfully spell my full name correctly. So I guess I can keep a small amount of anonymity...

Ok, off to get ready to ride! I love days off!

Randomness.... and I'm tired!

- Only one week into inpatient internal medicine and I am so tired! I feel like I've been thrust from one TV show to another. Surgery was Grey's anatomy with interpersonal drama and dying patients, and now I'm in an episode of House. No, my attending isn't a crazy nutjob hooked on painkillers like in the show (she is actually a total sweetheart), but my patients are complete medical mysteries. Maybe I should take a cue from the show and start ordering rabies tests on my patients. Keeps me on my toes, though, and I'm learning a ton. It's hard not to learn a lot when you start at the level of comprehension and available medical knowledge that I have. Scary sometimes to think I'll have MD behind my name in 20 months. Yikes!

- Sad news... I put Mike Honcho on the trainer on Monday. What a sad moment! The plan was to ride and run on alternate days. Today ended up being an impromptu rest day since I decided to wake up, set my alarm for 1:15 later, and completely pass out. Ah, well! At least I haven't missed a run day yet this week!

- I have 3 days off this rotation (5 weeks) and one of them is tomorrow. I am very excited. My masters team meets on Saturdays now, so I'm going to swim in the morning and ride in the afternoon. Talk about a perfect day! But then I'm on call Sunday...

- You know what I miss most about racing? It's the smell of neoprene in the morning.



- I am going to have to admit I've become rather disillusioned in regards to relationships lately. But every once in awhile I meet someone that reminds me that true love still exists. The patient I admitted on Wednesday is the sweetest guy. He has been with his wife for 31 years. She is disabled and he helps her with activities that we all take for granted. Every time I go to see him, he talks about her and how special she is, how much strength he gets from her, how she is the greatest woman in the world. I got to spend a fair bit of time with them both in the ER before he was admitted and it was so touching how much they cared for each other. I called her today to let her know how he is doing and what we are planning for him. Even though it is incredibly difficult for her to manage alone without him, she made me promise that we would keep him until we knew exactly why he has been sick. I told her that we would keep him as long as we needed to, and not a minute longer. I guess at heart I'm a true romantic. I don't find young/new love that inspiring. But when people have been together for many, many years and still are 100% committed to each other and want nothing more than the health and happiness of the one they love... well I think that is just awesome