9.20.2011

Lots to blog about

Sorry for the lack of blog updates lately fellow readers, but I've been pretty busy trying to finish up assignments, study for tests, doing lots of running, travelling, and adjusting to the university life in general.  Did I say travelling?  Why, yes I did!  Where did I go?  Well, a couple weeks ago the Seawolf cross country team headed down south to the Islands of Hawai'i for 9 days to get rid of all the racing cobwebs, and get this season underway!  I've never been to Hawai'i before, so I should probably start off by telling you all how awesome it was...Or maybe I'll just show you.  After all isn't a picture worth a thousand words or something like that?
The first race site (Jurrasic Park Film Location)

The Team

Not a bad beach eh?

Couple of Flamingos

The view from the hotel

Men's team

The backstretch of the race course A.K.A the 13th fairway
You can click on any of the above photos for an enlarged view.

 Yeah, so those were a few of the photos of the trip, but they definitely don't serve justice to this island paradise.  Hawai'i is definitely another one of those places that belongs on a bucket list, and I could literally spend hours writing about how the whole experience, but we have some running to talk about! (And I need to get some homework done tonight)  Anyways, the Seawolves definitely brought their A-Game to Hawaii.  Race #1 went a little like this:  We had a real early morning after a long flight and a race 2 days before, so it's safe to say that we were all a little beat up going into it, but ran good races overall and managed a couple W's for the men and women.  Time wasn't really relevant here, especially with the 90 degree weather, the goal was to get in a solid tune-up race that would prepare us for the race the following weekend, and as a measuring stick for the rest of the season.  So basically goal accomplished, +1 for the Seawolves.  By the way, this race course was in the park that filmed movies like Jurassic Park, 50 First Dates, and You, Me, and Dupree.  I'll try to get some official team and individual results up on the results page when I get a chance, so stay tuned.  After Race #1, a few of the guys happened to notice yellow fruits hanging on some of the trees during our cool down, and jumped at the opportunity to have an exotic fruit feast mid-run.  So we picked some guavas off the tree, and continued on our cool down with handfuls of tasty fruit.  WIN!  Then, we got to stay in Hawai'i for another 7 days to train and wait for our next race.  Pretty rough life, eh?  If you can't already imagine, we had tons of fun running along the waterfront trails, climbing mountains overlooking Honolulu, and ripping out some fartlek sessions under the palm trees.  In between all that, we also got to work on our Alaskan tans, got to swim in the big pool with all the sharks, ate lots of pineapples and got rocked by the massive waves at the north shore of the island.  Then came Race #2.  Just like the first race, the men's and women's teams both jumped to the front and finished the job off right.  2 more wins gave us all the confidence we need that we're on the right track, and ready to rumble come October.  Note the golf course pictures above, that was our race course, no complaints from me!  We also brought home some wicked Tiki Man trophies and flowery necklaces, which was pretty sweet as well.  That night we flew back home to the Big One, and we're here for a couple more weeks before Western Washington in early October.  We're in the middle of our big uninterrupted training block right now, doing some serious work.  This past week has probably been the best week of training for me, as I'm coming to adjust to the higher mileage, and on a couple of occasions I've felt like I had that extra gear I was missing in the first few weeks.  I'll try to update this blog at least once more before the next meet, but for now I have some anatomy studying to be done!  Talk to ya later!

P.S.  Below is the Hawaii Five-O theme song, and from 0:15 to 0:18 into the video where the guy is standing on the balcony is the hotel we stayed at.  Our hotel is famous!  Once again, note picture above for our hotel view.

9.02.2011

I'm so fresh, man!

"What a freshman!"
Definitely the most common phrase heard on college campuses all across the nation this week.  It's safe to say that the freshmen have arrived.  The confused faces, the "oops, wrong class", and the "hey, how do I get to _____ (insert name of the building on the other side of campus)" are all sure signs that school is back in session.  I've had a few of my own freshman moments this past week, most notably causing the dishwasher to overflow with soap bubbles, spewing them all over the floor due to adding excessive amounts of dishwashing liquid.


I haven't bothered to use the dishwasher since.  I've been teaching myself to cook, as well.  I guess my freshman culinary skills are lacking as well, because after every meal I make, my room mates rush to the kitchen window to let out all the burnt food fumes, and then proceed to evacuate the kitchen for a few hours.  Then, on my first day of school, I made another fatal freshman error.  I failed to correctly read over my schedule, and I walked into the wrong class!  I left as soon as I noticed everyone was staring at me kinda funny.  After that, I made sure to read my schedule twice.  But perhaps my most embarrassing freshman moment this week was on my way home from school yesterday.  The walk back to my place is about 15 minutes, and it's pretty lame.  So I figured I would go ahead and take the quickest route home, and try to play the angles and stuff like that.  But mother nature wanted me to walk the long way back home.  It was a really rainy day, so I was thinking I had just one-up'ed mother nature by packing an umbrella in my backpack.  But she had another trick up her sleeve.  As I was walking back I noticed that there were fewer intersections on one side of the street than the other, so I quickly jumped onto that sidewalk instead of the bike path running through the woods along the side of the road.  What I didn't notice was that the warp in the road that forms over time in the bus lanes, where the tires produce added pressure in certain spots had completely filled with rain water.  Also, this sidewalk was right on the edge of the road, which is probably why I was the only one walking on that side on a rainy day.  Anyways, you probably see where this one is headed.  I got drenched.  A wall of water soaked me from head to toe as a bus flew by, and my umbrella couldn't do anything about it.  I bet the bus load of people got a good chuckle about that.  To make things worse, I had my brand new, insanely expensive textbook in my bag at the time.  The miracle that it wasn't wet when I got home was definitely the best part of that day.  I'll take the longer way home next time.  But, I've had some pretty cool freshman experiences as well.  I had my first day of training last Monday, and we ran up a mountain.  Can't do that in T-Dot!  My ears were popping constantly, and we even ran through multiple layers of clouds on our ascent to the top.  You could almost call it altitude training by the time we got to the top, as we were about 3000 feet above sea level.  Not too shabby for a 50 minute run!  Then, a few days later while running in the forest, we encountered a massive moose in the middle of the trail.  It was big.  We decided it would be best to run the other way.  Pretty cool experience still.  As far as running goes, we're putting in some pretty solid work up here in the big AK, and feeling a little flat is going to be a part of the game for the next little while as I adapt to a heavier work load.  But that's cool, because the real racing is still months away.