It's been a while since I posted last. Life has been kind of crazy lately. I ended up missing a couple workouts this week due to said craziness. Basically, towards the end of last week, my thesis adviser let me know that he wouldn't be around next quarter, and that I should schedule my second oral exam (a progress report for when you're about 75ish% done with your thesis) for the end of the break week, or possible week 1 of spring. I thought, cool, there's some more data that I wanted to have before presenting, so that would give me plenty of time to get and go over this data to figure out what it was telling me. Fast forward to Tuesday afternoon, when my adviser emails me to say "We should schedule your second oral exam, I will be available Thursday afternoon." Wait, what? Two days? Can I do this in two days? Answer: HELLS YEAH! Basically all day Wednesday getting all of the data that I needed for the presentation, then Thursday night/morning making the presentation. Then I realized I was supposed to do the design meeting 3:30-5 at lululemon Thursday afternoon. I had been looking forward to this, it seemed like it was going to be fun. My oral exam was scheduled for 2pm. It should be about 45-50 minutes of presenting, then maybe half an hour of my thesis committee discussing whether I passed or not. I should be able to easily make it by 4, so I emailed the lululemon girl to let her know that I would probably be late. I thought I could do both. That hope/illusion passed when I finally finished my presentation at 3:45, and my committee still needs to talk. Damn. Oh well. I passed! On two days worth of prep, I'm pretty impressed with that. I had to miss a couple workouts, but as much as I hate to say it, sometimes Ironman has to take the back seat. That covers the non-tri portion of my life lately, lets move to the training.
My long rides are getting easier. Another unexpected development, is the relative absence of saddle soreness after said rides. Even so, a trip to Geneva to get fit is definitely on my to-do list, as I'm not super comfortable in the aero-position. My endurance zone is also held in a bigger gear than before too! I like seeing changes to mark my progression. Where I'm really seeing the most is on the run. This is evidenced by my long run performance yesterday. I ended up going 12.6 miles over the 1:40 I was scheduled for. I did it over a pretty hilly course outside of Canandaigua, where my parents live. It turned out to be quite the adventure. At mile 3, I was chased and bit by a dog. Then, I really didn't want to run by the dog again, so I attempted to bypass it. I got to the end of my bypass, where I would head back to my main route, and a guy who lives by my parents, and is notoriously a crazy drunk (gotta love the country folk!) has his dogs out, and they see me and go crazy. I think I'll go the other way. My route ended up becoming a giant loop. But I ended up back at my parents' house right on time! I was pretty happy about that, and the sub 8 pace I managed! As for the dog bite, I guess the owners couldn't find its vaccination records, so animal services is monitoring the dog for 10 days to make sure it's fine. I'm pretty sure I don't have rabies, but if I start foaming at the mouth, we'll all know why. Even with the dig bite, I couldn't be anything but happy with my run performance. I'm historically not a strong runner, and my 13.1 PR is 1:49. I almost ran that in 1:40 over a much hillier course. I'm pretty excited about that. Mary definitely has me doing something right. Days like that make me super excited for this summer. I'm excited to see exactly what I can do!
146 days to go!
