Training the Ratties

You know that giant beautiful chord at the end of The Beatles' A Day in the Life?  The one that seems to ring out longer each time you hear it and sounds like the kind of grand entrance theme you'd like to play every time you enter a room.  I want to say that chord is what a day in the life of a grad student is like, but really it's a lot closer to the sound of a three year old learning to play a piano in the apartment next to yours.  Mostly it's clanging that you can't control, but occasionally it's surprisingly awesome.  

This morning I got out pre-dawn for some hill repeats at Nichols Arboretum (henceforth known as The Arb), which boasts a 2/3 mile long switchback climb on a gravel trail entirely lined with trees.  The Arb is only 2 miles from my door, so that makes for a nice warmup before crushing your quads and calves.  Since it doesn't get light until 7:00, I stole the birthday present I gave my husband -- a Petzl Myo RXP headlamp -- and clicked on my latest audiobook, We Bought a Zoo.  The rabbits and other furry critters were stirring in the blacked out forest while the lions in my book were roaming restlessly, which stirred some extra adrenaline in my legs.  Overall, a great morning run.

Gravel Trail on left.  Taken earlier this year.

I take the 10 minute bus ride to and from lab every day and usually listen to more of my book while consuming a recovery drink- this is the only relaxing part of my day.  I got to work at 7:30, and I'm proud to say that I trained my undergraduate assistant to do rat brain histology- delegating tasks has the benefit of reducing my workload and passing on a little bit of knowledge. While he worked, I ran some Matlab programs and clustered cells while watching episodes of Grey's Anatomy, a guilty pleasure that pulls every emotionally manipulative move in the soap-opera playbook.  An excerpt from a gchat to my husband about an episode, "and now they just had a car crash after a marriage proposal with a pregnant lesbian jeeze what a stupid.show".  Stupid, of course, because it gets me every single time.  But check out these beautiful cells I clustered! Those are real rat-brain neurons!

For the rest of the day, I'll be training my rats, working on the intro to my thesis, and packing in as many healthy calories as I possibly can, since all I seem to do right now is shed weight and it's not helping my bike power. Speaking of the bike, my day will probably end around 5:00pm, when I'll come home, go for a hike/walk with Cody pup, and then ride hard for 1.5 hours while my awesome husband makes dinner.  I'm in bed by 9:00 and then we start it all over again! Just a day in the life!

First Post!

My invitation to the big leagues came this week, after five years racing as an Age Group triathlete. I received email confirmation from the USAT yesterday stating that my application to race as a professional triathlete has been accepted. Eeeeeeeeeeeep! And so the adventure begins. I'm excited and nervous for the coming challenges this year, but I also know that I'm going to work my tail off in training to be ready for all my races.

I’m working with Coach Jorge Martinez from E3 Training Solutions once again this year because I know that his evidence based training strategies will have me mentally and physically ready to test myself against the best triathletes in the world. He's helped me get to 70.3 and Ironman World Championships, pushing me toward personal bests along the way. Now it's time to step that level of intensity up even more.

Another piece to this year's personal challenge is balancing my work on a PhD in Neuroscience at UM while training hard and racing around the country. I'm a 5th year student now, which is when people start asking me straight up that stomach knotting question, "soooooooo, what are you going to do next?" To which I quickly change the subject with an awkward non-sequitor about my fuzzy nubbins Australian Shepherd dog named Cody. Like the time she rolled onto her back and slid down a snow covered hill like a slick otter. So cute. See how I did that?

I'm looking forward to an exciting and adventurous year of training, racing, and playing in the water, on the bike, and on the run.