Life as of Late

March 29, 2015 / Amanda / Leave a comment

Hi guys!

Wow. It’s been like a week since I’ve posted! My bad y’all. Things have gone kinda crazy over here in anticipation of our yearly site review from NSF (National Science Foundation).

Not to mention, my little bro, Andrew, was up for a bit looking at colleges! Steve and I wanted to make sure he had a blast and so we did all sorts of shit we thought a 17 yr old would enjoy. BTW, I am so out of touch with what is and is not cool these days. He was here for 3 days and we looked at 3 universities. Not bad right?

He flew in to Charlotte (a 2.5 hr drive from Raleigh) Monday night at 10pm. We got back to Raleigh around 1am and crashed hard!

Tuesday was North Carolina State University, NCSU, tour day. Since this is where both Steve and I go to grad school, we were able to show him all the nifty engineering labs and the cleanroom.

I like to pretend I’m a wimpy astronaut in this getup. It doesn’t really work though.

Steve, on the other hand, feels right at home in his cleanroom suit since this is where he does research!

We also toured the Hunt library which is the COOLEST LIBRARY EVER!! Seriously, if you’re ever in the Raleigh area, try to check it out. Trust me on this. There are robots. And lots of cool chairs.

(Look Mom, he smiles!!)

We walked all over campus and got the campus ice cream. We were still pretty tired after the ~~early morning~~ late night return. So, after grabbing sushi at Sushi Blues (which I didn’t take a picture of since we inhaled 6 giant rolls) we chilled at home and watched part of Jurassic Park.

Wednesday was Durham day! Andrew and I grabbed lunch in Durham and my uncle gave us a tour of the Duke campus for the remainder of the afternoon. Even though Duke is a fairly small school, we walked for a solid 2.5 hrs. Ow. After grabbing dinner, Steve and I rushed Andrew over to the most fun teenager activity we could think of….go kart racing! Not the dinky go-carts that you see everywhere. These are outfitted with 200 cc engines and get some serious speed!

Why do I always get the pink helmet…whatever. Andrew’s fastest lap was around 33 seconds. Not shabby for a first time! (The super fast guys can do a lap of the track in about 28 seconds)

Thursday seemed to be Andrew’s favorite (I’m totally guessing here). The lovely roomie, Lisa, took us on a tour of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill! While touring the physics building, we decided it’d be a good idea to see if anyone was around to give a tour of the building/talk about the program/idk. We lucked out and got to talk to the physics department head for a while and then his grad student gave us a tour of the physics labs! So cool. Like. OMG I may have chosen the wrong profession. Except for all the math. I think I’ll stick with my easy engineering math 🙂

After the UNC tour, Steve and I took Andrew to the other most awesome thing we could think of for a teenager. A pro hockey game! With fights! And crazy hockey fans!j

Except there were no fights (boo) and the area wasn’t super packed. BUT the Hurricanes won! 5-2 which was pretty sweet if you ask me.

Since we had to do the whole Charlotte drive thing again at 3am (WTF MOM?!?) we came home and got a quick 5 hrs of sleep before hitting the road.

We had a blast and it was a ton of fun touring all the campuses and eating all the food and doing all the fun things!

I’ll be back tomorrow with a training update (fair warning, it’s pretty embarrassing) <– also, I misspell this stupid word every time…does that happen to anyone else?

A Crazy Balancing Act

March 21, 2015March 21, 2015 / Amanda / Leave a comment

That’s basically grad school, one helluva crazy balancing act. You balance classes, research, sleep, prepping for last min meetings, outreach, professional development, the list goes on and on. Throw training for a half ironman in there and sometimes there’s no helping the circus that ensues.

The key is to remember that it’s ok. Some weeks are more grad school focused and training falls by the wayside. Other weeks, school is a little easier and training can pick up. It’s hard to not get upset by the loss of training time. But you have to remember that, as a grad student, we don’t work a normal 9-5 job. We don’t go home and leave work. It follows you everywhere.

This week, training really fell off. Why? Well there were due dates, and poster sessions, and just grad school. I did what I could in terms of training, but by Friday I was so exhausted I skipped both my workouts and was in bed by 9pm!

At least grand school was super productive! Here’s the progression of the armband I worked on all week

There was one more iteration after this last one but I was making it in a hurry and didn’t get a picture. Btw that last picture was taken at midnight when I had to stay late to work.

I also had a poster session that I was not thrilled about attending.

I was mainly there for the free pineapple. I was that person who stood by the fruit plate for a solid 5 min picking out all the pieces of pineapple and hoarding them like a squirell preparing for winter. Our director of grad studies even stopped by and asked if I had a thing for pineapple. He laughed a bit when I told him it’s usually the first fruit to go so I try to stock up 🙂

Gotta go back to school today for open house so we’ll see what training happens. I’m also typing this on my phone at the hair salon while trying to decide what to do with my hair.

Have a great Saturday!!

Little Things That Make Me Smile

March 17, 2015March 17, 2015 / Amanda / Leave a comment

Hi friends! Since last week the blog was a little bit of a downer, I’m going to overcompensate for it with happy things this week.

Yesterday was a pretty cool day in grad school world (read- it was chill). I’m stuck on research since I ran out of an etching material and Amazon’s 2 day shipping is not shipping fast enough. So I decided to head home a touch early and get some reading in.

Reading is way more enjoyable when you are outside and have a beer. If you have any doubt of my nerd status, I was excited about reading this…

Yeah it’s a textbook. Yeah it’s complicated. Yes I am way too excited about reading it and finding useful information.

Since Steve was at the library studying, it was just me and Indy for most of the night. Usually when Steve’s gone, Indy is pretty mopey and sits on her bed and ignores me. Last night, however, she hopped up on the bed to be my Netflix-watching buddy. Only, she kind of missed the bed and landed on me and promptly decided I was much more comfortable. It was pretty damn cute.

Other things that make me smile is the Wench house tradition of getting window decals/stickeys/idk-what-you-call-em-but-they’re-a-dollar-at-target. We typically buy things that spell out ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy Easter’. These cheerful greetings do not last long because we enjoy rearranging the letters and seeing how long it takes someone to notice. Here’s the latest scandalous anagram…

Note: this is a combination of “merry christmas” letters and “happy st. pat’s day” letters. It now says…. Scram pappy. Its a shart. thyme ryds. (sometimes we have to make up words since there aren’t enough vowels in the holidays)

Today was soooo pretty out! So Steve and I ate our lunch outside by the fountains! So pretty ❤

We had some leftover spiced chickpea wraps that were stuffed with carrots, cucumber, and spinach. Super healthy!

Speaking of healthy…..(like my transition there??)….a side effect of both of us training and trying to save some money is that our diet has unintentionally cleaned up quite a bit! Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t grab fast food every day before, but we ate out a decent amount and that adds up! We’ve really started cutting back on eating out and such because we’re saving up money for…..(drumroll please)….A TRIP TO EUROPE!!!!

We’re going for 2 weeks and are super stoked! My family will be with us for the first week while we hit up Vienna, Budapest, and Prague. Then we’ll go to Berlin, Barcelona, and have a short day in London. My brother, William, will be with us for most of the whole thing 😀 It’s our first time to go to Europe so we are crazy excited and are saving up as much as we can (on our limited grad student budget) so we can live it up while we’re there!

Any suggestions on places to go, food to try, things to see…are more than welcome!

Keeping it Cool – Training Week 3

March 16, 2015 / Amanda / Leave a comment

Hi friends! How was your weekend?

It’s a semi-slow start to my Monday, so I’ve taken advantage of it and tried to plan out my week in my bullet journal. But! Since it’s rest day, here’s my recap of all the training I did last week for Raleigh 70.3!

Miles run – a lot
Miles walked – some
Miles biked – like 50? 60?
Yards swum – too little
Goggles broken – F*$@ing pieces of $&^!
Times I have grossed myself out because I am covered in dried sweat, bug carcasses, and grime – Ewwwwwwww
Bugs eaten – none accidentally! or on purpose for that matter
Roadkill seen – squirrels, raccoons, ummmm some unidentifiable creature that could have possibly been an alien
Time spent training – 7:40 ish

Here’s the illegible training summary for my week. There are only 3 red blocks this time!! I didn’t post last weeks’ because yeah…..that was a lot of red. Now let’s break it down!

Monday – As usual rest day! Aka Amanda drinks an extra beer day! Aka Amanda binge watches Game of Thrones or Dr. Who or Downton Abbey day! The best.

Tuesday – Aaaaaand here’s where we started to go downhill (mentally anyways). I got a good 12.7 miles in on the trainer in about 50 min which breaks down to around 15 mph. It’s always hard to wake my legs up and get them moving at a decent pace at the ungodly hour of 6am. I had my 2500 yd swim scheduled for that afternoon, but instead I found that my goggles refused to gogg and instead flooded any time I stuck my head under water. Sooooo the angry Amanda stopped by the store and got 2 pairs of goggles AND a cute running top just because.

Wednesday – Another shit day at work so I left early and went on my long run at home. Usually the hills I tackle on my long run by the NC Art Museum and Meredith College kick my ass. Luckily I was a little out of my head (reminder that running is 80% mental sport) so I did 10.0 miles in 1.5 hrs. A 9:11 min/mile pace. Btw these hills are what tore my IT band back in November so I have a bit of a vendetta against them. Curse you 15% grades!! This really wore my legs out, cause yeah, my head wasn’t actively managing my pace so I went a bit faster than I like to for 9+ mile runs. Oh well. At least it was a good challenge!

Thursday – The weekthatshallnotbenamed continues. I felt pretty good on the swim and even attempted a few flip turns. Although one time I totally missed the wall, I got water up my nose like 5 times, and I thoroughly embarrassed myself in front of the men’s swim team. Yes I know I looked like a fish out of water attempting those flip turns. No need to judge dudes-in-spandex. I did 1800 yds in 38 min (including all my rest breaks) so I’m pretty happy that I did the whole workout and finished 2 min early. It’s the little things ya’ll. The trainer ride ended up being kinda late at night and I watched Game of Thrones for my easy spin. Did 9.9 miles in 50 min. Nice and easy.

Friday – I woke up early to get a morning run in. I regret not taking my phone because those pink clouds/sunrise were gorgeous. Seriously. Vibrant blue sky, pink clouds, and green grass. Love it! Did 4.5 miles in about 42 min and took it pretty easy. I walked a bit during this run since it was supposed to be an easy run. I also walked a bit cause I’m lazy. I also also walked a bit because it was pretty and I like looking at the pretty sky. The work day was pretty rough so I skipped my swim…..sad trombone.

Saturday – Totes did nothing. I drank green beer and grocery shopped like a champ!

Sunday – Brick day! Since it was a lovely day out, I went on my long bike ride outside! The second half of the bike course for Raleigh 70.3 is a LOT of short, steep, rolling hills. Which I knew about, but was completely unprepared for, last year. So, I’ve been riding the course backwards for all my training. I start close to the finish, bike out towards Jordan Lake, and that way, on my way back, I’m a little tired and it kinda simulates race conditions. Brilliant right?!? -looks proud of self- I was gonna take a picture of all my gear that I pack in my car for a brick, but the goldfish memory struck again and I forgot. Anywho, I biked out to a Sonic in Holly Springs where a bunch of teens were hanging out. And OMG I was so uncool. I overheard one girl asking her friends what was wrong with my shoes! 😀 But I hung out for a bit while eating my granola bar and then hopped back on the bike to head home. I kinda regret not getting any fries or tater tots.

All in all, I did about 39 miles in 2.5 hrs. Which is roughly 16 mph. I felt really good the whole time and only started struggling on the last hill up to my car. I then hopped off my bike and put my running shoes on for an easy 20 min run after with some not so awesome jelly legs. It did feel great to finish though!

My main mistake on the whole day was not eating enough before working out for 3 hrs. Oops. I was a little hungry when I got home and may have tried to eat Steve -sorry Steve-.

This is my first ‘rest’ week of the training session so things will be a bit lower intensity this week. Luckily, the weather is supposed to be great so I should be able to get outside for most of it!

See ya tomorrow!

My training brain

March 8, 2015March 8, 2015 / thievinsteven / Leave a comment

Yesterday I ran 8.2 miles, my longest run yet. I never thought I’d run that far before deciding to train for a half marathon. To be honest I used to think I couldn’t do it. I thought that my old ankle injury would handicap me too much and to be honest, it’s really stiff today. I can barely bend it.

I think about it differently now though. I think about a lot of things differently. Training for this race and steadily increasing my longest run distance has changed me. I feel more capable in general. I feel more confident. Barriers seem less insurmountable. I see challenges in a different light which helps me see ways to tackle them.

A week ago I did a 7 mile run. Mile number 7 was really difficult and I had to really concentrate to keep running. This week the first 7 miles were pretty easy and it was mile 8 that was really difficult. I did have Amanda with me on this run which was a huge help as far as making the run go quickly and distracting me from having to think “Ok, still running, keep going, only x more miles to go.” but still, the progress is there. I’m stronger than I was. I have more endurance than I’ve had in… decades I guess.

In the past if I tried to do something and woke up with an ankle this stiff that made me hobble around I would have said well… I guess I can’t do that. My new training brain is thinking about how we can best recover so I can make my 3 mile run on Monday. I look forward to pushing myself. I relish testing my limits. I take pride in my achievements.

This training brain thought process isn’t limited to running and exercise. It bleeds out into the rest of my life and is positively impacting my attitude toward challenges in my studies as well. In all aspects of my life I’m shedding apathy. I see footholds in barriers that seemed smooth and shear before. It’s refreshing and encouraging. Sure I still have days when things seem extra hard but I’m constantly proving to myself that I can do things I didn’t think I could and that makes a huge difference.

So, no jokes this post and I haven’t been taking many pictures lately, but here is an inspirational picture of Indy for you. She is becoming more confident all the time too (maybe a little too confident and a little too comfortable with being off her leash, but that’s a story for another time)

PhDeviants

Misadventures in grad school, running, and life

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