Daily: May 2008 Archives

Good grief it's hot. I went running last night at 6:30, and by that time a bunch of clouds had rolled in and the sun was hidden. But it was still super hot. I walked back into my apartment after 35 minutes of running and looked like I'd been in a swimming pool. I had a pretty good workout though. Warmup, 6x60-60, and cooldown. Yep, a little warm weather speedwork. I'm playing it by ear at this point, but I hope to put together a solid plan for my running over the next month. Goal: a good, solid run at the Y Tri that doesn't totally negate the speed I've gained on the bike!

Speaking of my bike, I had to figure out a way to get it inside my car this morning so it didn't get rained on during the day. (I brought it with me so I can go straight to the brick tonight.) The last time I tried to put a bike in my car, it took 10 minutes of wiggling to get it in there. See, my back seats don't fold down all the way -- they only go to about 45 degrees, which makes it difficult to fit a bike in the back. Or at least I thought they didn't fold down all the way. I just found out today that I can remove the back seat cushions, thus allowing the seats to lie flat when folded down. And I've owned my Xterra for more than 4 years. What other features does it have that I don't know about?

Work continues. We're scheduled to launch on Saturday, and for the first time I'll be working more than just ascent. I'm looking forward to working another mission, but I'm not looking forward to the hours. The ascent shift on Saturday isn't so bad, from 10:00 until about 5:00 with launch at 4:02 p.m. Central, for those who are interested in catching it on TV. But Sunday I'm on console at 6:00 a.m. Monday is rendezvous day and I'm in at 5:30. As Becca pointed out, since she is working the same shift, that is too early for Starbucks! Horrendous, I know. Then we go in at 5:30 for a few days before shifting even earlier. By undocking (currently scheduled for June 11), I'm in at 3:00 a.m. My position doesn't have a whole lot to do when the shuttle is docked to the station, so at least I can be happy that I'm working the main shift. The astronauts will be awake and active and can entertain me with their spacewalks. :)

Until I have kids of my own -- which is at least a few years away so nobody get worked up -- I plan to continue using Carina as my pseudo-child. And yesterday she turned 1! Very exciting. Gavin and Jen invited everyone over for a birthday party / Memorial Day cookout and a good time was had by all. Carina ditched us for a 2-hour nap in the middle of her own party, and then she chose to eat grapes instead of cake, but oh well. She's only 1. ;)

Happy Birthday to Jose! We went to the Radiohead concert in The Woodlands on Saturday night as his birthday present, but I bought him sushi for lunch and tonight we're going to the Astros game to celebrate his day. Hooray!

In other news, I decided that there is at least one good thing about running in the Houston summer: when you finish and stop running, it almost feels cool outside! I ran 3 miles on Tuesday night starting at 5:30 and was feeling pretty awful by the end. It's the first run I've done this year in the heat, and it sucked accordingly. I was quite happy to be done and, like I said, the only good thing was that after stopping, the breeze actually felt a little cool.

Last night was brick night, and I was finally able to make it out there, for only the second time this year. Attendance was light, but that didn't stop me from getting in a solid workout -- 17+ miles on the bike followed by a 2-mile run. By the time I got to the run, the sun was low enough that the trees along Bay Area blocked most of it, and so the heat wasn't too bad.

I continue to love my bike. I'm still adjusting to the aero position, and my neck and back are usually a little sore at the end of each ride, but nothing awful. My neck is actually less sore than it used to be after long rides on my road bike. On the road bike, I have a bad habit of hunching my shoulders and tensing up all the muscles in my neck and upper back -- which makes everything start burning after a while. That doesn't happen on my tri bike. Silverlake is the first race I've done with the new bike, so here's the first official photo of me on ol' red. (I need a name for my new bike, obviously.)

Boo yeah! I may not be that fast, but at least now I look fast. Ha!

I spent a while yesterday perusing the Silverlake results and you know what? If I could run about an 8:00 pace, I'd be a pretty dang good triathlete. Still not good enough to place in my age group at a large race, but enough to always win Athena handily, and place in the top half of finishers instead of the bottom half. Take my age group, for example. If I raced there instead of Athena, I would have finished 18/32 on Sunday. But take 5 minutes off my run time and I'd have been in the top 10.

I'm not really sure what to do with that information. While there is still room for improvement on both the swim and the bike, the run is where I stand to make the biggest gains. Obviously it would be nice to be a faster runner. I could gain a bit of speed simply by losing weight! (I could lose a 30 pounds and still be an Athena. Crazy.) And I know I have the capability to gain even more speed if I made that my goal (I'm not sure if I could ever get down to 8:00 pace, but I could definitely get into the nines). But I also know that getting significantly faster will take significant dedication, and when I'm honest with myself, I'm not sure I can do that and maintain my love for the sport.

So for now, I'll stick with what I'm doing, I guess. But it's days like these that I start wishing I'd been born with at least an ounce of natural talent... Heh.

We had our monthly BAM meeting last night, and this month we gathered at Webster Bicycle. They are our major sponsor and I gotta say, they are great. Over the years, I have had experience with three different bike shops in the Clear Lake area. Webster Bike = awesome. Bay Area Schwinn = awesome, albeit with a smaller selection of stuff. The large Houston-area chain bike store = not awesome. Needless to say, Webster Bike has gotten all of my business over the past six months including my new bike. Last night they offered us 20% off during the meeting (instead of our usual 10%), so I took the opportunity to pick up a computer mount for my new bike and a plastic stand so that I don't have to lean my bike against the car anymore when I clean it and hang out in the parking lot before and after rides.

After a week of sickness, it's back to normal starting with a run tonight. It's really hot today. Should be interesting.

Another day at home, but the end is in sight. Last night my throat still felt awful, but in the last 5 hours -- just in the time since I woke up this morning! -- there has been an almost total change. My throat barely hurts at all! It's going away as quickly as it came on. Finally. To celebrate, I'm drinking as much as I can. (Water, not alcohol! Heh.) I've basically been dehydrated since Sunday afternoon because even drinking was horribly painful. I know it was only three days of really bad throat pain but geez, it feels like so much longer when you don't want to eat, drink, talk, or even open your mouth. Man. Strep throat seemed a lot worse as an adult that I remember it being as a kid. Thank goodness it's ending.

The worst part of the whole ordeal is that I actually had a bunch of commitments at work this week, some of which I still managed to uphold but some that I had to scramble to fill. I am one of only two active, certified ARD Support Officers -- and the other one is currently in Nepal. (I'm so jealous!) So I'm the only one available to do any and all ARD work, and this month has actually been pretty full of just that. I went to work Monday morning, not yet realizing the full extent of my being sick, because I had to do a database check. I was supposed to be there Tuesday morning as well for a load checkout, but there was no way I could go in (instead, I went to the doctor) and while I tried to find a sub, there wasn't really anyone available. Thankfully, the ascent FDO was able to take care of the work himself without the usual help from ARD.

Yesterday morning I had to work a sim, so I didn't have much choice -- I had to go in, since I'm the only ARD in the country. After that I had to go check the 8 flight copies of the rendezvous procedures book. By flight copy, I mean the actual copies of the book that will fly into space on STS-124. (And yes, we checked to make sure it was ok that my strep throat self could look at the books.) I can't believe they actually take 8 copies into space (one each for the commander, pilot, and 2 of the mission specialists, plus a backup for each of those), but NASA is nothing if not diligent in having backups for the backups! Redundancy is an important concept in spaceflight, to be sure. All 8 copies looked fine.

Needless to say, I am very glad I'm getting better, and will be very glad when Bini gets back from the Himalayas!!

And on a completely different note, because Katy tagged me, I guess I'll play along and list 8 things about me, though at the moment I'm gonna stick to just 8 instead of following overachiever Cassie who did 100. ;)

1. When I was in 5th grade, I really, really wanted to get my ears pierced, but my dad didn't. Finally, he offered me a deal -- if I practiced my flute every day for a month, I could get my ears pierced. I'm not sure if he thought I would do it or not, but I did. So I got my ears pierced, but I also credit that deal with making me a great flute player (I made All-State band in high school and played formally from 5th grade through grad school).

2. I have never been one of those girls who "always wanted to be a mom," and it's hard for me to imagine having a child of my own. But I know that I want them, because the thought of being 80 years old and not having a family makes me very, very sad. And I know I want more than one, because I love having siblings myself.

3. Someday I would really like to own a small business. I don't actually have a specific thing in mind, however, and have thought about everything from my own graphic and web design business to a coffee shop to a running store (though there's not room in the Houston market for another running store, I don't think).

4. I love spaceflight. And I love NASA. But I'm not sure that I'm really meant to be an aerospace engineer, even though I've dedicated 6 years of secondary education and another 6 years of my career to it.

5. There aren't many foods that I truly despise, but one of them is melon. All kinds of melon. Yes, even watermelon. "Oh wait," you say, "you just haven't tried a good one yet." Yes. Yes, I have. I have tried many melons, many times, and I simply hate them. Yet strangely, I'm ok with melon-flavored candy and gum.

6. I went on the occasional date in college and afterwards, but nothing ever progressed beyond a few dates. When I was younger, my lack of relationships bothered me, because I felt like not having a boyfriend meant that there was something wrong with me. As I got older, I realized that -- duh -- I didn't need a relationship to be happy with my life. And of course, as the cliche goes, that's when I met Jose.

7. I played soccer and swam on the swim team as a kid, but had stopped by the time I became a teenager. I didn't try out for the high school soccer team because I claimed it would be a conflict with marching band -- and maybe it was, but really, I didn't try out because I didn't consider myself much of an athlete, and I was scared that I wouldn't make the team. I didn't start running until I was in grad school and it was only a couple years later that I finally felt comfortable calling myself an athlete.

8. I have become more of a girl in recent years. I still don't think I could be described as particularly "girly," but I have developed an appreciation for nice jewelry, wearing skirts, pedicures, and the color pink that I just didn't have 5 years ago. I still hate makeup, though.

After a miserable couple days during which my throat got progressively worse, to the point of me not even wanting to eat because eating means swallowing and swallowing felt like fire and razor blades, Jose finally convinced me to go to the doctor. I don't have a regular doctor here since I get free physicals every year from the clinic at work, so I went to his doctor. I saw the physician's assistant, who was really nice. She checked out my ears and nose and throat and lymph nodes and noted it all down on her cool tablet PC.

So yep, I have strep throat.

I'm pretty sure that this is the first time I've had this particular loveliness in about 20 years, as I remember getting it on practically a yearly basis as a kid. But I certainly haven't had it since then. And honestly, I was expecting the doctor to tell me that I just had a cold and it would go away.

But nope. Strep throat. I'm on amoxicillin for the next 10 days to kill off all the little bacterias.

I'm supposed to do the Silverlake Tri on Sunday. The PA noticed my shirt this morning, a tri t-shirt, and asked if I was a triathlete. When I said I was and that I was supposed to do a race this weekend, she surprised me by saying that she thought it was would be ok if I did the race as long as I listened to my body and took it easy. I already missed Battle of San Jacinto because I was sick the week before the race, and I was disappointed to think that I'd miss another one. So we'll see.

I noticed that my "economic stimulus" refund from the government showed up in my bank account recently. Instead of running out and spending it right now, I'm going to put it in the savings account I set up for my Japan trip -- and thus spend it out of the country. Ha!