I Hurt!!!

I have no idea what's going on right now. Last week after the race my shins and right calf are starting to really hurt. I feel like it shouldn't be from over-training. My training schedule has been having long runs on the weekend with a short run during the week. I haven't knocked up my mileage nor have I increased days. Oh, that's right, I did increase my days. Last weekend I ran both days as bricks and was really getting worked on the run.

Either way, I need to get this figured out because I was finally making some headway on my run and I don't want to lose the progress now. So the question is "what do I do?" Either I go through the pain and hope I don't get a stress fracture, or I back off and lose some running fitness. I'm leaning toward backing off, but it's so hard to take mentally. I still want to get out there and work hard to make progress towards my goal, but I don't want to take one step forward only to take two backwards.

The more I think about it the more logical it becomes I need to rest. Especially since last weekend I had a hard time sleeping and have been really sluggish this week. Might need to take my week off a little early. Stupid block training schedule!

Tough One

This week has been pretty tough for me mentally and physically. I had a race on Saturday and got 3rd in my age group. I felt pretty good about the result but thought I could do a little bit better. I trained right through the race, so it wasn't going to be pretty, so I guess I should be pleased.

The training for the last two weeks has been tough and continuing. I haven't had a day off yet in this new block. That means i'm at 14 straight days and I'm starting to get strung out. Today after a 2.5 hour ride I had a short 35 minute run. It went pretty well overall, but towards the end I was struggling to keep a smiling face. My emotions were starting to get the best of me and I really started to struggle with things.

The point of this post is for me to bitch apparently. I might need to get a day off in here soon, so I don't crack...

Wheelset

My dream bike is ready and rarin to go! I went and picked up my wheelset on Saturday but just rode the bike this morning. It was slightly breezy this morning and afternoon when I got out on my rides, but the wheelset even handled well (fairly well anyways) in crosswinds. The greatest part was that I only made it 2 blocks from my house when I got a flat! Ridiculous. Then I was trying to figure out how to use the extender for the valve... anyways, it took me a while to change a flat this time. I am glad it happened then than at a race, though.

There was a huge difference on the flats between these and the training wheels. Plus, they rolled so much better and were insanely smooth.

I planned on getting a couple of flat rides today to really test 'em out on the flats, but ended up doing some hilly rides with a few others. It was a ton of fun! Plus, both rides worked me over. I had a hard run yesterday and got worked at that too. I felt great about the pace and made some improvements on my 10 mile pace. I have my running partner to thank for that, though.

Other than the new bike and some good workouts this last week, life has been pretty good. Work was a little stressful last week but overall pretty good. It was noted to me by a friend that he thought I might not like my job. I quickly said I loved it! I come on here and rant sometimes so the negative does tend to come out at times. But that also means the great things come out also. More to the point: I love my job. I've been meeting some great people around here and have been loving the area too. No complaints coming from me!

Hope life is well for everyone else too!

Seattle

Without skiing and climbing trips to report I find my life is fairly bland... in relative terms. I've been missing the backcountry and have been scheming up some plans to get out as soon as it gets slightly nice. I had the idea of biking about 60 miles into the Cascades with a bivy sack, some clothes, a lot of food, and a stove; park the bike and start on a solo hiking trip for a night. Get out there and push myself as hard as I can for 48 hours. I want to seek some of the adventure that I lost since last year. Who knows if I'll get around to it, but it's on my mind. 

On another note, I keep trying to post some of my training on here but find it's quite boring. I get outside for runs here and there and have even managed a couple of cold bikes, but for the most part it's all inside on the trainer, in the pool, or at the gym. And let's face it... me telling you that I ran 8 miles on the treadmill constantly gets boring. So while things are slow now, I'll get on top of it when I'm outside more and getting out to races. Races start at the end of April and will run through August for sure, and hopefully through October. 

I've also been trying to post about Fritz coming out the other weekend. It's been a while since we were drinking beers together in grad school. Fritz now has his dream job over in Minneapolis being something weird like an economist. He got a trip together to come over here and hang out for the weekend. As it just so happens... it was rainy in Seattle. Weird, I know. 

We spent our first night drinking as much good beer as possible and sitting outside by a fire eating pizza. Who can beat that? Too good. We basically spent the entire weekend catching up and playing tourist: checking out the Space Needle, going downtown to PIke Place Market, drinking a ton of coffee, nursing a hangover, riding the ferries out to the peninsula, and eating sushi. All of that pretty much summarizes Seattle. 

 

Relief

Thursday I had an appointment to see a bio-movement specialist here in town. I was a bit nervous because I didn't want to hear about a long-term problem that would take me away from training. Fortunately that wasn't the case. Initially she had me stand up without shoes on to do a gait analysis and look at my hips. The first thing she says: "has anyone ever told you you have a short right leg?" Wonderful... at least that's fixable with an insert in my shoe. Then I do a few one leg squat exercises so she can see how my knee and ankle move. Nothing too crazy came out of that. Then I laid face down with my feet hanging off the edge of the table, and I find out I have a pretty big over-pronation. I was told more than double the normal pronation. So now I have a slight lift in my right shoe, and modified superfeet.

At the end of the appointment I ask if I can run and she tells me yes as if it's surprising I asked that question. Well, just a few days ago I had horrible hip pain and sharp knee pain. Are you saying I'm ready now and this is an easy fix?

So I head to the gym and get in 4.5 miles on the treadmill. No pain or anything! Hip was still a little tired, but nothing like it was. It felt great.

Now I'm back on hitting the workouts hard. Had a solid swim on Friday, 2 hour bike with 20 minute intervals and a 20 minute run on Saturday, and a 1 hour bike with 4x5minute intervals on Sunday. Today, as usual, I get worked over at masters. 3x300, 100 kick, 3x200, 100 kick, 3x100, 6x50 sprints. That was just the main set! Now off to Crossfit.

Now that my left hip and knee are feeling good and I'm back on training the only other fun news is with work. Last week was stressful with a few presentations, meetings, and reports due. I am really hating the cyclical nature of this job. 2 weeks every month I am working long hours. Then for the other 2 weeks I am in a lull... well sometimes in a lull.

Hope everyone's meeting their goals too!

The Hurt

Sorry I haven't posted much, but I haven't really found much to post about.

Lately, life has been training, working, training... Same 'ol same 'ol.

But, I have had a few visitors lately. L came over for a nice little visit on Christmas. We managed to hang in Seattle for a little bit and hit up Brouwer's and the Bottleshop. Other than that, what else do you do in Seattle? You get sushi! That's what. We also managed to cook an amazing five course meal all with beer pairings! Except I really dropped the ball on one of my pairings... my bad.

A then came over for New Year's. We had to once again kick it in Seattle for a bit and I managed to see a few other good friends. Plus we had some amazing greek food. Quite impressed.

That's the down and dirty lately. I have had a nice problem develop though. I started having a stupid hip flexor pain in my left hip, but managed to get rid of it. It then started to move to the outside of my hip. So now every time I run more than 5 miles my hips gets so sore the next day. Stupid. I have been staying off of it... for the most part. Toned down my running and kicked up my swimming. I still need to get the training hours in and get my base down.

Hopefully the leg starts feeling better so I can get back into running. For the first time ever I miss running. I used to absolutely hate my runs, but I've been doing so well the last few months that I've become slightly obsessed. Maybe that was my problem.

Hopefully things get more interesting soon, but I can't promise anything.

Here's my life. yep, riding the trainer baby!

Hard Week

Last week was rough. I had a long Sunday brick and felt tired Monday. So what do I do? I take Monday off like a wuss should do. Actually I'm trying to be a little more in tune with my body so I don't over-train. Tuesday was a good run and Wednesday was masters swim. I got absolutely worked swimming! My shoulder is still coming around in that department. I can easily do 60 pull-ups in a workout but I can barely swim a mile without my shoulder starting to hurt. Thursday was a day off. Swimming worked me that hard. Plus I wanted to do a good hard workout on my birthday. Friday ended up being a negative split miles for 4.5 miles, then sprints for another mile. Finally the weekend came and I did a bike workout with a friend. I did a 2 hour tempo ride with two short sprints in the middle. I felt worked at the end! I may need to change up my training schedule because I feel like I should have made more headway by now. Sunday was absolutely rough! I was way too tired to do anything. I sat on my couch most of the day and watched TV. Super Productive.

Other than the workouts being rough work was also a bit trying. I had a lot of projects put on my lap last week and had to do a bit of traveling and get a presentation together. Definitely a long week. My workouts tend to suffer a bit whenever I get really stressed out at work. After this next week things slow down a bit for me... for a week I hope.

Boring

This is where life has been spent lately. Well, first off I should say I did manage to take 4 full days off. It was awesome. Although, I got quite bored when I still woke up at 5am and didn't have anything to do. So I watched awesome early morning TV. Pretty cool. Saved By The Bell and Married With Children... so good!

Can I say how boring riding the trainer is? It was crazy boring! You sit in one place and pedal. That's it. I either listen to music or watch TV while I'm doing it so I have some entertainment. Thursday I kicked off the new training block. One hour of easy pedaling on the trainer. It was awesome. It actually felt great to get back on to the new training schedule. Hopefully this time I won't screw it up and lose track of my workouts.

Speaking of the bike, below is the new carbon fiber aerobars! Pretty awesome. They are much more comfortable than my old set. Plus, these have the s-bend aerobars which I like much better.

And speaking of gear, below are my running shoes. By the way, I have apparently turned this into my gear blog.

When I started training again this year my old Saucony running shoes were really hurting my right foot. My left foot felt great but the outside of my right foot was absolutely dying! I had to take 3 days off every time I ran. Not awesome. So I decided to start in on a new shoe search. Here's what I came up with: KSwiss Blade Light and Zoot Kapilani. Now that I've tested them both out I found I like the Zoot's for running and the KSwiss for cross training.

The problem with the K's was that they were a bit too stiff in terms of cushion. I need soft padding because of my right ankle and left knee. Since they were a bit too stiff I turned to the Zoot's and they were amazing! great run platform and movement. Great cushioning. Extremely comfortable. The only downside was that I like the way the K's moved from heel to toe. They are extremely smooth throughout the entire foot movement.

Anyways, the Zoot's have been working well and I'm extremely pleased with them.
Last but not least is my realization that I need to work on injury prevention. Given the multitude of problems I've had in the past I decided to purchase the Trigger Point rollers and ball. They allow me to roll out my leg problems and get them fresh for the next day. I have been having problems with my left IT band and since I've been rolling it out with the quadballer (as its called) I've been feeling a lot better. So, a big thumbs up from me on TP Therapy.
Now I'm off to a quick core and upper body workout. Box jumps, cable machines, medicine balls... good times! I'm hoping I'll feel better than I did yesterday during my 3 mile run. I felt like it was ten miles after I ended up positively splitting my miles (ie. going slower each mile). Work legs... Work!!!!

Long Week

Last week was rough! Work was much too stressful and the workouts were way too tough.

First off, my monthly reports covering my five counties were due last week as we released press numbers on Wednesday. After I already had two of them done, I was informed by my boss over our monthly conference call that we were changing the format of these reports slightly. This means I got to redo two of the reports I already wrote. That was awesome. I was on edge until Thursday when I finally sent in my reports. Then what happens? One of the other economists was reading through mine to check for errors and since she was running a little late getting it back to me I already sent it in... with errors! Yep, I had to quickly redo that one because I honestly have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote a couple sentences in there. Feeling good about that one!

The workouts were really tough last week. I go in 4 week cycles and last week was week 3, the hard one. Week 1 is build-up from a recovery week 4 previously, then week 2 pushes harder on into week 3 which is the peak for each cycle. Week 4 is the recovery week where I am now in active recovery rather than full rest recovery.

Since last week was my week 3 I was dying. Monday was a 6 mile run, Tuesday was upper body cross training, Wednesday was a 3 mile easy run followed by 2 miles of speed repeats, Thursday was another cross training workout done primarily with a medicine ball and the cable machine, then Friday was another 6 mile run (which was supposed to be faster than Monday, but it was much slower). Saturday was a pretty easy hour ride on the trainer followed by upper body for an hour. Now today starts the recovery.

Week 4 is always nice in the cycle because I get to take it easy, but I really hate taking these weeks. No matter how many times I go through these cycles I feel like I'm losing my fitness, when in all actuality it's gaining when I come back on week 1 with noticeable improvements.

In other news it finally snowed in town. It's been snowing up on the pass in the Cascade's, but not down here. It's actually remained quite nice for the last couple weeks, but yesterday the snow came and the temperature has dropped hard! Looking forward to some skiing finally. Hopefully there will be enough for a Thanksgiving opening and I'll actually have something to do. Otherwise I'm just going to hang out and train. Good stuff.

Training

I had it in my head that I'd start using the blog to keep track of my training over the winter, but haven't made much use of that. So now I'm going to start keeping track of things a little better and actually get some use out of this thing!

It's finally gotten cold around here and outside activities are at an end as far as I'm concerned (besides skiing of course). I am apparently too much of a wuss to ride my bike when it's cold and I hate running outside when it's cold. Yep... it is what it is. In grad school I managed to ride my bike to work/school everyday during the winter for the first year, but after I went sliding through a stop sign on my side with my bike right next to me I decided it wasn't a great idea at a certain point.

Training has been going real well the last month. I got a few 80 mile rides in and managed to only bonk during one! I was seriously relying on my americano I had at the turnaround point. It didn't really push me to the end, but it helped.

I've been trying hard to focus on my run this year to round out my swim and bike. Hopefully it works. I started off by getting new shoes. My Saucony's were really hurting my right foot lately, so I decided to try KSwiss and Zoot. The Zoot's won. They're so comfortable and don't rub anywhere. I did really like the way the KSwiss ran, they were really smooth on the entire foot transition, but were a little stiff in the cushioning department.

Anyways, I got 6 miles in today with a good cross-training workout in after that. A solid two hour workout. I had to bring an extra shirt with me to the gym because after about 10 minutes running I'm about through a shirt. And yes, I feel really cool changing shirts when I'm halfway through my workout.

And speaking of working out, I just finished watching Ironman Louisville and man there's some inspiration! Someday...

Oktoberfest

Right next to Wenatchee is Leavenworth the Bavarian Village. Yep, the Keystone of the West!

It's actually a pretty cool town but it just reminds me of a tacky tourist trap. Every year they host Oktoberfest the first three weekends in October and Matt, Amy, and I hit it up the first weekend. It was a pretty sweet shin-dig but a bit on the pricey side.

There were 4 stages for shows that had classic polka music, massacred polka music, and classic German dances from some groups straight out of Munich, Germany! It was actually a pretty cool shin-dig. It wasn't anything big, but did have quite a few people. The area of town that's sectioned off has most of a street right off of downtown and is big enough to pack in some serious crowds. It was pretty full while we were there, but from what I've heard the last weekend has the most people and is shoulder to shoulder for blocks! Kind of glad I had no part in that.

For next year we're coming up with some classic German garb to fully partake in festivities. There were surprisingly a lot of people that were dressed up and even quite a few older people that looked like they were straight out of Germany.

Anyways, I'm keeping this one short and sweet. The festivities were pretty sweet, and I'm actually looking forward to next year. Plus it'll be right after I'm done with triathlon season. Hot dang!

91 miles

Got in a nice long ride today. I wanted to shoot for at least 70 and maybe up to 80... added on a few more because the last little bit was slightly longer than I thought. It was a great ride though.

I started heading north of Wenatchee but took 97A instead of 97. 97A leads straight up towards Lake Chelan (which is amazing by the way) and starts with fairly flat roads that lead to a big climb up and over a pass. This part was not fun. Not fun at all.

After the nice flat ride it starts heading up and over the pass. This picture below is the nice little tunnel you go through before you hit a short valley that leads to Lake Chelan.

The fun part about going through the tunnel is their safety measures. It is nice and short, but come on... a button to turn on flashing lights that tells the motorists that there's a cyclist going through the tunnel... is there nothing better? For instance... make the tunnel wider initially rather than overlooking the details. Anyways, pretty funny. The button is right before the tunnel and it reminds me of a cross walk... except you go through a tunnel.

After I made it up to the Lake Chelan area I stopped at a coffee shop and downed an americano and muffin. I'm a sucker for that combo for some reason. Love having muffins with an americano. It was such a nice day I couldn't pass up the opportunity to hang out by the lake and watch the boats. Seems pretty exciting doesn't it?

After I managed to sit by the lake for an hour I hopped back on the bike with some slightly sore legs already and start pedaling up and over the pass again to town. All said and done, the ride ended up being 91 miles. I was pooped! I really need to plan out my nutrition better on these long rides. All I took along was a bottle of Hammer Perpetuem and a gel. Other than that it was water, coffee and a muffin. I have a feeling I'm going to be sore tomorrow....

Oh, and the best part of this is I get to sit in a car for a few hours to head over to Olympia for a couple meetings. Sitting in a car with sore legs is not fun. Anyone care to drive me?

New Bike

I have been wanting this bike for years and finally made the plunge!

I am super stoked about this bike. Cervelo has to be the greatest bike brand, period. They have been focusing on road and aero designs for years and years. While other companies are off designing mountain bikes and cruisers, Cervelo is redesigning one of their road frames to make it even better. What's actually quite amazing is that they've had some of the same designs for years and haven't changed a thing! And these are pro bikes we're talking about, not just some bike to ride around town.

Enough of the ranting. This is my Cervelo P2. Isn't he gorgeous? I decided it's a he even though it'd be better for a male to be "riding" a she. Anyways, now I just need to come up with a name for the bike....

I've already gotten him out on a few rides this week and it is amazing. I've never ridden this fast in my life. Pretty sweet rig. I tried to take a couple pictures of the ride I normally go on, but only a few really turned out well. This is right along the Columbia River directly north of Wenatchee.

I've been really impressed with some of the roads around here and extremely unimpressed with others. When I first came out here I was riding my bike quite a bit just to figure out town and see what it has to offer. Well, I found a lot of broken glass in certain parts of town and an area that tends to have a lot of thorned bushes that get blown off and find their way to the road. After 4 flats in a couple of rides I just quit going there.

This last shot is a great fruit stand right along the ride. Of course there's about 5 others right along the route. All stuff that's essentially been picked that day, most likely about 100 feet from the stand. Not too shabby living in orchard country!

Labor Day Weekend

I really need to keep up with postings. I have a lot to update and I haven't been getting on it! I need to make a goal of actually getting a few posts on here every month.

First off I managed a backpacking trip with Amy and Maggie up in the Cascades just outside of Leavenworth. We went on Labor Day weekend to get in three days and two nights of goodness. Amy had done all the work for this one figuring out where we were going and camping, so all I had to do was show up. That was a pretty sweet. Well the week of the trip I kept checking the weather to see if it was going to be nice. I really wanted to take my bivy because Amy and Maggie were taking their dogs which would be sleeping in their tents. This means I either need to take a tent up just for me or else I need to check out the ol bivy. Since the weather looked nice I decided on the bivy.

The problem here is that whenever I do a trip, any trip, something goes wrong. As soon as I decided to take the bivy I knew the weather would turn and it would rain. I just knew it would. When we started hiking on Saturday it was great weather, not too hot but sunny. We went about 11 miles in to the campsite right along a lake in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. It was a pretty amazing spot. Definitely can't complain about the location.

Once the girls set up camp and we start cooking it starts getting a little colder... After dinner we hike up to another lake right in a very tight cirque and it was gorgeous. Quite the setting... After we hike back to camp and sit down for a few minutes I am getting cold. Anyone that knows me knows I am always hot. Always. Once the sun starts setting the girls head for their tents and I start to set out my bivy. As I'm doing this what happens? Yep, it starts raining. This means I'm in a glorified sleeping bag trying not to get claustrophobic while trying to stay dry at the same time. Needless to say I didn't get much sleep. I woke up at one point and the continuous rain was getting louder... and yes it was snow. What backpacking trip with me is complete without snow?

When we woke up it was raining and continued to rain throughout the day. It would quit for a while here and there and slowed up quite a bit, but it was still wet. Well we packed up camp and headed to another lake to make our hike out of this loop only 10 miles. This means it is up and over a pass and down into a huge valley. This was even more gorgeous than the other camp. It was such a great area....

Well, by this point I'm getting cold as everyone is setting up camp so while the girls go on a short hike to get the blood flowing I hop in my sleeping bag knowing I don't have enough calories to keep trying to make me warm and/or hike more (you would think that since I had a strong hunch it was going to be raining I might have packed more food in preparation of being cold and burning more calories). So I sleep the afternoon away and wake up in time to cook dinner with the girls and promptly take off to my bivy for a night of sleep in the rain again.

The next day was pretty nice and we hiked out in pretty nice weather. It seems like we were caught up in the storm at the higher altitude and if we had just hiked a couple more miles we would have been in the clear. Interesting weather....

The hike out was pretty uneventful other than once we got back to the car it did start raining again.

The last bad part of this story is that I don't have any pictures. I managed to lose my camera in the move and I had been looking everywhere for it. I knew I packed it somewhere but just couldn't figure it out before the trip. Low and behold after all this I finally find my camera while I'm looking for my bike tool. So the point is I didn't have it for the hike but I have it now.... Yep......

Surprising

I've had a week of surprises. First off, I've been getting very excited for an Ironman 70.3 next year and have started a training schedule that will take me to August of next year. I'm really dreading all the miles on the trainer and treadmill in the coming winter, but I really want to get back to doing triathlons again. There's something so amazing about going as hard as you can for as long as you can in a balled up sport. There's so much to train for and to be excited about, but it is also quite draining. Sitting inside on a winter evening pedaling a bike on the trainer is great to get the frustrations of work out, but is incredibly boring. It's the mental stamina that I've had the hardest time developing. My muscles are easy to train and my lungs are coming back already... but my mind is still having a hard time.

The big surprise, though, is that I have now changed my buying habits. What buying habits? Well, I used to spend money on climbing and camping gear... because I lived in my car and would climb a lot. Pretty easy to explain. But now that I am being civilized I am buying suits, collared shirts.... and... ties. Yes, I know what everyone is thinking and yes I did cry a little bit. Well, only a little bit. I just bought a few more shirts and ties and am looking at buying a couple more suits. At which point I start to wonder "what just happened?" I was a bum in every sense of the word and I am now trying to be a respectable part of a community. It's wild. How times change!

Anyways, things have been going well over here. I still haven't met many people, but that's how it goes. It'll be slow to get integrated into this community. I'm still trying to get in with the cycling club so hopefully I can finally find this mythical club.

Better get back to doing laundry so I have nice smelling clothes for work!

Olympic Coast

Timing

Sorry it's been so long but I haven't had much to post the last while. There hasn't been much to discuss until lately. I had been running around Washington trying to get a job and finally found one. I'm a Regional Labor Economist for the state of Washington. It's an awesome job and I'm pretty excited, but pretty nervous at the same time.

Well, I am now living in Wenatchee. A small town at the base of the Cascades. Pretty sweet location for various reasons: great biking, good hiking, great skiing, some good climbing, and best of all is the fresh fruit right from farms next to town. The only down side is there isn't a great beer store around. There are some good finds here and there, but nothing consistent.

I've also been spending the last two weeks in Olympia for work. I really liked it in the "rain forest". Plus it got me away from the 100 degree weather here... which was nice. And since I had two weekends over there I managed to get two weekends of backpacking and camping in

Olympic National Park hiking and camping on the beach. That was one for the bucket list. I've always wanted to hike and camp on the beach, and now I've finally got to do it. I don't really know how much more I really have on the bucket list, but there are some good ones left. Anyhow, back to the beach: it was amazing! Great weather... good friends... and a nice easy trip. I rarely go on easy hikes and I actually found this quite enjoyable. There's something about being on the beach knowing you're at the edge of the U.S.

Here are a few pics from Olympic National Park. I have more coming, so check back soon.

So Much...

It's been interesting around here lately. I've been throwing out applications hoping someone bites and trying to force my way in to other places. It's been a bit rough, but I'm making a go of it. "A go of it" you ask? Yeah... a "go" of it.

I managed to make a quick trip over to Seattle to see a few long lost friends and also to pester a few businesses and try to convince them to hire me. There's nothing like running around a city with a suit then sitting down at a beer bar to throw back a couple Belgians at the end of the day. How is that for a businessman cliche?

Anyway, nothing turned up of the job hunt but I've got a few leads and made a few contacts, so it was more than worth it.

More importantly post avalanche activities have been going well. I think I'm only writing this because last night I had another one of "those" nights. It will always be weird to vividly picture being buried as I'm lying in bed trying to fall asleep. I'll just be laying there listening to music when I feel a little panic creep into my head.... then I can see these thick slabs of snow bury me. It's the exact scenario of where and how I get buried; there's no change to the situation at all. Then of course I sit there in a panic for a few hours trying to get the picture out of my head so I can sleep. I hope with time this avalanche will fade into the background. I feel like I always say this but I'm going to be hopeful because I honestly have no other way to deal with this.

Here's a few shots from Seattle:

How awesome is this?

I don't know why, but I was very intrigued by this.

Right at the Market and they had a few awesome Belgians made with yeast from the Westmalle Abbey. There was also an awesome double IPA that I had with fish and chips.

Exposed this shot for almost 2 minutes around 11PM. Turned out well.

The safety measures of the ferry.

This was a great spot right when you get into Olympic National Park from the north. Pretty cool park, but it was raining... and cold... and some seriously shady towns along the way. But of course I want to make it back to do a sweet hike along the beach. Looks amazing.

Ice Climbing

I've had a hard time getting back into skiing, so I've now moved back into ice climbing. My shoulder isn't real strong yet, but holds up quite well. Especially considering that I wasn't supposed to start climbing until this summer. My shoulder was a bit sore the next couple days, but not a muscle sore. My muscles have been holding up fine, but my joint felt a little inflamed and tight. After some arnica montana though it felt great again. And I honestly can't tell you how great it felt to be hanging off a cliff again. There's something so amazing about climbing frozen water... hanging onto sharp metal objects...

On that note too, I finally ran 5 miles yesterday! Another high point. I was running 6 miles before the avalanche so I'm getting pretty close. Overall things are feeling a bit more normal. I've still had spells of insomnia a night or two a week, but that's really not bad considering it's only been a little over a month. I'm noticing this will take quite some time...

Today I received the official notice that I am done with graduate school!!! My thesis is done and I'm waiting to hear if it's going to be published. It would be exciting to hear about a published paper, but I think a few papers will come out of my thesis. Good stuff.

Anyways, I'm done with that aspect of my life and am now applying to jobs all over the country. Literally anywhere from Alaska to Delaware. There's nothing like getting turned down for jobs because you have "too much education". Really? So I'm too smart to work for you... that seems... ummm.... counterintuitive. So you don't want anyone with the ability to get promoted within your business? O.K. just making sure.

Sorry for the randomness of this post, but that's my life. Kind of all over the place right now. The recovery has been going well. I feel great at this point. I'll still have some difficulty with this for quite some time, but I've been able to deal with this and pass on my story to a lot of people. It feels good to pass on information and let other people know first hand what can happen and how to deal with a scenario like this.

Alright, I'm going to go sleep and get ready for another day of searching for jobs.