Thursday, November 17, 2011

Le update

Hey, grad school is tough. Also, ice is cold!

NSF fellowship application: done. Who knew writing a proposal, personal statement, and summary of research, while hitting the broader impacts and merit criteria, would be so hard?

Hell week 1.0: almost to break, one more midterm and then I've got a week to unwind, do some homework and a project, and study for a ton of midterms when I return.

IT-band: improving rapidly. After massage and physical therapy, the pain in my glute is gone but it still isn't kicking in to keep my leg stable, so there is still a bit of a wobble. Otherwise, I'm getting the TFL stretched out, and I'm almost back to my normal daily mileage.

North Face in San Francisco seems like a go, although I'm waiting until mid-way through next week before committing to tickets and a hotel. Shuttle information for the race hasn't been posted, so I can't book the hotel yet, anyway.

Just like last year, I'm going into this 50 miler coming off of an IT-band blowout. Last year it was Pine to Palm, this year, Leadville. My injuries are a broken record.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

The grinder

Here is what's on my plate right now:

-NSF Fellowship application: my adviser and I decided I should go for an NSF fellowship, since I have a paper and a few presentations to my name. I have ten days to crank out a proposal, personal statement, and summation of previous research. Yowza.

-Grad school classes: they're hard and time consuming, what can I say? Thankfully I have only one midterm between now and Thanksgiving. The week after turkey day is going to be intense - two midterms, an oral presentation in atmospheric chemistry on hydroxyl radical production from obscure sources (much more interesting that it sounds), a weather discussion to lead, and at the end of the week, I catch a jet to San Fran and run 50 miles on Saturday. This is the meat grinder, but I did this sort of thing last year with the NF50.

-Getting this IT-band/piriformis under control. It's getting better on some sort of logarithmic slope.

-Realizing that heating an apartment in Colorado can cost you a pretty penny.

-And doing research for my thesis. LOL