The Beginning of the End

Today was my last day working at the hospital, so I decided to take in my camera and take a few shots. It was a bit nostalgic, but I was definitely ready to leave. Though I did meet a pretty nice American guy named Josh. It turns out he´s been working here for a while too but somehow we never really crossed paths.
This shot below is me and my ¨boss¨, Tania, if you could call her that. She is basically the nicest person I´ve ever met and somehow manages to be cheerful, but not obnoxiously so, every day. This hospital is really quite blessed to have her.
These are some shots of the Ludoteca, the play area where I spent most of my time.
The phooseball table, where I spent a good number of hours being not competetive in the slightest.
And finally, this is what my room looks like as I try to pack all of my stuff up. See, I packed it all up on Tuesday, and have basically just been living out of my suitcase since then. Still, it´s a bit hectic.

Anyways, I just got back from picking up my race number and packet, which was fun. Jefferson Perez was there, but unfortunately my camera was not. Still, I got to shake hands and talk a bit with an Olympic gold medalist. Pretty sweet!

Ryan Hall: Living with everything I need, not everything I want

The always gracious Ryan Hall has written a very nice ¨journal entry¨ available here:

Ryan Hall Journal Entry



Ryan´s letdown at the 2008 Olympics didn´t hold him back from continuing with his life or his running. I´m always amazed when I hear this young man speak and this is no exception.

Also, this comes at an interesting time after Ryan recently announced he will be running in the 2009 Boston Marathon!

Okayalright

I know how worried you all were, but my toe is feeling fine.

Today was pretty solid. A reasonably normal day, but solid nonetheless. I iced my foot a bunch last night so it was feeling pretty decent this morning. Still, I decided to take it safe and take the bus to work. Unfortunately, having never taken the bus before, I took the wrong bus and ended up farther away than when I started by the time I realized it. Oops! But I ended up still getting there on time.

Work was all right and then I took the bus home and had some lunch before heading out for a run. One thing I´ve noticed is that my moderate runs are getting both easier and quicker. I´m hoping this is a result of both my lungs becoming more efficient at this altitude and my body and muscular system become more efficient at covering ground. Either way, I covered about 8 miles at 6:40 pace and felt pretty comfortable the whole time.

Anyways, I only have two days of my project at the hospital left, which is a bit weird. The last few weeks have gone by really quickly; it´s hard to believe that in a few days my parents come and then it´s adios a Quito.

Photo Update!

I just got the chance to upload some photos from the weekend so here they are!

The always lovely beach!


My roommate Carla with a beer the size of her head.


Another shot of the beach and the coast heading South.


Yes, I DID eat that whole pizza. Thank you very much.


Me and Margaret, our fellow i-to-i volunteer.


Margaret and Carla at cocktail hour.


I just thought this was a nice artsy shot of a palm tree


These next few are from my run. Here, any CAXCer will remember with great joy Jon´s foot drills. Frankensteins!


Happy and oxygen deprived after 15 minutes and 49 seconds of hard, fast running.

15 Minutes

It´s been a pretty hectic bit and it´s probably going to stay that way until I get back. It seems a bit wierd that I can now say ¨until I get back¨ and not have it be that long.

Anyways, this past weekend, I went to the coast with my roomate Carla and an older Irish woman who works at the hospital with me named Margaret. It was a pretty solid trip. The weather was actually a lot nicer than the last time we went. Unlike the two women, my main purpose for going to the beach was to run a 5k time trial at sea level to see how my intervals had affected my fitness.

Well, it seems that Jon´s workouts have been doing pretty good work getting my legs and lungs and heart into an unstoppable trifecta. I ran the same route as last time (Early October, 5km, 16:07, 5:11/mile pace) and my goal was to go under 16:00. My secondary goal was to run negative mile splits, meaning each mile is faster than its predecessor. Well, I was able to meet both my goals! I ran 5:08, 5:07, 4:56, with a total time of 15:49, 5:05/mile (average) pace. I was pretty happy with my results and I think that my entry into the realm of 15 minutes can finally qualify me as a decent (pre-)collegiate runner.

The only buzz kill about that trip happened after my time trial when I walked down to the beach for a morning of reading and soaking up the equatorial sun and I saw a big crowd of people down by the ocean. I walked down, not exactly sure what to expect, but with a pretty bad feeling about it. I saw that there was a man lying on the sand and this didn´t help me feel any better. Finally I saw his face and he was very dead. It looked like he´d been dead for a while, too. He probably drowned the day or night before and was washed ashore. It was pretty haunting and a pretty nasty way to end an otherwise pleasant weekend.

We got back late Sunday night and so far this week has been pretty hectic. I´ve been packing and making sure I have enough room in my suitcases. It turns out I´m only allowed to bring one suitcase on the flight out of Quito, so I´ve had to consolidate a good bit.

I took a day off from running yesterday, but today I had a pretty decent workout, despite my time trial 2 days prior. For those of you who aren´t runners, you can probably just skip the next paragraph or so.

I did my usual 2 mile warmup and then foot drills. Today, though, I think I might have pulled something in my right foot during my drills. I was doing the long-walk and I got a pretty bad pain in my right big toe. I stopped and took a few minutes to massage my foot and try and feel where the pain was, and it ended up feeling all right. I didn´t do anymore long walking but finished up the rest of the drills and felt fine. It was still bugging me a bit so I said I´d do some striders and if it was bothering me, I´d call it off. strangely enough, it really only bugged me when I was walking and I didn´t really notice it at all during running. So, I figured I´d go ahead with the workout.

I was able to keep all my times at or below our goal times. The 300s I ran like you said: the first two on pace at 51 and the second two a bit faster. The 200s I tried to get faster with each, but I started a bit fast.

Here´s the workout:

2 Miles easy (7:30 pace), Drills, 4x Striders

2x400 (70): 70.3, 67.2
4x300 (51): 51.7, 51.3, 47.7, 47.4
4x200 (30): 29.7, 27.5, 29.6, 27.4

2 Mile cooldown easy (7:45 pace)

It was actually quite a fun workout. I liked the idea of getting faster and faster with each distance.

Anyways, the rest of the week I´m working, doing another interval workout on Thursday or Friday and my parents get here saturday night! Sunday morning, I think I´m going to run in a half marathon, but only as my long run (so I can get a cool t-shirt). Sunday, my parents and I are in Quito and then we´re off on our adventures. I believe the schedule looks something like this: Monday, we leave early for the Galapagos where we have 5 or 6 days on a boat tour around the islands. After that, we have a few days traveling and then we get to Perú, where we have a few days to see Maccu Piccu. I think we fly home from there and get back on 12/3.

I´ve been spending a good amount of time thinking about these past 12 weeks and I don´t think there´s a whole lot I´d change. I´ve accomplished things with my running that I never dreamed of being able to accomplish, at least not in such a short amount of time. I´ve also gone way farther with my Spanish than I ever could have dreamed. I´ve learned a lot about myself and I´ve spent a lot of time alone.

I´m incredibly happy I did this, but I´m also looking forward to going home. I don´t think these ideas have to be mutually exclusive. I´m all right with the idea that my time here is coming to an end. I am really excited to get back to the States and see my parents and friends and eat good chinese food and pizza and run outside of a city.

The Start of Something

I did my second interval workout in three days this morning. It was what Jon has dubbed a ¨Benchmark Workout.¨ That is, it´s a workout that will be repeated after another 4-6 weeks of good hard training.

The workout consisted of 5x800 meters at 2:36 or better, with 90 seconds jogging in between each. Basically, it´s 800s at VO2 max pace with very little rest between each. The workout would not only let us know how my body has been reacting to the intervals that I´ve been running for the past 5 weeks but also it would give me a better estimate for what I can run for my time trial this coming weekend.

I was still a bit stiff starting off, so I was almost pessemistic. Nonetheless, I got into my normal routine: 2 miles easy to warm up, full foot drills and dynamic stretching and two sets of striders. By the time I was ready to start, it had warmed up considerably, so I was glad to have worn layers.

The workout ended up going a lot better than I expected. I ended up averaging about 2:33 per rep, which I was pretty happy with, with the last at 2:29.

Looking over my intervals, I´m really happy with the progress I´ve made. This week, the 5x800 workout was a bit less volume than usual, and I felt it. However, looking back even a few weeks shows that I was doing shorter workouts, with more rest, and at slower paces. With that in mind, I´m feeling relatively confident.

In other news, I´m making some progress on my plans for next year, though a lot is still up in the air and seems as if it´ll stay that way for a while. The one thing that I´m feeling quite strong about is that I don´t want to spend the whole six months in one place. This presents a bit of a problem with finding a job, especially with the state of the current economy, but I´m confident that I can find some work.

My thoughts right now are some sort of permutation of the following: Spend December and part of January in Concord living at home. Here I can see my friends, get some work, and run in some indoor track races.

In January, I´m hoping to drive west somewhere for several reasons: First, to avoid (part of) the super cold and icy New England winter. Second, the two cities I´m thinking about living in right now are Tucson, AZ and Boulder, CO (slightly less warm...) which are both at relatively high altitudes, Tucson not as much. Being here in Quito has shown that my body reacts really well to altitude training, so this would give me another few months of that. It would also give me a nice change of scenery, which I´ve found is really important to me. Hopefully I´d be able to find a job in either place, and since both of them are high tourist season (Boulder, skiiers, Tucson, snowbirds) I´m relatively confident I could find some sort of work.

I would head back East in early March to see Phish in Hampton, VA. And then drive back up to Concord. The next few months depend a bit on my monetary state at the time. I have the possibility of living at home, living in Hanover with my brother, and living in Western Mass somewhere. I would try and get a job here as well and continue training and be able to race some outdoor track in the Spring.

It´s an ambitious and complicated plan, I know, but I´m hoping it works out.

Anyways, I´m headed to the coast on Friday early morning. I´ll try and update before then, but I may be busy with work and getting ready. I´m running my time trial Sunday morning, so send me fast vibes if you´re up between 7:00 and 8:00am!

Speedy Speed

This morning I did my first sharpening workout. That is, I did my first interval workout of shorter, faster intervals.

Most of my interval workouts up until now have been longer intervals (600-1000 meters) at 5k pace or a bit better. The workout this morning was of 200s and 400s at mile race pace or better. Well, it went pretty well. Perhaps a bit too well. Jon told me to be careful not to go too fast, since it was my first workout, and unfortunately, it looks like I did just that. My 200s were a bit quick, with my second to last at 26.1, but my 400s were right on, which was good.

I was luck enough to have my flatmate, Carla, accompany me on my warmup and cooldown and she was nice enough to film a bit of my workout. I put this little thing together to partly spoof the flotrack workout videos and partly because I was bored :P Anyways, let me know if it works:



Unfortunately, the weather was not nice enough to permit us to hike this weekend, but I think that the workout was accomplishment enough. I´m feeling pretty solid about my time trial this coming weekend at sea level. Hopefully it´ll go all right.

Anyways, it´s lunch time!

A Long Overdue Update

First of all, congratulations to the country for regaining a bit of my faith in one of the most important elections of our time. Yes. It´s true. Proposition II WAS passed. Take that you doubters.

Oh, and in other, less important, news, apparently Barak Obama was elected as well.

I have an awful lot to say and too much time. A whole lot has happened in the last week or so since I last updated.

Last weekend, my roomate and I took a 4 day hiking trip around the Quilotoa Loop in the Andes. It´s a group of 5 or 6 small Andean villages with beautiful hikes between each. The centerpiece is the Laguna Quilotoa, which is a giant Volcanic Crater lake high up in the mountains. We ended up hiking about 50 miles in 4 days at 4000m, so it was a pretty tiring weekend. A more long and detailed report of this is hopefully coming soon.

Other than that, I´ve been working and running and not a whole lot else. I had a great interval session Monday, a difficult but satisfying long run yesterday, and I have more speedier intervals on Sunday.

This weekend, we´re planning on doing a bit more hiking, but just around the mountains in Quito. Assuming the weather´s all right, we´re going to try and summit the big volcano next to Quito.

Also, next weekend, we are heading down to the coast, which should be really nice (again, weather permitting). I´m set to do a time trial down there on next Sunday at sea level. Jon has told me to shoot for 5:08 miles which comes out to a total time of 15:56. A 10 second PR at this level is a pretty big deal, but given that last time I ran this distance at sea level I was running about 10 miles per week less and not doing any intervals, I´m feeling at least relatively confident.

I´ve also been thinking a lot about what I´m going to do with the rest of my year off. The hiking trip made me really miss Arizona for some reason (the terrain is remarkably similar), so I´m going to try and spend at least a bit of time out west. Mostly, though, I need to get some work so I can pay off all these expenses that I´m incurring. I presented a first draft of my plan to my folks which was regarded only as ¨pretty ridiculous¨ so I see that as quite a success!

I´ll try and post more later but I´ve got to eat and then we´re off to see the new James Bond.