Erg Marathon

I never mentioned this before I guess because I never thought of it as part of my project, but I used the knowledge and experience I have gained to do it. For Row For Humanity, I erged(rowed) a marathon. That is 42,195m, and it took me 3h20m, for an average split of 2:20. I learned a lot.
First, it is easier at the start(Duh right?) As I started off, I decided I would take a minor break every 5k, for a quick drink and a bite of Luna bar, and at each 10k a major break, stand up and quick stretch. About halfway through, however, my body needed more fuel and more break so I shortened it to a drink every 2.5k and a stretch each 5k.
Second- it hurt.
Third- ii felt great to finish

The Recovery.
I took this as a chance to practice my recovery strategy. As I finished my body collapsed, I lay down and just tried to regain control, but when all I wanted to do was sleep, I knew I needed to walk around. This prevents your joints from feeling really bad and allows your body to cool down and slowly become normal. While walking I drank gatorade, to replenish my electrolytes and water, cherribundi to set my body up for less soreness, and some chocolate milk to give my some nutrients and carbs. Then once my heart rate and such had slowed I went to get some food. A lot of food. This morning when I woke up, I made myself pancakes to get my body full of sugars for today.

The one thing I forgot to do is stretch, which means that I am still quite sore. But I have been worse off than this and I will continue today like nothing is wrong.

Now I am looking foreword to my half marathon next weekend.

Katherine's Presentation

On May 22, Katherine was brave enough to kick off the WISE presentation season. We all attended and first I would like to say she did a great job!

I really liked her mixture of pictures, physical objects to show, and her great narrative through her project. I will borrow her mixture of showing pictures, and physical objects. As a future computer scientist, I will most likely hide behind technology more than she did, more powerpoint to have a more structured presentation, and I have fewer "things" to show off. One critique, going into the presentation I did not know her goal, and I only figured it out near the end of her presentation. I will up front admit my goal and how I have deviated from that track.

The Flow

I came home today, and I was just going to crash, I haven't been sleeping enough recently, but I was feeling the urge to run. So I went out for an 8 miler. In the bright sun. My iPod had no charge, so I got to a lot of thinking. To be honest it was a pretty bad run overall. Really hot and sweaty, the first 3 miles were terrible. But when I stopped for my water break halfway through I realized that the last mile hadn't been bad. I realized that I had gotten into the flow of the run. I start off with all my worries and concerns of the day, and am not focused on running. But a few miles in(and I've noticed this before, just didn't know how to say it) I hit my stride. I zone in, and tune out. My brain goes from a clutter of thoughts and emotions to the thump of my feet, maybe a single train of thought. But I have quit runs in the past because I was having trouble passing into the tuned in, zoned out state. So my race plan needs to be without stopping the first few miles. Anyway as I was running I saw a parallel between this and life. In life you start off slowly, learning new skills, in new places, and then you hit a zone where everything is going well. But all it takes is a loud car, or the adrenaline of a dog-chase to shake you from that zone, but if you persevere and continue on you can regain that zone.

Recover with Chocolate Milk

I have heard, from many different people, the great stuff about chocolate milk as a recovery drink. I was reading through RowingNews recently and found an article explaining why. Basically, it is way better than sports drink, as sports drinks are "sugar water with a dash of salt", whereas chocolate milk has many good thins, beyond tasting good and having sugar and salt, it has high-quality protein, riboflavin, calcium, and vitamin D. All of which help with the recovery process. Therefore, I shall drink chocolate milk from now on after workouts.

Thunder

Just now I was going to go for my weekly long run, today was going to be really hot, so I was going to go for an 8 mile hilly run, however things do not always go as planned. After having dropped off two water bottles (todays high is 93f) put on my running shoes, stepped outside and heard a huge clap of thunder and it started drizzling. So I called it off. but as I drove through the drizzle and building storm to collect my water bottles, I got to thinking about this project. I just read through some of my posts, and I realized I have done very few. This is not because I haven't been working, because I have been, and hard. But more out of a lack of time. I have been running and researching, but I've been doing it for myself, I lost sight of the goal. My goal is, now, to run a half marathon, but the goal of this project is to document the research and growth that goes on. So I will try to pull up my old research and post them here.

YOLO

First some pondering on rowing.
As you must know by now, I am first and foremost a rower. What is the goal of rowing? We strive for the "perfect stroke" yet everyone defines a perfect stroke differently. The real goal of rowing in an 8+ is rowing together. Then with less effort from the individual, the shell moves faster.
How do we achieve this?
Well, we row. A lot. but more than that. We strive for constant improvement, constantly fixing that slight overreach, that extra inch you can get. We have coaches, but we can see, granted not much as we are just looking that the back of a persons head. So we hear the boat?... somewhat, we can hear the clink of the oarlock, the splash of the blade entering and exiting, but it takes a back seat, so does vision.
We feel the boat. We feel the surge of the catch, the rush of the slide, the pop of the finish. But this feeling takes concentration and lack of concentration. It takes being in the moment. Not thinking of the next stroke, nor the last, just the current surge, as well as a feel for the tempo, to allow yourself to maybe be one moment in the future, to remain together.
Basically, rowing takes entering a mental place without any thought but the next piece of the stroke, the next step.
The same can be said for running. A marathon is run one step at a time, you just concentrate on everything and nothing. It is the moment. Isn't that part of the idea behind YOLO, you only live once, live in the moment, do what makes you happy.

Info on the Lake Placid Marathon

Background:
The Lake Placid Marathon & Half was recently ranked by a Runner's World Magazine survey as the #2 "Best Destination" race in the United States!! (Runner's World Magazine, January 2010 Issue, page 71) The Lake Placid Marathon & Half Marathon is a high quality premier early season race held in the charming Olympic Village of Lake Placid, New York USA home of the 1932 & 1980 Winter Games.
Roughly 2,500 runners partake between the half and full marathons.
Course 
Mostly road surface, with about a mile of dirt/gravel. An aid station every mile or so, the first four are water only, the rest have energy gel, sports drinks, and energy bars. 
Below is the elevation map of the full marathon(the half is just the first 13.1 miles)

Here is the course map:

Rules
Headphones ARE allowed(thankfuly)
Must always display the number bib.
Basically don't be stupid, have fun, don't ruin it for anyone else. 
(All found on http://lakeplacidmarathon.com/)