Been Awhile

It has been awhile since my last post. My research has come to a standstill since my mice won't have babies. So now I've been stalking potential thesis advisors for my PhD online and finding other avenues of interest that, for some reason, venture more towards chemistry than ecology. But I guess when it comes to semiochemicals, the line becomes pretty narrow.

Running has been going well. Nothing really long but I guess that's for the best since I need to get new shoes before I start any heavier mileage than I'm doing. I did 4 mile repeats yesterday with 5 minutes rest (at ~5k pace). 1st mile = 5:30 2nd= 5:18 3rd= 5:14 4th= 5:20. It was a pretty solid workout considering the heat of the day and such. I feel like if I were under an assigned workout I could have done 2-3 miles sub 5:30. After that I went home and made the most delicious stir fry ever. I enjoy stir fry (or what I consider to be stir fry). I just put frozen vegetables, some kind of meat or bean into a pan and cook it, pour some sauce on it and mix it with pasta. Always a good decision.

My race is coming up and I'm beyond pumped. It got written about in a local blog. I have a feeling it'll be a good time. Shirts were pretty easy to screenprint and dye (saved a ton of money on that one) and I'm in a position to raise around $200 for the National Parkinson's Foundation.

Now I'm going to go back to watching "dead like me". It's decently funny, despite its morbidity.

A fun weekend in spite of Missouri

An old friend and roommate/ex runner for the team came up and visited this past weekend, which was just the elixir I needed from the slow pace of life in rural Missouri. We went out to the local bars, ate Kum 'n' Go nachos with chili and cheese-esque toppings, grilled burgers and brats and threw the frisbee around. I did zero research, which was awesome. I needed a break from the mice and botanists turned thesis advisers.

I also had dinner with the head of the biology graduate program. Her husband is from Israel and so we all were spoiled with delicious food. Sesame encrusted fried chicken, tahini, something with chicken livers and onions, some salad with cucumbers and kalamata olives. I probably spelled most of those words incorrectly, but that doesn't change how delicious the meal was.

With all the commotion of the weekend, I didn't run at all. This is not a good thing. But it's okay. I'll hop back on the horse early tomorrow morning. I weighed myself the other day and I actually lost 2 pounds...which worried me more than if I would have been the same weight because I am probably losing the muscle from this past track season.

I also did a VO2 max test for a class of middle schoolers/high schoolers. I was interested to see how it had changed since my sophomore year and they needed someone to demonstrate the test. So I'm sitting in the performance lab getting all suited up (heart rate monitor, weight/height measurements). I was amusing myself by seeing how low I could get my heart rate by breathing deeply and trying to relax. I was able to get it down to around 63 before the kids came in. Despite my grad student status, these kids terrified the shit out of me. First off, the class was 90% female so I naturally had the added womanly vibe of critical judgements and childlike curiosity. It's easier with boys. They talk less...are less intimidating. Long story short, I hopped on the treadmill and kicked out a pretty decent test (68 was the end result). This is not as good as my sophomore year but a different technique was used to measure VO2 max compared to before and I'll chock it up to that...and I'm slowly slipping into being a recreational runner. Average college age male is around 45 so I can use that as a poultice on my wounded pride.

One last note:
My roommate hooked up our nextdoor neighbor. She disliked my taste in music. What a bitch. My ipod was on random but it played mostly the smiths, bloc party, bob dylan, the shins, etc.
I'm not sure what her tastes in music are like...but they must suck if she can't see the awesomeness of any of those bands. What a bitch.

A bump on the road to my masters

I have set up my Y-tube olfactometer and the first trial with larval ticks was promising. After that, things have been going downhill. No life stage of tick is showing an attraction response. They are, instead, preferring the control (a rock). It is very frustrating. I can deal with the several even split trials, but what is attractive about a rock? If this trials weren't positively spurious, I would be led to the conclusion that ticks do not actively search out hosts (which is not what the literature says). I guess what really bothers me is that I have been putting an immense amount of work into this project (like any masters student should) and another masters student is getting a completely canned project and hasn't even written a thesis proposal. Meanwhile, I've written, revised and publicly defended my thesis proposal. In a year and some change, we will both be getting the same degree (barring any serious issues). This means that, on paper, this student and I will look the same to potential labs/employers.

I think I'm just annoyed because I don't cut corners, take breaks (besides running) and make sure I know my stuff, while other people simply don't. I am working on a manuscript for publication and ,while it has 6+ authors, the work has been mostly by myself and my mentor. I'm quite fed up with the bureaucracy of science research.

In other news, I have started to increase mileage (maybe related to the above). I decided to follow my old cross coach's training program with a couple of modifications. It's a pretty decent training plan but I think I will increase the weekly mileage. Some days he has little 4 mile runs. I understand the need for recovery days but a short little run is not even worth it (unless it's a tempo). Also, he has no two-a-days. I enjoy a nice easy 5-6 in the morning, followed by an afternoon workout. We'll see how my body feels in a couple of weeks. I'll start off slowly. I just ran ~7 miles today at a decent pace. I think I'll call it a day and read a bit in bed. I'm finishing up Walden Two by B.F. Skinner and starting to re-read Everything Is Illuminated by Foer. Two very different books but I enjoy both of them immensely (especially Walden Two). If a Utopian community did exist such as Walden Two (or Walden), the masters student I mentioned previously wouldn't be there. But then again...the masters program probably wouldn't exist...and my spite would be looked upon as a major character flaw. But at least that student wouldn't be there right? I'm joking...?

Not a whole lot has happened in the last few days. With one notable exception. I received my graduation present from my parents - Mountain hardwear icestone soft shell. Tell me that's not a beautiful piece of gear. It is by far the best piece of gear I own now (which is sad). After I get my masters, I figure I'll move out west (or just somewhere not in the Midwest) and I'll be doing field work. So cold winters and lots of field work equals need for warm and tough clothing. I put it on as soon as I got it. I even wore it a couple of days ago for the first time even though its a little warm. It was a cooler morning and it was drizzling so I tossed it on. No water touched the jacket. It says it's water resistant but it seems waterproof to me. Despite being windproof, it's surprisingly breathable too. Definite plus. I'm pretty pumped about the winter to see if the jacket can do all that it says. They market it as a winter shell but we'll see what I'll have to put under it in order to make it warm enough.





Other than that, running has been going well. Did 6 yesterday and 8-9 the day before. Easy 4 or 5 the day before that because my hamstring was a little tender from carrying big bags full of mammal traps. The rec is extending their hours starting June 1st so that will be nice to get some weightlifting in with the running. Plus, I'm cheap and don't like to waste water at the house so I'll just shower at the rec everyday.





Research is coming along great. I assembled the testing apparatus and am almost ready to start performing trials. I just need a laptop to hook the data logger up to and a fresh supply of larval D. variabilis (dog tick) and I'll be good to go. I was worried that breeding mice would be difficult from the way the first breeding pair reacted to one another. They sat at opposite ends of the cage and stared at each other for about 3 days. However, they (and the 2nd breeding pair) have become friends and hopefully more. I checked on them twice today and saw they were curled up next to one another. They're cute. Not like in a girly "omg I want one as a pet" cute. They're just beautiful animals. I watched about 30-40 mice get the gas chamber (CO2) today. The herpetology department needed some food. That is actually the sole reason we maintain an active breeding colony. Nobody does research with the mice...they're like cattle. That amuses me for some reason or another.

But that's neither here nor there. Tell me that's not cute

Good race

I was actually nervous when I woke up this morning. Blame it on the rainy weather, but I woke up roughly 3 hours before race time and couldn't get back to sleep. What was I afraid of? O yea...potential embarassment. But that's neither here nor there. I won the race. I did in fact break the tape roughly 2 minutes ahead of the second place finisher. I ran a decent race too, considering the weather and the lack of people to run with. I ran a 17:21, which is over a minute off my PR of 16:13. Many decent runners would laugh at that time. I don't claim to be a 5k runner. Toss me in a 10k or a half and see what I can do. Now I'm just tooting my own horn. I digress.


The main thing I want to communicate to my one follower (thank you), is that the race went well but it wasn't the most important part of the whole event. The people were incredibly supportive. I am used to collegiate races, in which you size up competition through sideways looks. The atmosphere of this race was more like a church potluck than a 5k. I was so impressed that I talked with the head of the 5k and asked her to provide me with the e-mail addresses of the participants, so that I could invite them to run my race (2nd Annual TD5k).
That's the t-shirt design for the 1st annual. Designed by Jason Simpson (amazing graphic design guy and runner http://www.jasonfordesign.com/). This post is pretty stream of consciousness. Whatever. I made the race after my grandpa was diagnosed with Parkinson's to help raise money for the cause and to have a little fun with the team and the community. Given the impromptu nature of the whole thing, I'd say it was a marked success. I raised about $60 for the Parkinson's Research Foundation and had enough money to throw a pretty good party afterwards with bbq and a fair amount of cheap booze. I tried to cut out the middleman and do much of the work myself which saved money. For instance, I bought t-shirts wholesale and screenprinted them myself. I got a local meat smokehouse to donate the burgers so all I had to buy was buns, chips and booze. It was a good time. The second annual will now incorporate more of the local community I hope after I have seen what a supportive and friendly group they are. I mentioned to the second place finisher that if enough people (>50) signed up, I would buy a keg of decent beer.

I am tired. I'm heading to bed. I've been trapping mice for the past two weeks as part of my master's thesis and it has been borderline fruitless and exhausting. Don't worry...All mice captured are kept in accordance with the animal care and use guidelines of the animal care facility of the University and the Society of Mammalogists. They're living the good life.

Goodnight.

A possible disappointing adjustment

Running in div. II is like being on a semi-pro baseball team. Even if you're really good relative to your peers, you still suck globally. However, a major benefit when running races in college is the fact that you're racing against similar caliber athletes. Since my collegiate running career is over I have moved on to greener pastures...the local road races. The 5ks and 10ks that the YMCA puts on, citing titles like "fun run" and "5k run and 1mile walk". I'm not an elitist. Don't misunderstand what I am trying to say. I do enjoy the community aspect of road races, the multiple generations all lacing up their shoes.

The point is that I just found out that there is a 5k here in Kirksville tomorrow (Coal Miner 5k or something like that). I have decided that with only 2-3 solid workouts since I took 2 weeks off under my belt, I will go ahead and give local racing a try. I'm not going to take it very serious because if I do and I lose, I will be a little crushed. Also, I don't want to look pompous, breaking the tape a minute or two before the next finisher. But that just sounds cocky..and I'm not that good at all.

My roommates gone for the summer and graciously left his Brooks ST III racers. For those of you who aren't really familiar with racing, there are basically two types of shoes you wear if you want to race seriously. For grassy or wooded runs without much concrete or road, you would want to wear a spike. These are very lightweight shoes with nearly no support and 1/8-1/2 in spikes on the ball of the foot. There is some debate on when to use spikes (I spike up for anything less than 10k) but the normal community race seems to be the 5k so no qualm there. The other race day shoes are racing flats (pictured above) These are much more versatile and provide far more support than spikes, though not as much as regular trainers. They are slightly heavier than spikes but still very light.

But either way...I'll update the 0 people that are reading this tomorrow with how I did in the local 5k.

Also, for beginning runners, it is always good to have a race plan in your head before you even enter a local race. For instance, due to low confidence in my training, my race plan is to go out with the leaders tomorrow for the first mile (caveat: unless they are going over 5:45 pace) then pick it up over the last two miles. My plan to run negative splits (progressively speeding up rather than the norm of slowing down after a mile or so) will give me confidence that I can run fast and push myself. It's almost ridiculous how much of your ability is rooted in your perception of your ability. Look at Alan Webb. I'm just kidding. He's a good guy. YouTube him. He doesn't disappoint...or get into reckless drunk driving accidents like Nike's little poster boy.

Trial run

Hey guys.

This is the first blog I have ever created. No, I am not 80 years old. I just never got too into the whole blogging thing until now I guess.

I am a graduate student at Truman State in middle-of-nowhere Missouri.
I ran cross and track for them (Div. II) for 4 years under two different coaches.

But that's neither here nor there. This is my blog. I will talk about running/biology/life in the middle of nowhere.

That is all for now.