Thursday, June 08, 2006

A Great Talk & a 10 Miler

Well people the talk went well! I went to the room a little early and ran into a new girl named Mandy, looking for the meeting room. She's a student from Oklahoma University and probably thinks I'm nuts because when I get nervous I tend to talk a LOT and FAST! Oh well. I was the third presentation of the day and was real ansy to get going. It's so difficult giving talks at Fermi Lab because everyone in the room has a PhD in physics or will have a PhD in physics...so you might say a bit intimidating.

Remember when I said that I talk fast and a lot when I get nervous, if that is me giving a presenation change that to fast and LOUD. So I guess I am pretty understandable even though I am flying at 100 miles an hour. I didn't have any major questions and the new girl said that it was a great talk (Thanks!). When I got back to a computer I had this little message from my advisor:
Outstanding job. Very smooth, showed solid progress, no questions as I think you hit everything.
Those little two sentances from him are just so meaningful. He is one of the top physicists at the lab and every conference we go to people ask, "Oh are you so and so's student?". I have a huge respect for this guy and so when I get compliments like that it makes all the little bullshit things float away. Thanks!

Alright, well of course that is no where near the end of the story...still a lot of work to be done. But I'm on it.

We got home around 6:30 after a dissapointing stop at the store Running Away on Damen...which is no more :-( I wonder if they moved or are just out of business....hmm?

We had a 10 mile run planned and since I have had wandering brain on our runs lately I decided to take my iPod shuffle with me for some music motivation. I wish I could give real stats about the run. I wasn't paying good enough attention to the Garmin and so I hit 9 miles see the thing tell me the pace for the mile and I continue under the viaduct just south of Belmont and look back at the watch and what do I see? 8.8 miles? WTF? After I got home and uploaded the thing to MB I noticed that it had me running out into Lake Michigan. I have to pay more attention to the satillite quality. So the watch says we ran 10 miles averaging 8:44 pace (right on target) , However MB says we ran 10.8 miles averaging 8:05 miles (too fast/impossible looking at the split times!) I think we are more likely at 10.2 miles which comes out to about an 8:33 pace which is fine by me and makes more sense than the other two numbers.

I LOVE that I can go out and run 10 miles at a pretty brisky pace on a Thursday night. I was NO WHERE near this kind of conditioning last summer and it makes me really excited to delve more into this training program. Next week we will have our first Lactate threshold run...so we'll see how that goes & we'll be up to 40 miles &&& we add in another day of running! Whew....let me change that to terrified!

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad to hear that your presentation went to well, and that your training is on target. Although, I'm thinking that the sampling of the Little Debbie's isn't such a bad idea. I haven't eaten those things since I was a kid.

Thomas said...

Congratulations on a great job with the presentation. And won't any new people ne just as intimitated by you as you are by the PhDs?

Good work on the run, too. Don't rely on those gadgets for pace and distance, go with what your body tells you.

Full Metal Lunchbox said...

Congratulations on your presentation.  Must be a huge relief!

What kind of music do you like to listen to when you run?

LeahC said...

usually we listen to either new pop music, becuase let's face it's fun has a good beat to run to (Shake That by Eminem is a great song to run to) or old 80's songs like We're Not Going to Take It by Twister Sister (maybe some Hall and Oates but I really don't want to admit that...She's a Rich Girl...oh dear), some bon jovi, of course Eye of the Tiger, some Clash songs...

I actually really like this artist Steve Earle. He's a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll, and has a couple songs I love to run to. The first, Lonier Than This Not a fast song, but I really like it while I'm running because no matter how big the race you are running, or if you have a running partner there always seems to be times when the run is your thing and your thing alone. By the same artist I like the song Someday, about someday taking that step to leave town and where to go next which will probably be happening to Jason and I in the next year (unless we can find jobs here). One more by the same guy.....Steve's Last Ramble

Wow that was a long answer to a short question :-)

Scott said...

Liking Steve Earl just shows that you were brought up right!

Dad

Triseverance said...

Great Job Leah, on all fronts. 40 Miles eeeeek, crazy isn't it. Good luck, it is nice having you guys a couple of weeks ahead of me in the plan. I get to sort of hear about the weeks before I do them. :)

So what happens if you guys go through the plan smoothly? How do you plan on filling the gap?

Jason said...

How do you plan on filling the gap?

Three weeks of binge drinking. either that or we'll just run 26.2 miles 3 weeks earlier than everyone else.

Serious answer? Having the England trip built in, as well as a likely trip to florida, pretty much guarantees that we will be repeating a couple weeks.

Kendra said...

Congrats, Leah!

Bridgette said...

Did you realize that you broke into a Donnie & Marie song...I'm a little bit country... haha

I wish I could run 10 miles....

jeanne said...

nice work on the talk! And congrats on getting that compliment! Isn't it amazing the affect that kind words can have on us?! and wheee! on the 10 miles! one day, i'll get there, too!