Marathon and Pushing Through

Guess who survived the marathon! Me. (Kind of, barely.) Thanks for all of your supportive comments beforehand!

The before pictures:

The during pictures:

Not smiling quite as much in the during pictures.

It was really intense. I felt great the first 13 miles, and it was kind of downhill from there. Mark was very supportive and kept me going a few times, my favorite part being singing Bon Jovi to distract ourselves around mile 18. However, by the end I was really dragging. As soon as we crossed the finish line (6 hours later!) and downed a bottle of Gatorade, I magically had energy again. Lesson learned: Eat more when running for hours and hours, even if you don't like gel.

Things were so good with Mark that weekend that we got back together for a few weeks until it became unmistakably apparent that we do not value the same thing in a relationship. What can I say-- Love is exceedingly optimistic.  

On the upside, I am now far more confident in interpreting and trusting my feelings. I know how I feel when someone loves me for me (like in the beginning) and I know how good it feels to care about someone, talk through things because I care (even if I prefer to avoid hard discussions), and make plans together. I also know one person can't make the relationship work. When it's healthy and right, it's going to be great.

So where am I now? Back in Rhode Island. I started a painting that I've been wanting to do, bought the materials to make this cute bag, and am arranging regular volunteering. Tune in next time for pictures from my much-needed vacation to Arizona and Chicago. :)

Marathon Training

My marathon is THIS WEEK. I'm excited and nervous... I can't believe I'm doing this, though I'm glad I am!

It started out as something that Mark asked me to do, and I thought it would finally be something we could accomplish together. It also turned into a great feeling of accomplishment, being able to do something I didn't think I could do. 

Well, then we skipped 3 long runs in a row and broke up. I would say last weekend was my lowest point of 2011. I was physically sick from the break up aftermath and only ran 12.6 miles on my 21-mile run day. Out of time to train, hating energy gel, and still crying most days, I was about ready to quit. I really wanted to crawl in a hole and try to make sense of my life that had fallen to pieces around me. (Or just sleep.) I still kind of want this.

Well, I have been careful to give myself space and time to experience all of that, get enough sleep, try to maintain my running schedule. I'm still heart broken. I'm still working through things I could have done differently (though I am trying valiantly to think about them in the context of future-- because "could have" is useless). It still hurts that everyone around me is getting married-- especially my friends that started dating right after we did. But I have been teaching myself to trust my emotions and have given myself time to process pieces without being in pieces all the time. I;m sure this will be a long process, so it's not like I'm saying this is over.

But I am going to finish what I started.

And yes, I am even running it with Mark. I anticipate the emotions will be pretty strong, and that's okay. I am not going to go back on my decision not to marry him, and I know we can't be real friends just yet. But my heart is at least a little bit on board this time, which will help. If it's the worst weekend ever, well, I will have learned something from that too.

Wish me luck! 

Bi-Annual Update

Once every six months counts as consistent, right?

This year has been pretty packed already. I've spent a lot of time with a great guy who has adventured a lot with me. We've had a lot of firsts together.

My first time east coast skiing... Biffed it a little bit on the ice, but we had a blast!

Visited the Basketball Hall of Fame. (Who knew basketball was invented in Massachusetts?)

My first Red Sox game!

Visited a lighthouse on Cape Cod:

We also visited a pirate museum nearby... Mark documented me and Cassidy being good pirates.

Hiked a little section of the Appalachian Trail:

We wrote random notes for other people to find, just those before us did.

There are also little huts along the way for through-hikers.

We had lots of other adventures too.. NY, DC... and just generally played!

He'll probably be in a few more pictures because we're training for a marathon in September. Woo hoo! Those of you who have trained for any kind of race should send me music advice, goo advice, and any other advice you can think of that will help me survive 26 miles. I'm actually pretty proud of myself so far. I never really loved running long distances, so every long run we do is my longest one ever. Last Saturday's run was 12 miles! My favorite part is that I can now consistently run the whole mid-week 6 mile runs (slowly, mind you)-- and 6 miles used to count as the long run. It's pretty cool.

The other big news I have is that I published my first article in a medical journal! (I had a ton of team support in writing it.) It was just released last Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine. I don't know where that puts me in the long run, because I don't plan to stay in research, but it's cool anyway.

Who knew so much could happen in seven months!

Oh How the Mighty Have Fallen/ It's Okay Though

The following is not a judgment of anyone else's workout habits, lifestyle choices, etc.  This blog is all about me, after all, so please relax if you think I'm somehow judging other people-- I'm not.  I'm writing about my own life, thank you very much. 

It's been a rough couple of months with my workouts.  I usually don't stress about it (or write about it), because every day is a new day and a new chance to take care of my body.  But today, when I was a little sore from tae-bo and a few burpees last night, I cried a little bit inside.  Actually, a lot.  I know I'll probably never again be able to lift like I did in high school, and that's okay.  But I shouldn't have been sore from what I did.  And I was even more sad when I realized that walking now makes up a good portion of my physical activity-- I know things change with "age" and life demands, but I was an Exercise Science major.  As in, I majored in "Loving to Move Intensely."  On top of that, I have just spent another two years thinking about all the possible barriers to healthy lifestyle.  FALLEN.  And now I actually understand what people mean when they say working out is like a chore.  It's so hard to motivate yourself when you remember how you felt once upon a time and now feel like a complete pansy.  And it makes me ANGRY that something I love so much is suddenly not so lovable.  Or rather, I'm upset that I've let my life disintegrate into something that could even allow this to occur.  On the upside, it's not permanent.  But now you see why I want to be so careful about my next move-- I'm constructing a lot more than a career, here.

On the upside, I got 100% on my final paper in Nutritional Epidemiology!  This may sound like a minimal feat, but I am really proud of those 20 pages, and getting a perfect score from my professor was no cake walk.  (I should know, since she was also my thesis reader and has been ripping my work apart weekly for the last several months.)  I feel like I did what I should have been doing the entire last two years:  Developing a deep and thorough grasp on the current evidence (and its limitations) for a topic so that I feel confident giving an authoritative opinion.  A PhD might not be so bad...  I have been so grateful for this awesome professor, and this class was a good one to end on.

Another great thing that happened today was recovering some pictures that I thought might be lost forever.  I co-hosted a bridal shower for a friend a few weeks ago and took a ton of pictures... and then couldn't find them when I hooked my camera to my computer.  This made me completely nauseous, but tonight we were able to recover them, which is one more thing I can safely cross off of my May list. :)  Plus, we're adorable.

Ashley, the bride-to-be.

Weekly Highlights / Hooray for Love

- After randomly craving split pea soup, I found this recipe, which I am sharing with you because it was phenomenal and easy. I skipped the potatoes and barley (because I didn't have any) and only sort of followed the directions-- so it seems fairly difficult to ruin. Precisely my kind of recipe! :) Eventually I'll probably try it with the barley.

- I finally spent some time with my local friends, whom I've been neglecting for the past couple of weeks due (mostly) to regional church activities. I am so grateful for the amazing people I have met during my time here! I hope we can keep it up when we (I) splinter off in different directions.

- Truly beautiful Valentine's flowers. On a first date, of course, because Valentine's Day is placed so awkwardly on the calendar. But it was still very sweet of him. C'est la vie, or at least c'est la vie merveilleuse mienne. (P.S., is that right? Anyone speak French?)

Anyway, we made pesto (courtesy of Natalie's awesome recipe blog). Yum!

- Cassidy, my adventuring buddy, spent Sunday with me and we made heart-shaped pizzas. The company (and the pizzas) were amazing.



And...Recognize these? (Maddie, I know you will!)

That's right, the best brownies ever. Mmmmm.

Final highlight:
- Today was unseasonably warm, so I got to run outside for the first time since... November? Thank you, February, for being so kind on my day off. LOVE.

:: ::

I'm having, as John Mayer puts it, a quarter-life crisis.

I applied for this fellowship yesterday. It feels good to have it finished, and I should find out in about 3-4 weeks whether I get to interview. To those who gave me feedback-- thank you! If I get it, it would be a really great opportunity to get down in the trenches of a community to help improve food access, and then I'd get to go back to DC to try to stir up some action there.

But the thing is... if I take this fellowship, it still only solves my problem for a year. What am I going to do with my life after that?!!! (Yes, this question does merit three exclamation points.)

I have all these grand plans, but I get really discouraged when I think about how most leadership roles require sitting on my duff in an uncomfortable chair for 8+ hours a day. I really think I should be over this by now, but I'm not. Sitting for hours on end is my deepest circle of hell. It's uncomfortable and boring and makes me want to scream because bodies were made to move. I hate not being able to concentrate because oxygen has stopped racing through my brain and is, instead, oozing.

I was puzzling about this today (until my puzzler was sore) trying to figure out why I didn't realize this in college. I've been working since my sophomore year of high school, so why am I suddenly having such a hard time working? And then I realized that every single job I've had so far has had me moving and interacting with people and things around me. I feel like a child with some sort of stimulation deficit-- or an attention deficit. I need to break things up. I CRAVE it. I liked having multiple patients every hour and having multiple responsibilities during the day so that desk time was confined to 4- or 5-hour chunks. I liked getting immediate feedback from my environment (instead of just staring at a screen). And I liked the seemingly paradoxical security/instability that comes from working with people; I can be safe in my competence but still get a welcome and vigorous challenge from unpredictable and unique people.

I also think some part of me needs to be standing up at the front of a room drawing things on the board and talking to people about things we care about. I really think my dream is perfect-- carrying a half-time patient load as an outpatient dietitian, and leading diabetes group management programs the other half of the time. I'd get to move. Engage. Teach. And the desk time would have a visible end. Basically, it would be more immediate gratification, because I'd get to see people processing things everyday, even before the total program impact is clear.

But boy is it hard to find a position like that. And p.s., I'm not a stinking dietitian yet. I mean, how do you summarize that dream into a nice Google-friendly search term without using the word "dietitian"? It's like playing an unfortunate game of Taboo.

On the upside, I'm pretty decent at Taboo. :) Wellness coordinator and health coach have been doing pretty well for me so far, and I'm sure I'll find something. There's even a company in Chicago that looks promising. And if nothing else, I have a lot of options in the fitness industry. The thing is, I really want to help people love themselves and it's just more effective to start with food. Most everyone likes food, whereas not everyone likes exercise --yet.

So I'll keep looking. I just really want to do something I love and I also really want to live in a city because, let's be honest, I miss roommates and I miss boys. And I want that city and that job to be awesome enough to hold my attention for a few years, because otherwise I start to feel unbearably flighty and might do something drastic like move to Alaska. Or Spain.

Anyway, for now I'm here and that's good. And by this time next week I'll have started class again and will also have started a cool social marketing project at the department of health. Tune in next time... :)

My Life: A Short Story

I know you are dying for the follow-up from a couple of days ago. Here you go! Pictures to follow later. :)

1) Working hard
I just started a cool new project at work. I'm excited because a) it's great experience putting policy into action, and b) I get to work more closely with a whole bunch of CEOs and big-shot hospital administrators. I don't want to work in business (I miss patient care!), but I do get a teeny rush from high-octane work environments... Basically, there might be some new legislation coming down the pike, and we're scrambling to fit a 10-month certification process into 4 months so we can help the hospitals out as well as dominate the niche in Rhode Island.

2) Replaced my car!
Dan and Maddie are the best and sold me their car. It's a white Chevy Malibu, which I have not yet named, but I definitely will. (But I'm proud of myself for still walking to work today.)

3) NYC Ballet
Tony was very sweet this weekend and surprised me with a lovely dinner in Times Square, followed by excellent seats for a performance of the NYC Ballet. We were less than ten rows back, practically in the center (orchestra seating)! They performed a Stravinsky violin concerto, and it was amazing. The last movement was the best-- the pairing of the instruments with the dancers was most striking in this movement, which is my favorite thing about ballet. I love being able to see the group of "low brass" dancers glide around the "violin" dancers, and the perfect, effortless beauty of really good dancing. :)

4) Always wanted to be a writer...
This is a small opportunity, but I've been writing little nutritional "columns" for a wellness intervention in California. One of Brown's research centers is doing consulting work for this intervention and writing all of the newsletters, and I've been writing small pieces on common barriers to healthy eating. Mostly, I like it because my writing is finally reaching people who can benefit from it (and because it's another good way to keep up on nutrition).

5) Hip hop class
I love working out, I really do. But I haven't had a real goal for awhile (besides actually getting my workouts in), and it's sort of demotivating... I mean, I love lifting (especially when I'm using the same weights as some of the boys), but increasing weights only goes so far. Numbers get old after awhile! So mastering a dance combo is a good motivator. :)