Month of May Recap

May was a surprisingly busy month for me despite the semester finishing up. I still had a lot of research to work on, and it's always interesting getting into a new schedule.

The first week of May I had finals, which ended up going quite well. I had two classes: Design and Analysis of Robotic Manipulators and Regression Analysis (statistics class). I thought that both of them were pretty hard, and wasn't entirely sure how they were going to turn out, but everything ended well. :)

The weekend of May 16th started with one of my very good friends, Helen, graduating with her PhD! Here we are getting lunch at the Farmer's Market before her final defense.

Of course after she had defended (and passed!), we had to go out and celebrate. It was a lot of fun--also the first time I have ever had Fireball! :-o

Saturday morning, she walked in the graduation ceremony, and then had a cookout for lunch. It was delicious and nice to see everyone. It was also rather sad because she lives in Michigan, and now that she is done with her PhD, she doesn't have any official reasons to come back to Indiana. Hopefully she'll keep coming back just to visit. :) I left from the cookout to go to a cabin at Starved Rock with two of my roommates from college. Here is a picture with them from my wedding!

We had a really good time making a fire, cooking brats over said fire, making s'mores (with Reese's! If you haven't done this, you should try it), and just in general catching up with each other. On Sunday we went hiking at Starved Rock State Park which was beautiful! We ended up walking around 7 miles, so it was a fun and healthy trip. :)

The following Wednesday, May 20, my mom called and told me that her and my dad were going to drive to Atlanta to see my sister and family the next day. She asked if D and I wanted to come--I initially said no because that seemed crazy to just go on a whim, but then we decided that we should go since we didn't have any reason not to. :) We rode down with my parents (four people in a car is a little much for 10 hours ha) on Thursday morning, and stayed until Sunday morning. I love visiting my two crazy nieces--they are growing so fast that every time I see them they are basically different people!

Isabella, the blonde one on the left in the picture, is 6, and Emily is 4. Whenever we visit, we try to spend a lot of time with them, and we always do at least one educational activity. This trip, we brought small rockets down, and they were able to put them together, decorate them (probably their favorite part ha), and then we took them to the local baseball field to shoot them off. They were pretty neat, going about 500 feet in the air! The girls seemed to really like them. My sister and the family are moving to Las Vegas soon--she used to live there and work as a blackjack dealer at Hard Rock Casino. While they are moving, my parents are going to watch the girls, so hopefully I'll get to see them quite a bit in the next month or so. :)

The last weekend in May we didn't do much, mostly just tried to catch up on research. I did get to do some good workouts with my friend Beth which brings me to my summary of my running in May. I set a goal for myself to run 60 miles this month--I wasn't sure if I would be able to do it, but I did! Highlight workouts were: a pub run with the local triathlon store (running + beer will always be a winner in my book!), running with D in Atlanta (I thought I might not make it due to the heat, humidity, and hills), a brick with Beth (30 minutes bike, 30 minutes run), and a long run with Beth the following day (8.15 miles--more than I have done since my half marathon back in November!). I ended up at 61.89 miles, so I barely accomplished my goal! :)

That's it for my recap of the month of May. Sorry I have been off the blogging radar for awhile--I am going to try to keep up with it much better. I do still read all of your blogs everyday though. :)

A New Garden

My parents came over yesterday to help me start a garden in our backyard. My friend Helen and I had rented a community garden plot two summers ago, and I loved it. We were pretty successful with our plants--we had tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, potatoes, and even a watermelon. However, it was somewhat tough to get out there on a daily basis to water, so when D and I moved into a house with a backyard, I was excited to have my own garden.

Helen and I at our garden with bags and bags of harvested potatoes :)

I knew I wanted a raised garden bed (our soil isn't that great at drainage, so raising it helps, plus I thought it might help keep rabbits out), but that was all I knew. I looked up some options online, but I definitely wasn't set on anything. My parents brought a bunch of bricks with them that were from my grandpa's (on my dad's side) jewelry store that I had the option of using (free materials, woo!). I wasn't sure how using bricks would turn out, but I decided to go ahead and give it a try.

We started by going to Menards to buy a bunch of dirt. Since we were raising up the garden slightly (we decided to do about 4-5 inches above the ground), we would need a decent amount of dirt. We ended up getting 20 bags of black dirt (!) along with two bags of sand to mix in. I also picked out several vegetable plants to buy, and bought some packets of seeds.

Once we had all of the materials, putting the garden in went pretty quickly. The hardest part was digging up the grass where the garden would go, but even that wasn't too bad. Once the bricks and soil were in place, I planted all of my vegetables, and my mom planted a bunch of flower seeds in the front (I hope they grow!).

View of the garden from the garage.

Close up of the garden

There were several extra plants that wouldn't fit in the main part of the garden, so my dad decided to plant an "overflow garden." He thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if spending $30 on soil and putting the work into elevating the garden would improve the outcome of the plants. We will see. :)

Overflow garden--even if the plants grow well, it's just not as pretty as the main garden :)

Since I took most of yesterday off to get the garden in place, I have a lot of work to do today to study for finals! I have a statistics final tomorrow evening, and my robotics final on Wednesday evening. After that, another semester will officially be over. :) Have a great week, everyone!

Purdue Sprint Tri Recap

Hello all! Sorry for the disappearance. :) Even though it's been almost two weeks, I want to give you guys a recap of my first sprint tri of the year! My friend Helen came from Michigan to do this tri with me, so I was excited to have a friend share the misery fun with me.

This race has a wonderful start time of 10 am, so we were able to wake up at a reasonable time, have breakfast, casually get ready, and then head to the start. The start/transition area is less than a mile from my house, so we considered just riding our bikes there, but we had our bags of stuff (towels, water bottles, sunglasses, shoes, etc), and we were going to lunch afterwards, so we loaded up the car and drove over there.

We were there about a half hour before the start of the race, but they were making it seem as if the race was about to start. They kept saying the transition area was closing soon, and in general were making me very nervous! It was funny because I had my HR monitor on, so I could see that as I got more anxious about being late, my heart rate kept rising. :) It turned out just fine though, and we got our numbers written on us and headed to the swimming area.

I was a swimmer in high school, so I am very comfortable in the water, and I always feel like the swimming part of a tri is my best area. This tri is in a pool and the swim follows a snaking pattern, which is nice (no scary open water swim), but also makes it very tough to pass people if you are faster than them. I passed about 5 people who were clumped together and realized there was a huge gap in front of them, which meant that once I was past them, it was easy going.

The bike portion of the tri is probably my weakest portion. The very first triathlon I did was at the end of my freshman year of college, and I didn't even know what a road bike was. I had a "mountain" bike from Walmart, which I didn't even know how to shift gears with hahaha! Now that I look back, that is so embarrassing, but at the time I didn't even know it was strange. I remember being one of the first people out of the pool and then I think every single person passed me on the bike! ha. I am a bit better than that now. :) I still feel like I could improve a lot through more consistent cycle training. When I did the Purdue tri back in 2013, there was this megahill which was very intimidating! They have since changed the course, so although there are several decent hills (to me, I'm sure to someone who lives in a hilly place, this course is very flat haha), it is very doable. I felt very strong through the entire bike course, which helped me a lot mentally. I look very happy in the picture below because the guy was at the very top of the last hill, and I was amused that he chose to be there where everyone was pretty tired/slow. I said to him, "Why did you choose to be right here?!" and started laughing, which made the pictures he took of me turn out pretty well. :)

After the bike ended, I was very nervous to start running. The last time I participated in triathlons was in 2013, and at the time I was definitely not a runner. I remember running after biking being so painful/awful. I was hoping that since I have made running my primary activity in the past two years, I would be more comfortable, and I definitely was! It was still hard, no doubt, but I took about 5 minutes off of my 5k time from the previous tri! The course went through campus, and was very similar to one of my normal running routes, so I think again I had a nice mental advantage. Here is a picture of me during the running portion.

Overall, this was the first triathlon that I have ever done that I didn't feel like I was suffering the entire time. :) I think this race made me more confident in triathlon racing and in running! I am so happy that I did it, and I am excited to continue to train and get even better. When I did this race in 2013, I finished in 1:31:49 (swim (300 m): 6:36, bike (20k): 48:28, and run (5k): 33:33), and this year I finished in 1:22:02 (swim (300 m); 6:33, bike (20k): 44:24, and run (5k): 28:30). I hope that all of you runners consider doing a Sprint Triathlon at some point! They are fun to train for, and it is a very different experience than running races. :)

Backpack Dash 5k Recap

Another weekend, another race! I think this is the first time ever that I have done a race two weekends in a row. This 5k was tentatively on my calendar because my friend Bethany's mom planned it, but I didn't actually decide if I was going to do it or until about Thursday night. At that point I decided that getting an official 5k time this early in the year would be a good benchmark for the rest of the year. :)

This race happened in Rossville, a small town about a half hour away from Purdue. I was pretty happy that the start time wasn't until 9 am, so I didn't even have to get up that early! I had asked my parents if they wanted to come and walk it (it was officially a run/walk), and I was very happy when they said yes! My mom has walked one other 5k before, but this was my dad's first. Yay to healthy choices. :)

A picture of my parents and I at my wedding--one of the only good pictures of us (I'll have to change that!)

I got to Rossville around 8:30, so had plenty of time to get my race bib on and decide what to wear. It was 35 degrees, so I was trying to decide if I wanted my light-weight zip-up hoodie on, or if I wanted to go in a t-shirt; I decided on keeping the hoodie, which I think was the right choice even though I was getting pretty toasty by the end. The course was out and back--I ran the first mile too fast at 8:14, so slowed down quite a bit for the next two miles (8:23, 8:39) and was able to speed up a little for the end. I finished up with 26:17, 8:25 pace...not a PR, but not far off, and my best time without D running next to me telling me we can go faster. :) Overall I was pretty happy with how it went!

Beth and I after the 5k. 

My parents walked together and finished around 51:20, which is a pace of about 16:30...not too bad! I was very happy that they decided to come and participate. :)

First Spring Week!

I think we can finally say that Spring is here in full force. This week was [mostly] very warm, and contained several thunderstorms that convinced me that Indiana has accepted that it is Springtime. :) Yay for the end of winter!

This week wasn't overly eventful, although I did find out that I passed the math qualifying exam, which is the monster one, so I was relieved to hear that! :) I have a sprint triathlon coming up next Saturday that my friend Helen is doing with me. We were both feeling a little nervous about the prospect of a tri, so we decided to do a practice run of the whole event (not at race pace, just casually), in an attempt to prove to ourselves that we could do it. Unfortunately, when we woke up on Wednesday, it was storming intensely, so we had to resort to doing the whole practice tri indoors. No problem! :)

We started with 40 minutes on the spin bike, which said it was about 16 miles for me (Helen was over 17, woo!), followed by 3.1 on the treadmill. I was right at 30 minutes for the 5k--a little slow for me, but I have to remind myself that my legs are going to be slower after spending time on the bike immediately beforehand. We swam last just because it made the most sense logistically (not soaking wet on the spin bikes, shower after swimming, etc). We swam the 300 meter swim that we will have to swim in the tri, and I finished in just under 5 minutes. I think we both felt much better afterwards, and now we are ready to conquer this tri! :)

My friend Helen and I after eating delicious burritos to reward ourselves for our practice tri :)

I had an exam on Thursday, which I think went pretty well, and then went out with drinks for Helen and a few other friends on Thursday evening. She lives in Michigan now, so whenever she visits, I make sure to maximize contact time with her. :) This weekend I did a 5k with my friend Bethany--race recap to follow shortly. Today I biked the bike route for next week's tri. I was very relieved when I looked at the course and saw that they had changed it from previous years so there is no longer a humongous hill in the middle! There are still a few decent hills, but I am happy to avoid this monster. :) I ended up biking 16 miles and felt pretty good, so I hope that's a good sign for next weekend. Have a good week, everyone!

Chi Town 10k

On Saturday, my friend Bethany and I participated in the the Chi Town 10k. I have been running consistently lately, but only 3-4 times a week, and not more than 4 miles at any given time, so I was pretty nervous to do a 10k. I figured I would just take it as a training run, and be happy with whatever happened.

The nicest part about this race is that the start line is only about a 5 minute walk from Beth's house, so there was zero stress in getting to the course. Beth and I run about the same pace, and neither of us were expecting a PR, so we decided to run together. Here is a picture of the course route:

The most hilarious/insane thing happened during the race. After the stretch south along the lake shore, the course goes through a small tunnel that passes under Lake Shore Drive. When we got near the tunnel, there was a person from the race saying, "The course route goes through this tunnel, but there is a water leak, so there is a decent amount of water in the tunnel." Beth and I figured it couldn't be too bad, so we ran to the entrance of the tunnel and we saw that there was about 5 inches of standing water! We decided we did not want to run through that (we were only around the halfway point, so we would have had to run over 3 miles with soaking wet shoes); we looked around and saw a ton of people jumping over the guard rail, and then crossing Lake Shore Drive!! This is a very busy, 8 lane road, and traffic was completely stopped because of all the runners making their way across! We joined everyone else, hopped over the guard rail, crossed one direction of the road, hopped another guard rail, crossed the other direction of the road, and then finally were back on the course. It was insane! I am sure the drivers were not happy (understandably!), but we were not sure what else to do! AND a few minutes later, we heard a guy talking to his friend behind us, and he said, "I went through the water, and it was very smelly...I think it was sewage." :-o That made us extremely glad we hadn't tried to tough it through the water! :)

Overall, my race time of 58:45 was quite a bit slower than last year (I expected to be slower), but we had negative splits for every single mile (except for the whole crossing the road fiasco, but I'm quite sure our pace was where it should be for that mile), so I was actually pretty happy with how it went. I felt strong until around mile 5, then I started to feel exhausted. Beth suggested we try to do a 9:00 mile for the final mile, and I said I couldn't, but ended up doing it! Woo. :) Not bad for what I went into the race expecting. Afterwards we had a delicious breakfast: I drank about 4 cups of coffee and ate an awesome croissant sandwich (wish I had a picture to show you!). I'll leave you with a picture of Beth and I after breakfast.

Back to Los Estados Unidos!

I am back to the US and have been catching up with school and sleep this week. I came back with a cold, so I haven't been very productive this week, but I had an absolutely fabulous time in Spain! Here is a quick recap of my time in Espana!

Sunday
We arrived to Madrid, had time to change and get ready for dinner, then took buses to have dinner as a large group (our entire group was around 115!).

Monday
Run in the morning! I was worried that my GPS watch wouldn't work since I was halfway around the world, but it had no issues! Our pace was a little slow because we stopped at a lot of lights and spent some time evaluating if we were going in the correct direction or not. :)

We took a day trip to Toledo, which was beautiful! It is a smaller city that is surrounded by a river on two sides. To protect the city, a wall was built around the other two sides of the city. Very neat place that seems to represent the classic Spain that first comes to mind.

Our first concert was in evening in a beautiful church in Madrid. We had a full audience which I found absolutely amazing--people had to see the poster that said an orchestra from Purdue (I am sure most of them hadn't even heard of Purdue before!), and then they decided to come see us. I think we played very well, and I feel lucky to have such a cool experience.

Tuesday
We walked to a large park called Retiro Park as a group in the morning. This is somewhat similar to Central Park in NYC; I mostly say that because it is a huge park with tons of trees, fountains, greenry, etc, right in the middle of Madrid. We rented row boats (actual row boats, not paddle boats!) which was a blast. You can see me in the obnoxiously bright pink/purple rain jacket. :)

Later in the day we went to Plaza Mayor, and were given some time to explore the area. Following, we went to The Prado--a very famous art museum with several classic pieces. After the museum, several of us went to a Flamenco show, which was beautiful and inspiring: the dancing, the singing, and the guitar playing were all incredible. We ended the night with karaoke which was so. much. fun.

Wednesday
High speed train ride to Barcelona--we seriously need to get some fast trains in the US; they are fabulous for traveling. Barcelona is amazing! If you haven't been there, you have to go check it out. I think it is the most interesting city that I have ever been to. It is a perfect combination of new and old--they kept most of the old buildings in the city, but when they restored them, they would add modern flairs. For example, there was a huge building that used to be a famous site for bull fights. They recently remodeled it and added a lot of colorful tiles, colored windows where there used to be open gaps, and a glass elevator to the top--gorgeous. The rest of the day we spent just exploring the city a little bit.

Thursday
Thursday morning I was motivated to wake up early and run. We ran along the sea, which obviously I never get to do in Indiana, so I was on cloud 9. :) My watch didn't find satellites until we had already been running for about 5 minutes, so I think we were probably closer to 3.3 miles or so.

After the run, we had breakfast, and then a large group of us walked back to the beach. We put our feet in the water (brr!), and walked barefoot in the sand--it was nice. Here is a nice picture of all of the girls that were with us.

The rest of Thursday we spent walking through the city and checking things out. We rode a gondola to the top of a mountain, which gave us a perfect view of the city--very neat. At night, a handful of us went out with our orchestra director, and we ended up being out until 5:15 am. :-| That is the first time in a very long time that I have been out that late, but it was only 12:15 EST, so I'll just say I was still on Indiana time. :) When I got back to the hotel room, I got some very exciting news--D's twin sister had just had her baby girl. So sweet!

Friday
This morning we went to see La Sagrada Familia, which is a very famous church designed by Gaudi. It was probably my favorite thing that we saw on the entire trip--it is unfinished, but it is already magnificent. The rest of Friday flew by and in the evening we had our second, and final, concert. This was again in a church, and our audience was just as great as in Madrid. It is a great feeling to play a concert and feel like the audience truly appreciates your music.

Saturday
We woke up early and headed home. It was a day full of travel!

The best way to recap is with this absolutely amazing video that my friend Adam made. He studied abroad in Spain in the summer, and during that time he wrote and recorded the song that is playing in the background; then during this trip he took a bunch of videos and stitched them together to make this masterpiece. :)