Hey,
So lately things here have been flying by! I’m over half way done with my internship…which means half way closer to graduating (yay!) and half way closer to moving from “unemployed college student” to simply “unemployed”…the second of which is not acceptable and highly unproductive. In a few weeks I’m going to start handing out resumes to everyone I know here in Salt Lake City. Hopefully I’ll be employed before Christmas.
The last month has been a lot of fun (in between my moments of boredom). I spent a couple of days out at the Olympic Oval–one day observing lactate testing on the biggest treadmill I’ve ever seen in my life (I kid you not it’s got to be 12 feet across and 8 feet long…the skaters rollerblade on it, and the skiers rollerski on it for testing), and one day taking video clips of the speedskaters’ starts for Steve (resident biomechanist) to anyalyze/critique. I’ve also spent a day or two in the lab where the typical bike/treadmill VO2 testing takes place–the victims of the day were the Junior National speedskaters. I sat in on the performance enhancement meeting for the speedskaters where I got to see Carl (my advisor) from LaX. It was nice to see a familiar face. The meeting was extremely interesting…I can’t remember if I wrote about it in my last e-mail or not…but basically all of the coaches, doctors, therapists, nutritionists, physiologists etc for the team sit together and talk about all of the skaters behind their backs ;). Everything is fair game–training, diet, personal lives…it was interesting and unnerving at the same time 😉 All joking aside, I learned a lot.
I’ve also gotten out and had some fun. After the football game that didn’t work out, I did finally get the chance to hang out with the kids from work at the most amazing piano bar…”The Tavernacle” Two dueling grand pianos play songs by request (for $2), if you don’t like the song they are playing you can stop it for $3…if someone wants it to keep playing $4…you get the idea. It was fun and right up my alley. I had never heard Eminem on a piano before… 😉
I got out into the mountains (finally) for a wonderful hike. Well, the altitude kicked my butt…but otherwise it was wonderful. Yesterday I drove up to Park City (where the olympic park is as well as where most of the skiing events were held) to sight-see and do some outlet mall shopping. The mountains are BEAUTIFUL.
Friday morning a few of us from work decided to work out together. We did one of the backpedal protocols from Acceleration. For anyone who hasn’t heard of this, basically they strap you into a harness and you run backwards uphill on a treadmill. They are mostly short bouts (6-15 seconds at a time) however the slowest one was 6mph and the fastest was 9mps at a 22.5% grade. In english that’s running backwards very fast up a very steep hill. Thank goodness for the harness. And if you’re wondering…yes, everyone looks like an idiot when they do it the first time…and if you fall and need the harness the first time you might be doing it right. The science behind this is that it’s great for your glutes and all of your stabilizers (somewhere’s in the realm of 200% more muscle recruitment than running forwards at the same speed/grade…logical since humans really aren’t designed to run backwards). In addition you get the chance to fall down repeatedly/and or lose your breakfast if you’re not careful! 🙂 In summary, I was sore for the better part of the weekend, it was a great workout, and a good deal of fun.
In the coming weeks I might get the chance to try my luck at pushing a bobsled..thanks to Robert (one of the athletes in the pool for the 4-man bobsled this winter olympics) who we’re training right now, who thinks I’d make a good bobsled pusher. I told him I thought pushing wouldn’t be the problem…it would be getting in before the thing takes off down the hill that would be rough. (Mental picture of me dragging along behind a bobsled with 3 riders in it). He also might hook us up with bobsled rides (I’m pumped!). I’m also going with some coworkers to a Switchfoot concert on the 24th and a Utah football game sometime in the next month. If Utah was actually winning I’d be more excited 😉
There’s so much more to tell that you probably can’t sit through reading it all. I’m going to stop here. Hopefully more individual e-mails in the next week….if I don’t get an e-mail to you right away beat me to it! I hope you’re well…be in touch!
Steph~
ps. I’ve created an actual “update” list…and you made it! (The desired response is “yay!” or “yippee!”)