Midterms

I'm in the midst of midterms.  I had one last week, one coming up, and today I did a midterm on combining running and graduate school.  That midterm is also known as the Chicago Marathon.

I went out at roughly the pace I had planned and ran the race that I had discussed with my coach up until 17 or 18 miles.  Then my legs fell off.  Not literally, they are still there, but...

Wait, I if I put that, then the blog post is basically over.  So let's start over.  I ran the Chicago Marathon today.  I've gotten into the midterm period, and had one midterm on Thursday.  I have another take-home midterm due this Thursday.  I've probably gotten off to a late start on that.

Anyways, I woke up before the sun, because it isn't a road race if you don't miss the sunrise because you're too nervous about your warmup.  I miss mountain running already.

Also, because it is Chicago and 50,000 or 60,000 or a million or however many people are running is a bit of a logistical nightmare, they made us report to the start at about the time I was hoping to start my warm-up.  While many people didn't seem to be too bothered by this, I've been living in Tempe, and think a high of only 90 is a really nice day, so I was a bit chilled.  Oh well.

Anyways, before the start, during the national anthem, there were some problems with the PA system.  The runners took over and sang the rest of the song as the lady singing into the PA system came in and out.  I'll leave any touching statements about that anecdote to you, because I ran a marathon today and am kind of tired.  I'm also trying to save my brainpower for a few days of strait physics to catch up from not doing any yesterday or today.  Oh yeah!

I started out running the race my coach and I had envisioned.  It was really the race that I had hoped to run before factoring in grad school, but it was a beautiful day, so no excuses.  I ran 2:21.  Say what you want, but I'm okay with that.  I struggled towards the end, but combining running and physicsing is still a work in progress.  I'm sure I'll figure it out.

Also, I realized I spaced out on writing a blog post after World Mountain Running Championships.  I usually write a post after I get home, but I got home on Monday and spent the next 36 hours working on physics.  I just kind of lost track of things in all the physics.  Which isn't a bad thing.  I've been loving learning physics, teaching physics, doing physics, and dreaming physics.  At first it kind of freaked me out to wake up after applying Lagrangians in my dreams, but now if something like that happens, I just correct myself that I should probably calculate probability using partition functions rather than the Principle of Least Action.  I give my dreams bad grades for how well physics theories are applied during them.  To get an A, I would have to be applying information entropy to said situations.  An A+ would include numerically solving for said entropy in my dreams.  It would also mean that I'm getting really good at math.  But anyways, the next time I tell you, "I do this physics in my sleep," I'm probably not lying.

Anyways, Worlds was just a really bad race.  I don't know what to say and can't even dream up excuses.  I just had nothing in my legs.  I tried to run fast, but I didn't.  I kept telling myself I was going to feel better after the next transition, that I would start running well when I reached the next hill, and then that I would start to feel better when I crested it.  But I never did.  I just ran slower and slower.  I don't know what else to say.  Sometimes you're the unstoppable force, other times you're the immovable object.  And being an immovable object is pretty bad during a race.