I did everything I planned this weekend, and more. After a low key Friday night, E and I started out Saturday morning with volleyball practice. The Tox grad students have had a team for the past few years, but I never played until now because the team was way more competitive than I could handle. Well, we finally had enough people that wanted to play in the less competitive league this year, so I joined in. It's been years since I have played volleyball, so I ended up with giant bruises on my arms after the practice that kept me from playing in the game on Sunday night :( The team won though :)
I finally got out x-country skiing on Saturday afternoon. I met my friend S at a golf course where the local ski club sets track, and we did about 2.5 km before deciding that we had had enough of the -25C windchill blowing across the wide open course. The short distance was fine with me because I really only wanted to make sure that my skis and boots were in good working order so that I could head up north to ski on Sunday. It's always nice to see S too!
E and I went to Little Red River park in Prince Albert to x-country ski on Sunday. I've posted about Little Red here before, so I won't blather on about how awesome it is again. We managed about 16 km (10 miles) over the course of 4 hours before we decided to call it a day. Conditions were just okay (could have used a little more snow that was a little less powdery), but what a wonderful way to spend the day.
I was so tired after the weekend that a good night's sleep, which I definitely got on Sunday, wasn't enough for me to feel recovered. I ended up going to bed early again last night, and I finally feel better today. I really wish I were one of those people who could function on 5 hours of sleep sometimes, but I definitely am not!
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Deep Freeze
The weather here in Saskatoon has been fabulous, with the exception of one below-average week in November, all fall and winter. I tried not to let it lull me into a false sense of security, but it's pretty hard to remember what a -40C windchill feels like when it's consistently above 0C in January. January people! Well, as is probably evident from the title of this post, the bottom fell out over the weekend, and we are now dealing with ambient lows in the -35C range and windchills of as little as -48C. This is just a special kind of cold that I'm pretty sure you can't understand without experiencing it.
Locally, the 'deep freeze' is actually a term commonly used to describe the type of weather we are currently having. The freezers that most of us have in our homes, be they fridge/freezer combos or chest freezers, cool to about the -20C mark to keep your stuff frozen. While it is considerably colder than -20C at the worst of most 'deep freeze' weather events, -20C is definitely the cut-off between tolerable and unbearable for a lot of people, so they start calling it a deep freeze when the daily high temperatures fail to reach -20C.
The good news is that this cold weather is supposed to break between tomorrow and Saturday. The other good news is that we finally got enough snow to x-country ski when this crap blew in. The weekend forecast is for highs around -10C, and most of the ski trails around here should be tracked and set by then. I am looking forward to a weekend of x-country bliss, and probably at least one day in the boreal forest of Northern Saskatchewan. It should be an AWESOME weekend!
Locally, the 'deep freeze' is actually a term commonly used to describe the type of weather we are currently having. The freezers that most of us have in our homes, be they fridge/freezer combos or chest freezers, cool to about the -20C mark to keep your stuff frozen. While it is considerably colder than -20C at the worst of most 'deep freeze' weather events, -20C is definitely the cut-off between tolerable and unbearable for a lot of people, so they start calling it a deep freeze when the daily high temperatures fail to reach -20C.
The good news is that this cold weather is supposed to break between tomorrow and Saturday. The other good news is that we finally got enough snow to x-country ski when this crap blew in. The weekend forecast is for highs around -10C, and most of the ski trails around here should be tracked and set by then. I am looking forward to a weekend of x-country bliss, and probably at least one day in the boreal forest of Northern Saskatchewan. It should be an AWESOME weekend!
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Exhaustion
I'm doing pretty fantastic keeping up with my new year's goals, but my 'new lifestyle' is keeping me busy and too tired to blog in the evenings so far. I am hoping that I will get used to the schedule change soon so that I can avoid falling asleep at 9-10PM every night!
I had the most productive week I've had in a long time on the PhD front. I finished drafts of 2 different manuscripts. One is in the early stages (so, still some work to do), but the other is basically ready to submit for publication this week, and I can't wait until that is done because it's been sitting on my desk unfinished for far too long. I also got some good news about some analysis I have been trying to do in the lab that just wasn't working. Turns out that one of our reagents had gone bad/gotten contaminated, and that was screwing everything up. I can't get back the two weeks I spent trying to figure that mess out, but at least I know what the problem is now.
I am just shy of 2 weeks with no/minimal processed foods right now. To be honest, I haven't found it too difficult to avoid most processed food so far, but I have spent A LOT of time prepping food, and I've been too scared to try eating out as of yet. I am trying to keep my diet varied by trying new recipes, which has been fun and tasty. In the last couple of weeks, I've made a pasta dish with sardines (for Omega-3s), broccoli salad with dried cherries and walnuts, Tom Yum soup, and a lentil/walnut spread with watercress salad on rye crisps.
I bought a brand new swanky yoga mat last weekend, but I had to take this week off of yoga because I pulled something in my right hip (the good one!) doing yoga P90X yoga on Saturday or at my Sunday morning class, not really sure which one. I really love yoga, but I am not sold on P90X at all, especially the yoga. I find that the P90X guy (Tony??) tries to make yoga into a workout and doesn't give accurate instructions about how to do some of the poses. He makes it seem like it's okay to do more advanced versions of poses, even when you are clearly not doing them correctly because you are not at that point in your practice. And it kind of annoys the crap out of me!
I started swimming last week to see if it would be realistic for me to train for an Olympic distance triathlon this year. In lieu of endurance running, I thought it might be fun to take up a new sport (swimming) while doing shorter distances of two sports I already like (biking and running). But, I have to be able to swim for 40 minutes before I can even think about starting a training schedule. The swimming is going surprisingly well, but it has necessitated changing my sleep schedule a bit. The pool is only open early mornings and at lunch, and it's much easier for me to do the morning session. So I have to be in the pool at 7AM, which means I have to wake up at 6AM. Since I was already getting up at 6:30AM, I decided to just start waking up at 6AM every day. Hence my exhaustion in the evenings. It's only a half hour, but it really makes a difference to me. The change in schedule wrecked me so badly this week that I basically went to sleep Friday evening and didn't really wake up until this morning! (Although I think that I was probably fighting off a bug too, because my head was pretty congested.)
I try not to fixate on weight, but I was happy to find that I have already lost the 1.5 lbs that I gained over Xmas and New Years. It's definitely nice to see my efforts at living a healthy lifestyle pay off in some tangible way.
I feel like 2012 is off to a great start, and I'm excited to keep up the good work!
I had the most productive week I've had in a long time on the PhD front. I finished drafts of 2 different manuscripts. One is in the early stages (so, still some work to do), but the other is basically ready to submit for publication this week, and I can't wait until that is done because it's been sitting on my desk unfinished for far too long. I also got some good news about some analysis I have been trying to do in the lab that just wasn't working. Turns out that one of our reagents had gone bad/gotten contaminated, and that was screwing everything up. I can't get back the two weeks I spent trying to figure that mess out, but at least I know what the problem is now.
I am just shy of 2 weeks with no/minimal processed foods right now. To be honest, I haven't found it too difficult to avoid most processed food so far, but I have spent A LOT of time prepping food, and I've been too scared to try eating out as of yet. I am trying to keep my diet varied by trying new recipes, which has been fun and tasty. In the last couple of weeks, I've made a pasta dish with sardines (for Omega-3s), broccoli salad with dried cherries and walnuts, Tom Yum soup, and a lentil/walnut spread with watercress salad on rye crisps.
I bought a brand new swanky yoga mat last weekend, but I had to take this week off of yoga because I pulled something in my right hip (the good one!) doing yoga P90X yoga on Saturday or at my Sunday morning class, not really sure which one. I really love yoga, but I am not sold on P90X at all, especially the yoga. I find that the P90X guy (Tony??) tries to make yoga into a workout and doesn't give accurate instructions about how to do some of the poses. He makes it seem like it's okay to do more advanced versions of poses, even when you are clearly not doing them correctly because you are not at that point in your practice. And it kind of annoys the crap out of me!
I started swimming last week to see if it would be realistic for me to train for an Olympic distance triathlon this year. In lieu of endurance running, I thought it might be fun to take up a new sport (swimming) while doing shorter distances of two sports I already like (biking and running). But, I have to be able to swim for 40 minutes before I can even think about starting a training schedule. The swimming is going surprisingly well, but it has necessitated changing my sleep schedule a bit. The pool is only open early mornings and at lunch, and it's much easier for me to do the morning session. So I have to be in the pool at 7AM, which means I have to wake up at 6AM. Since I was already getting up at 6:30AM, I decided to just start waking up at 6AM every day. Hence my exhaustion in the evenings. It's only a half hour, but it really makes a difference to me. The change in schedule wrecked me so badly this week that I basically went to sleep Friday evening and didn't really wake up until this morning! (Although I think that I was probably fighting off a bug too, because my head was pretty congested.)
I try not to fixate on weight, but I was happy to find that I have already lost the 1.5 lbs that I gained over Xmas and New Years. It's definitely nice to see my efforts at living a healthy lifestyle pay off in some tangible way.
I feel like 2012 is off to a great start, and I'm excited to keep up the good work!
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
It's a Start
Yesterday wasn't perfect (a little too much digital time and not enough PhD finishing), but I did manage to eat well and do 90 minutes of yoga. Today hasn't been real productive on the PhD front, either, but I'm hoping to knock some work out this afternoon.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Happy New Year
I thought that 2011 was going to be my year, but it just didn't end up working out that way. Unfortunately, a lot of the things I was hoping to accomplish didn't happen. Some were within my control, some most definitely were not. So, while I am not normally one for putting a whole lot of stock in the hype of the 'new year', I have to admit that I am strangely relieved to see 2011 give way to 2012. I don't typically make new year's resolutions as such, but I do have some 2012 goals to share.
1. Finish my PhD. Honestly, as I look at the numbers, I am embarrassed that I am still in grad school. It took me 3 years to finish my masters, and I am looking at 5 for my PhD if I finish this summer. That is 8 years for a degree that some people finish in 4. I am at the point in my program where I have realized that if I would have just applied myself a little more, I could already be finished. That's depressing, so I need to work hard and finish this beast up ASAP!
2. Commit to a healthy lifestyle that includes regular exercise and a balanced diet. I am good at training for big races, but I usually burn out after a race and stop exercising, which is a bad long-term lifestyle choice. Although I genuinely enjoy distance running and cycling, I have come to realize that, for me, heavy mileage is just not sustainable. Endurance training has also done a number on my eating habits. I am always tired and always hungry while distance training, and I consistently make poor (processed/restaurant) food choices then. When I stop training, I am used to eating processed food in large quantities, so I keep doing it. There are all kinds of problems with this scenario, but my biggest concern is that I am consistently not fueling with the types of foods I need to be eating. So, I guess my healthy lifestyle goals are to consistently exercise 4-5 times per week and to minimize consumption of processed foods.
3. Ditch the digital devices. I spend way too much time on the web, playing with apps, and watching TV. My goal here is to spend no more than 1 hour per day doing these things during my free time. Exceptions: exercise DVDs and watching TV while riding the bike trainer do not count.
Those are my big 3 this year. What are yours?
1. Finish my PhD. Honestly, as I look at the numbers, I am embarrassed that I am still in grad school. It took me 3 years to finish my masters, and I am looking at 5 for my PhD if I finish this summer. That is 8 years for a degree that some people finish in 4. I am at the point in my program where I have realized that if I would have just applied myself a little more, I could already be finished. That's depressing, so I need to work hard and finish this beast up ASAP!
2. Commit to a healthy lifestyle that includes regular exercise and a balanced diet. I am good at training for big races, but I usually burn out after a race and stop exercising, which is a bad long-term lifestyle choice. Although I genuinely enjoy distance running and cycling, I have come to realize that, for me, heavy mileage is just not sustainable. Endurance training has also done a number on my eating habits. I am always tired and always hungry while distance training, and I consistently make poor (processed/restaurant) food choices then. When I stop training, I am used to eating processed food in large quantities, so I keep doing it. There are all kinds of problems with this scenario, but my biggest concern is that I am consistently not fueling with the types of foods I need to be eating. So, I guess my healthy lifestyle goals are to consistently exercise 4-5 times per week and to minimize consumption of processed foods.
3. Ditch the digital devices. I spend way too much time on the web, playing with apps, and watching TV. My goal here is to spend no more than 1 hour per day doing these things during my free time. Exceptions: exercise DVDs and watching TV while riding the bike trainer do not count.
Those are my big 3 this year. What are yours?
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