Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

It's a known fact that I don't like choosing the easier path.

Pretty much by definition, if there's a harder way to do something, that's probably the way I'll do it. Sometimes it ends in disaster (see: first anatomy exam) but sometimes it ends in awesome (see: Tough Mudders 1-3). In this case, at the very least it ends in funding for the American Lung Association of Colorado.

Last night I signed up to run the Run the 'Rocks 5k in a few weeks. It's at Red Rocks park/amphitheater and seems like a normal 5k at first...except that the end is UP the amphitheater.

Please note: The last mile of the course has a steady incline and finishes by going up the amphitheater stairs.  Please train appropriately.  

My lungs are crying just looking at that. My legs are excited. For now.

If you're interested in contributing to the cause, you can donate here. Please note that the text there is prefab. The real reason I'm running it is because it sounds hard. It's a bonus that it goes towards a cause that helps a friend breathe easier so she can laugh at me while I struggle up that last hill.

A mile of incline. Sheesh.

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Aside from that lapse in judgement, it was a good weekend. We (hubs, bro, dog, and I) went to Red Rocks on Saturday morning (hence the inspiration) to meet up with my classmates who'd hosted some Japanese exchange students over the weekend. We doinked around the amphitheater, then went and had lunch at the Blue Cow Eatery. Good food, snotty staff...it balanced out to an acceptable experience.

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So that's what's up.

Oh and there's some rumblings about running a marathon next year. Probably the Denver Rock n Roll marathon. There's a reasonable chance I'll do another triathlon again too, after seeing pics from a friend's race this weekend.

Probably means I should start running/biking again at some point. Dang.

Hitting my Stride

As long as I'm failing at doing anything related to school, I may as well blog about it. 

Today was a good day. It was a long day, with 6 hours of hands-on labs (literally, the first two hours were learning about myofascial release and trigger point therapy) and 4 hours of "make it count hands on experience building", but it was a good day. I feel like I'm finding my place here, even if it's not one that's photographed well with Instagram and whatnot. 

At lunch, we had a meeting for the Night Owls. It's basically a monthly parents' night out for parents of kids with special needs and their siblings. It provides one on one care for each kid, which is critical for some of these kids. I'm really excited to start volunteering in a couple of weeks! 

(Shameless plug: if this is at all something you're passionate about, Night Owls is run entirely on private donations...if you want to contribute, visit the link above and see what it's all about!)

After the 6th hour of lab ended, I took my poor aching body (mostly from climbing last night, but partly from some solid trigger point work this morning...ouch) over to the lab that pays me, to get started on the data processing grunt work. I won't lie, I actually kind of enjoy the monotony of click n wait data processing. It's like guilt-free down time...I'm not thinking too hard, but I'm still doing something. 

Too bad we hit a minor snag though, and the data wasn't as straight-forward as we'd hoped. I tend to have that effect on data sets. 

The whole thing resulted in me poking around the software, figuring out how they took the data from the machine and made it into the data that we were looking at, and feeling strangely at home. I guess you can take the girl away from testing but you can't take the testing away from the girl. Or something like that. 

Anyway, I should actually get to bed. But life is good, y'all. Life is good. 

All or Nothing

Watch out guys, things just got legit up in here.

You know this one, I promise. 

In the interest of not doing anything halfway, I've started attending (and committing to attend) APTA (American Physical Therapy Association) conferences, gatherings, and D&D meetups networking opportunities. To that end, I just registered for the National Student Conclave in November.

Does this nametag make my street cred look big?

So that's exciting. Should be a good weekend of networking and learning how to get a job in 3 years. I hope. With any luck, i might even post about it during/after the event. Maybe even with pictures. Woah.

In addition to that, I'm also starting work on some research stuff within my department which is still a little bit vague to me at the moment (in terms of my role, not so much the project itself). I can't tell you how embarrassingly excited I was to start talking data processing (with Matlab and everything!) with the post-doc was yesterday.

It's also come to my attention that I may be the only one in my class who actually enjoys working with data at all...this is completely confusing to me because I just don't see how it couldn't be interesting to find trends and whatnot. But...apparently that's just me. The upshot is, that makes me a special snowflake in terms of expertise and capabilities, so hopefully that'll translate to an interesting (and lucrative?) job post-graduation.

So that's exciting.

Anyway, it's time for a practice Therapeutic Interventions lab and this comp is on STM, thermotherapy, and compression. Translation: massage, heat, and mud wraps. It's like a spa, but without the cucumbers.

Have a great day y'all.

Spanning the Ages

I know, I know. I'm a terrible blogger.

Honestly, most of it stems from the fact that I really haven't been working out pretty much at all, and this blog was supposed to be about my journey as a fitness instructor. I did get an email requesting an audition a couple weeks back, but when I told her my schedule she never responded. Bummer too, since I was pretty excited about working at that particular club.

Now, I'm thinking I may start talking to local senior homes/centers about starting a Saturday or Sunday morning strength class. Nothing too fancy, just basic moves to promote strength, balance, and stability for the most fall-risky population.

Just like that. 

From a quick Google Images search, it looks like I'm not the only one with this idea...that's good.

I'm thinking this would be a win for everyone...there'd be one more activity (an active activity no less) for folks to do each week, and I would get to teach. I'd also get to learn more about the limitation varieties there are in that demographic, as well as how to cue for them. (So if I wanted people to practice sit to stands without using their arms, but someone isn't capable/comfortable with that, I would need to make sure to cue for the next step down with both proper instruction AND positive encouragement that makes sure the person knows they're doing well as long as they're doing their best.)

So that's my excuse for not writing more. That and the mountains of reading and homework I keep finding creative ways of putting off.

I have a feeling this is going to be the most "fun" semester. All the classes are geared towards making us useful at our first clinicals in January, so we've got a lot of toys and babies to play with. Last week alone I got to experiment with electrotherapy (NOT the same as electroSHOCK therapy...) and watch how a 3 year old plays...while holding her 3 month old brother.

My face exactly. It's been literally years since I've been within probably 10 feet of an infant, let alone holding one. Fortunately, this kid liked me a fair amount so that helped.

That's actually a strange thing that's been happening lately...kids suddenly like me. His sister liked me. The neighbor kid LOVES me. I have literally no idea what to do with kids, so I just kind of stand there and try not to make any sudden moves. They freaking love that apparently. Go figure.

Anyway, I have some household chores to get done before I can work on my homework, which I need to get done in order to have a few minutes to sew this afternoon. So I should go. With any luck, I'll be posting chair workouts here soon. We'll see.

I get to learn to use that machine next week. It'll be on the final.