Mark Allen worked with Phil Maffetone on his training before winning, and winning, and winning the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii.  One of the things that Phil Maffetone is known for is his unique take on endurance training.  He advises that one spend significant time truly training one’s aerobic system, which is one of the things that many people do not take the time to effectively do.  Maffetone advises that one spend 4-5 months working on just aerobic training and doing NO anaerobic work.  For me, at this point in my training and with my lack of racing this past year it sounds like a pretty good call to go with this method of training and to really spend some serious time working on my aerobic engine.

Now, this sounds all well and good, but as Mark Allen has stated multiple times, this method of training is harder than it sounds.  It’s not harder because it’s so taxing, but quite the opposite.  In order to maintain a true aerobic rate the basic formula utilized is to take 180 and subtract your age in order to acquire your maximum aerobic heart rate.  There are a number of variables to add or subtract a few beats with regards to how much one does or does not exercise.  Regardless of this my maximum aerobic rate is currently around 143 bpms.  For anyone who trains or regularly works out with a heart rate monitor, this number is incredibly LOW.  This is what makes it so hard to train in this fashion i.e. having to hold in the reins, so to speak, and keep it slow in order to keep the heart rate in the aerobic range.  Now, I’ve done a lot of long, slow miles when I was doing long runs for marathon training, but it almost seems counterintuitive to do this sort of training.

I’m going to give it a go and see how it works out.  If all goes as it is supposed to, while keeping my heart rate in this range it should become easier to do the distance and actually go farther and longer while maintaining the same heart rate.  I don’t expect any fast gains with this and I’m going to stick with it for a few months to evaluate the effectiveness and validity of this method of training.  If all goes well, I’ll be in way better shape and much more aerobically fit than I have been in a long time.  Hopefully all this exercise, and especially the aerobic fat-burning aspect of it will knock of some of this weight that has been slowly creeping up since I started nursing school and reduced my training.

Looking forward to seeing what folks have to say!

Namaste.

I got a lot of my data together for another case study I have to do for class and I’m thinking I may take the plunge and go ahead and get it knocked out so I don’t have to deal with it after the break.  A built in breather for lack of a better term so I have a little more time in the semester to come.  I also need to spend some more time with my MCAT prep course as that test is coming up sooner than I would like!

Outside of that, I’ve finally gotten off my ass and begun working out almost every day again… It’s been a slow road back, but I feel like I’m making some progress anyway.  Hopefully I can continue to increase the distances and lengths of training and get back to a decent state of health.

Just a short entry today… think I’m going to go grab some grub and run some errands.

Namaste.

So, the next couple of weeks are going to be KILLER! This week I’ve got 2 pretty major papers due along with the usual class stuff.  We meet with our priest to go over our FOCCUS test we took to see how ‘compatible’ we are according to some pen and paper test.  That should be interesting to see… the last one of those I did said we were great together and then we got divorced a few months later, so I don’t give it a whole lot of credence.

Next week is the week of death.  If I make it through unscathed, the heavens will open and rain sweet golden ale upon us all.  You see, I’m taking 16 hours this semester and next week all of my professors decided it would be an outstanding time to have exams.  So, I’ve got a total of 5 exams plus a skills validation/hands-on practical just to add some variety.  To say the least, I’m not looking forward to this at all.  One would think that professor’s might actually look at this sort of scheduling, but alas, no.  They are all completely oblivious to anything but the little biosphere that is their little class.  I’ve pretty much got a test every day next week, except Wednesday when I’ll be at the hospital all day.

The funny thing about all this is after death week is spring break.  I am looking forward to spring break, but not for any typical debauchery or the like, but rather I plan on getting some sleep and actually getting ahead in school for the first time this semester.  I also will probably be spending the majority of that down time studying for MCAT which is creeping up slowly.  It’s not like I’m some 20-something looking for some strange…

Oh well, thanks for reading… comment. comment. comment… I had > 50 readers on my last post with a whopping 2 comments… come on! I am interested and would love to see who’s out there… outside of my usual 5 readers (and you know who you are).

Namaste.

School: I’ve pretty much stopped work on my Master’s degree… I was having no luck with getting motivated to do my thesis and the time was just never really there.  I applied for and got accepted into ASU’s nursing program back in 2008 and I am currently in my second semester of nursing school.  It’s been really busy trying to fit in work and this program, but I’m making it through as always.  I was really excited about getting into the program and being back in the hospital, but I want more from it than I am currently getting.  I’ve wanted to be in healthcare since my time in the military and my time as a paramedic, but being in the nursing program and being around the hospital all the time has really opened my eyes.  I just ordered an MCAT prep book yesterday and I think I’m going to bust my ass studying to see if I can get a competitive score and if so… I’ll be tossing my hat into the medical school admissions process.  I’ve always wanted to be a physician and I’ve been putting self-limiting restraints on myself due to my financial status and having to provide for my daughter.  I just couldn’t figure out a way to pay for medical school and keep up to date on my obligations to my daughter… all without working while I attended medical school.  After talking at length about this issue with Amanda she essentially told me to go for it and we would figure out a way to make it work.  So… I’m going to continue in nursing school and get my license as an RN as sort of a plan B if I can’t get into med school.  If I do get in, it will be pretty much about the same time as I get my license and I figure I can at least pick up a shift here and there as an RN on some weekends while I’m in med school. If I don’t get in, I’ll continue down the nursing path in the CRNA direction that I’ve been planning.

Career: I hate my job.  I say that with venom dripping off my canines and acid in my stomach.  I would change jobs, but the only upside of my current position is the ability to make my own schedule, work from home, and the flexibility that I’ve got that allows me to go to school… which will allow me to finally get out of this I.T. business and on to something that I actually want to do.  It’s a constant source of stress for me and I just keep telling myself that in just over a year I can turn in my laptop and my badge and be on to something else.  I’ve been in this ‘career’ for almost 11 years now and while it has had its ups there have recently been a lot more downs than ups.

Wedding: Well, one of the first posts of this blog was that I had got engaged.  That was over 2 years ago and due to the extremely drawn out process of getting my former marriage annulled through the church it has taken us this long to get here.  We have an August wedding and that’s just under 6 months at this point. One of the major stressors I’ve currently got regarding this wedding is choosing a best man and groom’s men.  I had it in my head who I was going to choose back when we got engaged, but a couple of years have passed and alot has changed.  One of the people that I had thought of originally as a best man didn’t even invite me to his wedding and the only reason I even knew he got married was due to an announcement in the paper! A couple of more of my friends that I had originally thought of to be in the wedding have pretty much dropped off the radar and that’s disheartening.  One moved away and the lack of communication has been pretty large.  Essentially, I’d drop him a line, he’d reply and that was it.  One-sided communication sucks.  The other has pretty much dropped off the radar as well… he got a new job and I can’t even tell you the last time I saw or heard from him.  Many of my friends have moved away and they’re more acquaintances than friends at this point… I barely know what is going on with them most of the time.  I’m at a loss as to who to ask and the clock keeps on ticking…

Friends: This may be a repeat of what is written above, but it deserves saying.  Over the past few years many of my friends have moved away and many that are still in town have just grown distant.  People who I have been interacting with through school are nothing but acquaintances and seem to have their own agendas regarding how I fit in… i.e. what can I do for them?  I’m tired of this… for example… we started going out after exams with some of my school friends to celebrate/drown sorrows after a major exam.  This semester, I overheard that those same friends were planning on doing something after the exam, but I had not been invited or included.  To say this was hurtful would be a major understatement.  To say the least, I’m pretty much done with these people and I’ll just be doing my own thing.  That seems to be the trend though… My pool of friends has declined over the years and I’m not 100% sure why.  Maybe it’s due to people getting older and moving on with their lives and new family structures… maybe it’s the strange work dynamic that I’m in due to working at home… maybe it’s due to being a non-traditional student and not being able to foster true relationships with my school peers who are so much younger than me.  I don’t have a solid answer… all I know is that for the first time in a very long time I’m kind of lonely and it is not a great place to be.

Well, that’s enough for now… I realize this reads like a big pity party, but I’m in kind of a down place right now and I just needed to vent.

Now, that brings me to this morning, Thursday, January 18th… It’s still cold, granted, the streets are not currently in a frozen state, but it was raining on my morning commute.  I don’t know what people were thinking, but on the way in I saw 3 wrecks!!! I guess people decided that since the streets were ‘only’ wet, they could go back to driving like normal… it’s truly sad when I see more wrecks when the streets aren’t frozen than when they are frozen.  And due to the locations of said wrecks, it took me as long to get in to work today as it did yesterday when everything was frozen. 

If our public transportation system was worth a squat I’d seriously be thinking about taking the bus at this point since people seem to have about as much sense as a cracked out monkey behind the wheel…

On that note, I guess I’m going to end this…

To my 5 readers, have a shiny day and try and stay warm… oh, and watch out for all the id10ts on the road as they truly are out to get ya!

Working on and finishing up my thesis so I can graduate (hopefully!) in May with my Master of Science in Biology. 

Running the Beach to Bay Relay Marathon down in Corpus Christi again in May with the team that I’m training up.  This one’s going to take a lot of time as I have about 1/2 my team that are ‘new’ runners, that I’m actually training… kind of a scary proposition, not that they’re new, but the fact that I’m training them to do it.  I’m looking forward to the challenge and hope that they all go above and beyond in succeeding at this… seeing them all do this will make me proud beyond belief.  I’m also training for the San Diego Marathon in June… concurrently with the Beach to Bay training… kind of funny, well at least from a runner’s perspective, that I’ll be doing that relay marathon during my taper for San Diego! 

What else… oh yeah, wedding preparations will be underway in full force by this summer… that’s always a time consuming venture, but in a good way.   Hopefully it will go without too much incident… planning one of these always seems to bring out the crazies in people… guess that’s why there’s that show ‘Bridezilla’… hehe, hope we don’t get to that point

The change in jobs/employers that’s going to occur at the end of August when we all are no longer employed by our current employer and change over to the new contract holder… that’s a BIG one… especially since I’ve been working for this company since 1998!  That’s a long time… I guess it’s time for a change though since these people pretty much take advantage whenever the opportunity to do so presents itself.  I won’t even get started on that one, as that’s a post in and of itself, let’s just say that I’m not the happiest individual when it comes to my current job title and paygrade as I’m working at a level far above what I’m currently titled/paid!

Studying for and taking my MCAT… gotta get moving on this one as I need to get a GREAT score on this puppy in order to get my booty into medical school.  Medical school… that’s a long journey, but hopefully one that will be worth it.  More school is just a bit depressing at this point, but at least I won’t be working in this stifling industry anymore and I’ll ‘only’ have to go to school and not have to do this full time school and full time work thing that I’ve been doing seemingly for as long as I can remember…

Whew… just thinking about all that makes me tired.  I want to go take a nap, but alas, guess I ought to get back to the grind stone…

Happy New Year to my 4 readers. Hope it’s all you want it to be… etc… etc… etc…

Let me illustrate this point with an example.  In statistics there are a number of hypothesis tests… in these tests you essentially make a hypothesis and then, um… test it… yeah, so… anyway, during the testing of your hypothesis, based on the values you end up with you either reject or fail to reject said hypothesis.  During class, the professor said “Therefore we reject the null hypotheses” and nursey man says “aww… wouldn’t it be sad?”  Everyone looks at him for the moron he is and he misinterprets this as non-understanding and goes on to explain that the null hypotheses would be sad for being rejected and potentially need therapy… OMGWTFBBQSTFUDIEDIEDIE!!!

This guy totally wears me out and he has that same kind of verbal diarrhea every single class period.  From talking to some of my fellow students, he’s like that in ALL of his classes.  I mean, does he honestly think that he’s funny by doing this? Even the professor just looks at him like ‘what did you just say?’ and he is just oblivious to the whole thing. 

Today was actually relatively amusing in that I had enough of his verbal diarrhea and after one particular round of ‘let’s try and look like I really understand what I’m talking about by analogizing this to something’ by nursey man… I pretty much flexed my statistical muscle and stated to the prof… ‘this is actually just based on the power of the situation and since it’s not a beta situation we’re really basing these assumptions on alpha to reduce the incidence of making a Type II error’… to which she replied, ‘yes, that is exactly correct’.  It was so silent you could hear a cricket… and ol’ Nursey man didn’t say another word for the entire class.

So, that kind of leaves me hanging… verbally I can shoot down ol’ Nursey man and that will shut him up… but what does that make me…?  Is it better to shut him up or in doing so do I become him? ARGH!! granted, my one comment was actually course relevant and not simile/analogy, but still… I certainly don’t want to be ‘that guy’ because ‘that guy’ sucks!

On that note, I bid you adieu… have a good one my faithful 3 readers. (yay it went up by one)…

p.s. I have nothing against nursing or the nursing profession in general… it just so happens that this one imbecile is a nurse, and that’s why he got the name Nursey man