Week 4

Hello, followers!

First of all, GO MARYLAND!! We beat Duke this past Saturday for the first time in three years. It was exciting enough for me and I pretty much know nothing about basketball and have never been to a basketball game here, so that's saying something. Relevant: http://www.diddukewin.com/

I started my training again last Wednesday. My ankle has felt fine, and the only thing I haven't started up again yet is running. I think it would be fine to run on, but I'm just nervous about landing funny and accidentally hurting my ankle again. I might go on the indoor track later this week. I thought that swimming would be the best workout to do while it's still not 100% better, since it's low impact, but swimming actually felt the worst on it (out of cycling, Body Pump, and swimming). I think because you have to point your toes and kick, and the water provides a lot of resistance. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do the squat track at Body Pump, but I was, and was super happy because squats is my favorite track :) 

Also, it occurred to me that it was a luxury to know that I would recover fully and be my normal self before too long. At no point did I think my ankle would be injured forever or that I'd never be able to go back to my normal life. In contrast, cancer patients usually have no such assurances. Again, that's why it's so important to keep up hope and morale. Go Ulman Fund!!

Due to freezing cold temps and a 60% chance of snow this weekend, we didn't do a long road ride. When I made plans to do a road ride every weekend, I wasn't thinking about the cold, or bad weather :/ So I'm disappointed that those plans haven't been working out. We're still considering buying a bike trainer.

Thursday was Valentine's Day, and I really don't need any more jewelry/flowers/chocolate, so Andrew decided to give me bike accessories :) I got a cool bike computer, an American flag bell, a water bottle cage (carbon fiber so it's super light), a multipurpose bike tool, mini bottles of chain grease (one for good weather and one for rain), and even spare batteries for the bike computer. BTW bike computer aka cyclometer = a little device you put on your handlebars that tells you: current speed, average speed, maximum speed, trip distance, how many miles your bike has traveled total, and cadence (revolutions per minute). Thanks Andrew for always thinking of everything!! I would've found that stuff terribly boring to shop for so I really appreciated him doing it for me. He's also going to show me how to use all the tools. Perks of dating a mechanical engineering major. I already fixed a loose drawer handle in the apartment.. NBD.

American flag bell :)

I still need to get a nice helmet, a bike seat, and cycling shorts. Also a sleeping bag and sleeping pad for the ride, but that's really not urgent. I'm beyond excited to get our training jerseys & duffel bags. They said it will be late March/early April when we get them.

Fundraising -- I am super excited to have reached my $5000 goal!! Thank you to everyone for the support in helping me reach my goal. A special shoutout to the Lees, the parents of my best friend when I was ages 2-5 and lived in Pennsylvania. The last time we saw them was probably 14 years ago, and they gave a donation. Also a shoutout to my friend Patty from New Jersey. She was one of my best friends when I lived there. We played soccer together and had wayyy too much fun together in school. I haven't seen her in about 9 years, but we still keep in touch through Facebook, and I was so happy when I saw that she donated! Thanks Patty!!  Soo, I've raised my goal to $6000. There is still plenty of time to fundraise, so I'm excited to see if I can achieve that. Besides the fact that the more money you raise, the more people you help, the 4K is giving out some incentives for money raised beyond the minimum of $4500, so that's pretty cool.

Over $5000!

Also, I gave up Facebook and Twitter for Lent. It's a good idea because I waste a ton of time on them. So I won't be able to advertise my blog posts on Facebook until Easter... which probably means I'll have no one reading this until then :)

On a completely unrelated note, I have become obsessed with Downton Abbey and in the past approximately 2 weeks I've managed to watch nearly the entirety of the first, second, and third season. I will probably finish the last episode of the third season tomorrow. Any D.A. fans - contact me because I have 2 conspiracy theories that I'd love to discuss with you.

Things we should take from Downton Abbey:
-Perfect posture. Notice that no one is EVER slouching. Backs are always straight and everyone always looks so poised.
-Respect for superiors
-"I beg your pardon"
-"May I have a word"

Also: Maggie Smith. 'Nuff said.

Until next week!

XOXO,
Mary

Week 3: Don't Text and Walk Down Stairs

Hello, supporters! This post will be short and sweet because the past week was a great week for fundraising and a not-so-great week for training!

So, I'll start with the good news -- I am so happy to say that this week I reached the minimum amount of $4,500!! Many thanks to the Trinchere family, who were the ones that made the special donation :) So, as of now, I'm just under $400 away from my goal of $5,000. Chelsea and I have a few ideas in the works for upcoming fundraising.

Fundraising as of 2/11/13

The bad news is that last Monday, promptly one day after I wrote my last post, I sprained my ankle :( I am proud to say that this occurred while tackling a bad guy that was committing one of the many armed robberies that happened at UMD the past week. Just kidding (About the tackle, not the armed robberies-- stay classy, College Park). Unfortunately, rather than that, or even being related to my training, it happened because I was texting while walking down the stairs outside my apartment complex. Hehe. I thought there was one step left but there were actually two, went to put all my weight down on the nonexistent ground, landed on the outside of my foot, and promptly twisted it and fell. I heard a pop :/ It was swollen and really painful for the first 2 days but dramatically improved on the third, and since then has been improving a lot each day. I got x-rays to make sure nothing was broken and the Health Center gave me an ankle brace which I wore for I think 4 days and which helped a lot.

So training-wise, I had to take the past week off. At this point it's feeling much better, but I still don't quite have a full range of motion in it, so I'm thinking I'll do swimming workouts for a couple of days starting tomorrow, and then resume cycling (without the clipless pedals) Thursday or Friday. Running I'm going to give at least another week. I need to be cautious because when you sprain something it is easy for it to happen again while it's still recovering, and my ankle is vital to cycling, because the way you get in and out of clipless pedals is by twisting your ankle! Which leads me to my next issue - my plans to get comfortable with the clip-in pedals over the past week were obviously foiled, and unfortunately it'll probably be another week or so before I feel okay to start trying them. I might practice with only my other foot, but that sounds kind of difficult... we'll see. For now I'm just going to take it day by day, and do what I feel comfortable with. I am lucky that this happened now, early on, rather than later. I've also learned my lesson: No texting and stairs :)

So as depressing as this week has been (it's been really frustrating not being able to work out), I thought I'd share some of the thoughts that the injury has made occur to me. It's actually been somewhat of an eye-opening experience.

First, it was much harder than I thought it would be to get around campus. The UMD campus is not a friendly campus to injuries. Yikes. I had the option of taking the "Paratransit" bus, which is for students with injuries or disabilities, but I felt I didn't need it. I got some looks for walking funny the first couple days, and was passed by a lot of annoyed people when I had to walk up some crowded stairs and was taking them one stair at a time. When my friend invited me to go to lunch, I wanted to go, but said no because walking would make my ankle worse. I was frustrated that I wasn't able to do everything I wanted to do. So for cancer patients, when cancer and treatment drain the energy out of them, all parts of daily life must be such a struggle, and way worse than I experienced with just a sprained ankle. Just getting from point A to point B is enough of an accomplishment, but having to keep up with the demands of their lives must be exhausting. If they are unable to keep up their daily lives, I can only imagine the frustration they could experience. Keeping up a positive attitude is absolutely vital for their recovery-- and it is to this effort that the Ulman Cancer Fund contributes. So I'm extremely happy that I'm supporting this cause!

Second, how lucky I am to be healthy, and how amazing the human body is -- and what a tragedy cancer is. The healthy human body can repair wounds, bones, and ligaments, to name a few, all by itself. Without you consciously doing anything, the body quietly goes to work mending an injury as soon as it happens. The things the body can recover from are incredible. But when you think about all the visible, physical, blunt-force trauma that the body can recover from, and then stop to consider that the body can often not defeat cancer, it gives you an idea of just how terrible cancer really is. How cancer can go unnoticed for quite some time, silently debilitating the body from its core, taking away its incredible capacity to heal itself. Even with the best available care in modern medicine, cancer is one of the top killers in the nation.

So, the week was kind of a bummer, but it allowed me to refocus on why I'm doing this. This week I will be getting back up to speed with my training, and hopefully will be back to my normal schedule soon :)

Training week 2 and getting my 4K bike!

Hello, followers! This week I completed my second week of training, and got my official 4K road bike! :)

I got fitted for my bike on Tuesday, which consisted of me getting on bikes of different sizes so they could see which frame size I would need. I went to Princeton Sports in Columbia. They partner with the 4K, and 4K riders get free adjustments, tune-ups, and 10% off everything in the store, which is pretty awesome. This process was easy... John, one of the bike specialists, guessed my size correctly the first time so all I had to do was get on one bike. I was the smallest size, meep.. 

Turns out that the bike they had me get on had Chelsea's name on it - so I called Chelsea to let her know her bike was ready, and she went to pick it up that day. We spent some time in the evening gleefully admiring it and petting it, and she rode around campus a little bit giggling hysterically at how fast and sleek it was. I couldn't wait to get mine!

Luckily they had the bike in stock and just had to assemble it, so my bike was ready on Friday. The process of picking it up took about an hour and a half because they size it and make adjustments specifically for your body. They put the bike on a stationary trainer and had me get on it for a bit, then adjusted the seat height and horizontal position and kept checking and making slight adjustments until it was perfect. I was really interested in why they were making each adjustment because it is all biomechanics :) For example, they hung a weight from my knee down to my foot to see that it was a 90-degree angle, because this positioning will give you the most power on the downstroke of pedaling. 

John from Princeton Sports making adjustments to my bike!

My bike is AWESOME! It is super sleek and fast and I absolutely love it. I need to give it a name, but rather than trying to force it into a mold, I think I will let it be whoever it wants to be.... just kidding, that's kinda weird. But I am going to wait until the perfect name pops into my head!

At Princeton Sports I also bought cycling shoes, cycling gloves, a water bottle cage, a bike rack for our apartment, and my new worst enemy: clipless pedals. For those of you that don't know, clipless pedals are pedals which your shoes clip into so that your feet, and therefore you, are quite attached to the bike. (I don't really understand the terminology... why are they called "clipless" if the point of them is to clip in??) The idea is that without them, you can't get any power from pulling your foot back up after pedaling. Using clipless pedals is a lot more energy-efficient and therefore they are routinely used by serious cyclists. However, being attached to your bike can obviously be dangerous, especially if you have never used them before (ahem, me). They are like skis in that in the event of an emergency they will come unclipped, but normally, you have to quickly clip into them while taking off from a stop, then remember to unclip them before you stop... otherwise you will be getting up close and personal with the ground. I got a "special" kind of clipless pedals, AKA the noob kind, which has clips on both sides of the pedals. That way if you miss one side trying to clip in, you can try again on the other side. 

Clipless pedals 

The pedals come with an attachment which you bolt into the bottom of your cycling shoe. This means that most road cycling shoes will have a flat bottom and then an awkward clip jutting out in the middle of their foot, making it extremely hard and awkward to walk in. If you've ever seen cyclists trying to walk around a 7/11 or something and they are walking awkwardly on the heels of their feet, this is why. So for this reason, the guys at Princeton Sports recommended that I get "mountain" cycling shoes -- the difference being that the clip fits snugly inside the bottom of the shoe, and they are normal to walk around in.  Since we will be stopping for water breaks and occasionally taking in/ exploring scenery, I definitely agreed that these were the better option. Unfortunately, they are some of the ugliest shoes I have ever seen. They are all black (they only come in black, apparently because they would get dirty) and sort of mesh, with three giant velcro fasteners... super cute! But I'm guessing that when we're out riding 60-120 miles a day, having fashionable shoes is going to drop to the bottom of my priority list. Also, the bottom of the shoe doesn't bend at all so it kind of feels like you're walking around in bricks. Really light bricks, that is.

Anyway, the guys at Princeton Sports set up the pedals and shoes for me and taught me how to use them. Let's just say... it's hard. Like any repetitive motion, we are just going to have to do it hundreds of times until our bodies learn it. To get into the pedals, you have to point your foot downwards to get the front of it in the clip, then swing your heel to the side and push down to clip in. To get out, you have to push down and push your heel out at the same time. It's easiest to do both clipping in and clipping out when your foot is at the bottom, because you can use your body weight. I think getting into them is going to be more difficult because once you have one in, you'd better be able to get the other one in or you're probably going down, and you also have to be riding and looking where you're going at the same time. It's going to be like learning how to ride a bike all over again... I'm definitely expecting a few falls. The guys at Princeton Sports said they don't know anyone who didn't fall while they were learning. I'm definitely nervous, but also excited. Everyone says that they make biking so much better. Chelsea and I are going to be practicing a lot this week, helping hold each other up and everything, and we are hoping to be able to bike with them for the first time next weekend!

Chelsea and I also assembled the bike rack my mom bought us, so that we can keep our bikes inside! We aren't going to be riding them around to class for fear of theft, and we definitely want to keep them inside away from the elements. So here's our current set-up. Thanks to our other two roomies for being cool with half our living room being taken up by bikes for the rest of the school year :)

Our bike rack and identical bikes

Fundraising -- I couldn't be happier with how things are going! This week, not only did I clear the $4000 mark, but I'm also just under $200 away from the minimum that we have to raise. Thank you everyone that has made this happen!! This week I got a $500 donation from a nearly complete stranger. I was so surprised and humbled. The generosity of some people truly amazes me, and I am so grateful. It makes me hope that when I am older, I am willing and able to give generously to worthy causes such as this. Also, I'm working on a making a virtual US map that will show little pins where all my supporters are.

Training -- It's now been two weeks since I started training, and I am definitely feeling changes in my body. There's no doubt that I feel stronger! I've also been sore for two weeks straight... so I guess that means I'm doing something right. One highlight of this week was Wednesday, when Chelsea and I finally managed to run over from orchestra in time to get seats in one of UMD's cycling classes. It was a 55-minute spin class and it was an awesome workout! It must've been about 85 degrees in that room. We sweated so much that it kind of looked like we went swimming instead of a cycling class.. It was pretty gross... hopefully it's cooler next time. But it was a great workout either way and we plan on going back every Monday & Wednesday. Working out to music definitely makes a big difference, as does working out when someone is telling you what to do. 

This weekend we didn't go on an outdoor training ride because of the bad weather, so today I did 25 miles on the stationary bike. Blehhhh. Not something I recommend. It was so boring and it was not very kind to my butt. I need to get some nice cycling shorts. The only thing that made it tolerable was the fact that I finally bugged my dad enough for him to give me his Netflix password, then dragged a chair into the gym and put my laptop on it, and was able to watch the first two episodes of Downton Abbey while cycling :) On an obviously completely unrelated note I'm now kind of addicted to Downton Abbey. The good news is that the horrors of riding 25 miles straight on a stationary bike has motivated me to get these clipless pedals down in time to go outside for next weekend!!

To do this week: Focus on school (I decided to add another class, so I have to catch up in that one), keep up the training, shop for some more bike gear, and learn how to use the clipless pedals without injuring myself! I'm hoping Punxsutawney was right the other day and we have an early spring... I'm tired of this cold!

On an unrelated note, GO RAVENS!! I'm really not a Ravens fan and I didn't even watch the Super Bowl -- I went grocery shopping instead, which was a fantastic idea because absolutely no one was there -- but it's still really exciting that the Ravens won :)

Thank you for reading, and have a fantastic week!

XOXO,

Mary