4K for Cancer 2013: Super exciting news!

Super exciting news!! Chelsea and I have been chosen as "Leg Leaders" for the ride!! This means that we will essentially plan 1/3 of the trip. We are responsible for selecting the route and setting up the accommodations for the second third of the trip: Chicago to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I am so excited! We had to do a brief application in order to get chosen, and I mentioned in my application that if we were both chosen we would like to work together (there are 2 leg leaders for each segment of the trip) because we are an unstoppable power team, which we are ;) The good news is we have 12 years of history to fall back on with the route and the hosts along the way. If anyone reading happens to know anyone that lives along an approximate straight line between Chicago and Jackson Hole that might have access to accommodations for 30 people and would like to support a great cause, please let me know! :)

TRAINING - has been going pretty well! Except for the end of this week when I was extremely busy and skipped 2 days (more on that later), I'm completely back into my normal training routine and my ankle is feeling 99% better. The only thing that still hurts to do is to twist it all the way to the left. Now that I finished Downton Abbey, which is what I used to do while biking, I've found 2 new ways to make cycling on the stationary bike interesting. The first one is basically that I just put some music on shuffle, and cycle to the beat of the music. I change the resistance for each song so that it's at a tough level - such that I can keep it up to the beat of the music but that it keeps my heart rate up and is a challenge. So for faster songs, it's faster cycling and less resistance, and for slower songs, slower cycling and more resistance. The second way is that I put on mostly upbeat songs, and put on a high resistance during the verses and bridge of the song, and during the chorus, I lower the resistance and do a sprint. Both of these ways are both challenging and enjoyable, and biking to the beat of the music helps me keep a constant pace. It also keeps me focused on the workout, and since it's enjoyable it also makes the time pass quickly!

Other exciting training news is that I bought an exercise ball for working out! A lot of core exercises are made much better by using an exercise ball :) So I'm going to revamp my strength training workout that I've been doing 2-3 times a week.

Also, last Saturday, the roomies and I went on a rock climbing outing! We went to Earth Treks in Rockville and it was super fun. I'd only been to a rock climbing gym (is that what they're called?? idk) once and that was approximatelyyy 8 years ago. I am actually pretty scared of heights and falling so I was kind of nervous. And it didn't get any better as the day went on! I was nervous every time and was shaking pretty much the whole time I was climbing, haha. Still super fun though. The roomies had fun too and Rachel, who didn't think she was even going to get on the wall, ended up making it all the way to the top! We were actually SUPER sore for a good 2-3 days after climbing!

Other than that, our awesome ride directors have planned a training game for us where they split us into two teams and we earn points for our team by working out. We get different amounts of points for different activities. The game will run from March 1-31 and the winning team gets prizes! It's a pretty cool way to keep us motivated! So that started yesterday.

The only thing is that certain workouts get more points than others. So I will be tempted to do the ones that get me the most points! But I think I will stick to what I've been doing, even if it doesn't get me the most points, because I've been enjoying that and it's been working well for me.

I was the last person in the pool at 10 pm on a Friday night.

FUNDRAISING - Pretty good! I haven't been actively fundraising in a while but I'm still getting the occasional donation coming in from people who got my fundraising letter. My current total is $5163. I probably won't be actively fundraising much until after Easter. For Spring Break I am going on a service trip so I unfortunately won't be home to fundraise around my hometown. I definitely want to do a car wash in Bel Air, and Chelsea and I have plans to go to various bike-centric areas of DC, set ourselves up with a poster or something, and see if any bike fans want to donate.

Otherwise - This week, school hit me like a brick wall -___- Up until this week it had been smooth sailing and at times I even felt bored. I mean I had enough free time to watch all three seasons of Downton Abbey, heheh. But this week it seemed that all of my classes caught up to speed at once, and I was really swamped with work and exams. I do not enjoy being at the Kim building (UMD bioengineering building) well past dark 3 days in a row, nor do I enjoy seeing 3 am four days in a row! We also had an orchestra concert on Tuesday (Chelsea is in orchestra with me - she also plays violin). We played Brahms No. 4, Beethoven Egmont Overture, and Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel. The concert went really well, most notably Brahms, which was a very hard piece for the orchestra to learn. I put in many hours of practice on the tricky violin passages. This coming week is going to be busy as well - 3 exams and 2 quizzes, on top of regular homework - so I'm just going to put on my blinders and charge ahead until Friday, when some epic relaxation will be taking place.

SIDENOTE: The season finale of season 3 was HORRIBLE!!!! To avoid spoilers, I will just say that they killed off a very important character, and I think Downton Abbey is done from here. There is no way the show can be good after this. It's like, akin to taking Michael Scott off The Office, except he dies. Ugh. I loved you so much, Downton Abbey. I can't believe you would do this to me </3

Also, last Friday I entered an abstract into a competition for the 1st annual JHU/UMD Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Research Day. Everyone that entered would present a poster at a poster session, and six abstracts were chosen to do oral presentations as well. I found out Saturday that I was chosen to do an oral presentation. The event was Friday (yesterday), so I had less than a week to prepare a poster and presentation on top of the already-busy school week. My graduate student Omar helped me a ton with the preparation and stayed at work late 2 days in a row to coach me on presentation style. Yesterday was the event, and about 25 people from UMD traveled up to Hopkins for the event. Everyone did really well and the posters and presentations were really cool. So many interesting projects being done by undergrads. I was pretty nervous to present, but my presentation actually won first place! There is a $300 cash prize :) I am very happy to have had this opportunity!