Wednesday, January 30, 2008

TIR running / recovery plan

I've been working out the ideal recovery plan for my running, since I think the TIR is going to be a test for how fast we recharge everything. Here's what I've determined, through exhaustive experimentation, to be the ideal plan for running / recovering. Some of the tasks require some assistance from one or more teammates.

## Prior to run
3-4 hours prior to run - start drinking lots of water
1-2 hours prior to run - 100 - 150 calories of carbohydrates, more water
30 minutes prior to run - less water, so nothing will be sloshing around on the run

## During the run
mile 0 - I drink a little water but spit it out
mile 1 - I eat five or seven gummy bears
mile 1.5 - One small cup Peachy Keen Cytomax - more gummy bears
mile 2 - no liquids at all, I need lots of positive reinforcement
mile 2.5 - only red gummy bears, but I dont eat them, just chew and spit
mile 3 - I'll raise my arms and say 'whoop whoop whoop!'
mile 3.5 - I need negative reinforcement at this point - no gummy bears.
mile 4 - A light slap to the face/ eye poke is ideal at this moment.
mile 4.5 - A little childish mockery, one gummy bear
mile 5 and beyond - please provide various surprises to keep things interesting. intermittent gummy bears.

## After the run
- a little pretend stretching
- some flexing of muscles
- talking about how I was tired for a while and felt better for a while and then tired again
15 minutes of groaning
30 minutes of staring into space, gummy bears ad libitum

This plan has proven to be the most effective at recharging my glycogen stores, which I think will be a key component for maintaining energy in the later legs of the relay. You might take issue with the necessity of some elements, but the data are the data. Bottom line is that it works.

Ran 3 miles last night, 2 more on tap for tonight.

Keith.

Monday, January 28, 2008

Yeehaw.

Hey America! How are you?! You look beautiful.

Sorry for the delay in posting. I've been terribly busy. I look for some time when I can sit down, write a little to you, and post some pictures of my travelings. I went to Mallorca, Spain for a conference with some of the best numbercrunchers in the world. I have pictures of that. And I went to Colombia to meet Claudia's parents, which I was quite nervous about. I have pictures of that too.

I wrote and applied for a pre-doctoral fellowship which was quite an involved process, with a firing line interview and everything. I'm happy to say I was accepted and my employment situation is significantly more secure than before. Without this fellowship, I could keep my job of course, but worse than that, I may have had to teach! I'm still recovering from the last time I taught and how the TA evaluations came back and everybody was very positive except one guy that wrote "TA is so suck." How could he write that! Can't you be a little more constructive with your criticism Mr. Bui! Yes, I know it was you, Mr. Bui! The form was anonymous, but I know it was you!

Well, there's that, and during my absence, I missed so much stuff that needed commenting, for example:

There was a marathon recently in the area, and so many of my friends were in it. I'm proud of all of you. I was home that day, cursing myself for not being in shape enough for a marathon. It's a painful experience to be a runner in Houston, and not be fit for the Houston Marathon. I thought about selling my bib, but in the end I decided that I deserved to lose my money, the lazy bum that I am.

There's a certain relay that people have been talking about. I have a lot to say about that too, and I haven't been connected as I should be. I'm excited about the race. I think the whole experience is going to be a blast and a half.

And there were some other events of general interest which could have yielded some interesting comments. For example, there was a senator that got caught propositioning an undercover police officer in an airport restroom. I had some funny things to say about that, and I missed my chance. And how his excuse that he wasn't propositioning, he just has a wide stance and hit the other guys foot accidentally, that doesn't really make sense because in the restroom, to have a wide stance you have to have your pants all the way off. I was going to say that, and I was also going to say that the bottom line is, if your in the restroom and you touch my foot even accidentally, you have to lose your job, whether your a senator, or a doctor, or a busboy, or anything.

I've been focused almost exclusively on neurobiology and there are a lot of interesting things going on. Maybe at some point I'll try to boil it down for something that would be interesting for the general public. I've read some interesting things recently that attempt to address how you can keep a concept in your mind, sort of a analogy to working memory at the cellular level.

Anywho, I'm looking for time. I don't even really have it right now, I'm still at work and all.

Talk to you later,
Keith out!