A Series of Unawesome Events

Running and life both have their ups and downs. After what was a pretty good weekend (with a PR in the 5k and my solid long run), I've had a series (i.e. the rest of the week) of runs, where, not only did the run feel bad, but it was a challenge to get out the door. For me, this is a fairly rare occurrence. Monday was okay, Tuesday I didn't finish the workout, Wednesday I nearly turned around after 3 miles at ~7 min mile pace (I started feeling okay after that), Thursday I was so exhausted that I took it off, and Friday I made it half a mile before I just felt like I couldn't go anymore (I was supposed to do a workout). I am feeling quite a bit better today, and am debating whether I should try and do the workout planned for yesterday, or if it would just be an accomplishment to go for a run (which I could do with people, which may help).

I am definitely experiencing one of the lows of running. I'm not 100% sure why I'm feeling this way (it's probably the weeks of high intensity/high mileage compounded with the not sleeping well). Though I feel like crap now, I really think with the rest I have gotten, and by focusing on getting more sleep this next week, I'll be fine for the Martian Meteor 10k, although its hard not to have your confidence shaken after I've had a week like I've had.

Other (unawesome) things: I believe that its time to get a new phone. It was a little dirty, so I decided to put it through the wash (since sarcasm is sometimes hard to read: this was not intentional). I've wanted to get a new phone for quite a while (ever since I was at Alltel, got a new phone, had that phone not work for me while Alltel was switching to Verizon, and then have the Verizon people contradict what Alltel was telling me and not fixing the problem. So I was stuck with either having the sucky, not working Alltel phone, buying out the contract, or purchasing a used phone and going from there. I decided to go with the used phone option, ended up with a Razr (which is what I had before all of this started in the first place), which pretty much sucked (the battery was aweful if you actually used the phone, texting was a pain, my old ring tones didn't work), but at least it worked. Anyway, phone-->wash-->currently not working...
I'm absolutely sick of it being cold.

Tried to get a Western blot to work for a poster. It finally did (after trying several things), but the positive control didn't show up... and the results weren't what we were hoping for or had seen in the past... so that was unawesome...

One awesome thing: I got to have lunch with a Nobel laureate (2008 in Medicine, Harold zur Hausen)! He was a pretty awesome guy. It was kind of fun; at the lunch with the other graduate students, there were several that were at a loss of words upon meeting him. And he also was interesting to listen too (although his voice could be described as sleep inducing; I know, this sounds paradoxical).

Unawesome thing: While it was really cool to meet the Nobel laureate, and he was a great guy, the lunch was quite disappointing. I was excited to hear we were getting catered lunch from Dusty's (a restaurant in the E.L. area) which I was expecting to be really good. It was not. The bread was stale, the meat was dry, the side was sparse and mostly made up of noodles. Dessert was probably good, but I didn't eat mine...

Well, I'm done complaining, and do feel a little better. Thanks for listening to my rant. I don't think at this point its appropriate to say "Blaze on," so much as "lets get a spark going so we can get the fire going again," so that's what I'm going to leave you with.

Also, I'm still awesome. :)