Rolling Thunder

The first week of school is always insane! But to add to my normal insanity I was chosen to help coordinate and lead to the Qcomm blood draws. For all those that are left scratching your heads at my last statement allow me to explain further. Everyone morning, starting on Tuesday ie first day of classes and running through Saturday (yes, Saturday), I awoke between 4:00 and 4:30am, grabbed a quick bowl of oatmeal and rode my squeaky mountain bike to lab, Where for the next five+ hours over 2500 blood samples were taken! Lovely! Before the start of each Qcomm blood draw, I got the privilege, neigh, the honor to work alongside Dr. Quindry and observe his surgical techniques on his exercised lab rats. Very cool. Then from roughly 6:30am till class time (~10:00-10:30) I would experience a blur of coordinating running centrifuges at various temperatures, speeds and times; aliquoting blood samples into separate vials, digging around in liquid N2, organizing snap frozen samples and making sure everything/everyone was running smoothly! Wonderful. Then off to class for two hours followed by four-ish hours of training. Typically, I would be lucky if I hit the pillow by 11:30pm.
With that said I am happy to report that the blood draws are over until next month and I have safely returned to my niche on the 4th floor of the CAP building. Overall, training is going extremely well and I am iching to toe the line at the Duke Half-Ironman next weekend. If I can carry that numbers and efforts I have been doing in training, I have a really good feeling about what might happen.
Finally, (I have three minutes before my samples are done spinning) a rant! Last week, Wednesday or TR, not sure since all my days are running together I had my car booted! I have parked for over a year and all through the summer at Kristen's apartment due to its close proximity to campus. The individual (who will remain nameless simply because I do not know his name) called the tow truck company on me after yelling at my girlfriend about my car being parked in the parking lot. I would have moved the car if I had known it was upsetting this resident but since I was unaware and had been at work since 4:30am I did not know until Kristen called me after class that my car was getting ready to get towed. Needless to say, I had a great training day afterwards. Very upsetting that this 50year old man who lives in a college apartment could not confront a 20year old student but rather had to call the police first, the tow company and then yell at my girlfriend. Grow some balls old man!

I will close with some swimming observations:

300yds or 300m is the worse distance to swim intervals!

The snorkel still makes feel as if I am drowning a slow painful death.

Practicing kicking, although tedious, is very in swimming faster.