Week Two

While walking around campus after class one day a guy rode by on a bicycle that looked almost exactly like mine. He was riding rather slowly, weaving through people, and in my shock I stopped to stare at the bike. The words, "oh no you didn't" where projected through my mind and as I was on my way to comfront him I noticed minute differences that insure (at least to myself) that the bike was indeed not mine. However, I did have to rush to where I had left my bike only an hour before to insure that it was still there.
I was asked to give a talk in church today about how General Conference influenced. Not sure what to do with such a broad topic I attended General Conference in it's entirety (for the first time EVER!) and was sure to take meticulous. With much prayer, I couple of desprite calls home and guidance from Grandma and Grandpa I finished my talk at 2:30am of the day I was to give it. I then precided to bed and arose at 7:00 to go on a team run, in my rush to get to practice on time I for went breakfast (not a wise decission). The team traveled out to this place called "The Saddle" where we ran around for a good hour. We got back to school at roughly 10:00 where I quickly got ready for church. I ended up being only 15min late (I had feared worse) but when I started looking for my talk in my back pack I soon realized (to my horror) that I had left it in the OSU Cross-Country girls' locker room. I said a quiet prayer and snuck into the chapel in time for sacrament. Grandma and Grandpa seem to believe that my talk went well, so I'll go with that. Elder Wirthlin taught that we must learn to laugh. I'm getting there.

St George Smith

Running has generally been good to me. But I worry I'm only as good as my last race, so I'm usually making plans for my next fix. One of my goals has been to break 2:40 after turning age 40. That would be a 3 and 1/2 minute PR, but I got greedy and hoped for several minutes faster than that. Unfortunately, between recovering from Where's Waldo, knee pain from pre-patellar bursitis, very limited time to train, and having a fool for a coach, I didn't train sufficient for that.

I picked the marathon that I thought would be optimal- St. George has 2600' elevation drop, not a lot of turns, and plenty of fast people. I consider downhill running to be my strength, and I trained by doing some downhill intervals.

I then tried to justify the extravagance of traveling 900 miles each way for a race by dragging the rest of the family (minus Emily) along, and even brought Grandma Lake with to Las Vegas. They didn't complain much because they got to spend time with the cousins, and we had a couple of hours with grandpa & grandma Ron and Dianne Reynolds. (sidenote: from their place you can almost hit the Jacob Hamblin home with a rock. This is where my Grandpa Neil & Normal Fugal served a mission in ~1983, and where my brother-in-law Chad Gubler started a fire from throwing smoke bombs from his grandpa's place just up the hill.) The kids really were good travellers. After 10+ hrs in the car they were still laughing and having a good time. That is, when they weren't asking "how much further." Fortunately, Grandma Lake's GPS navigator kept the distance remaining constantly displayed, which saved me from answering that question as often.

Morning came early, but with some directions from the police, Pam was able to get me to the packet pick-up and on to a bus before they stopped running. I met up with 3 of the 5 other people from Central Point that I knew, that were also running. We huddled at a fire pit. The rain was generally light, and the temperature not too bad, but the headwind took a toll. I hurried through my pre-race routine. I found lidocaine works wonders for my bursitis. I shed my sweats and worked my way forward as far as the 3:00 pace sign before the gun went off. It was chip timed, so I wasn't worried about being right at the front.

I don't know if it was the 5200' altitude, the headwind, or the training, but even with some gentle downhill the first mile was only 6 minutes. I expected to be going faster, so over the coming miles I went ahead and pushed some. The pace didn't drop much, and at mile 7.5 when we hit some uphill I felt quite sluggish. I drafted behind a guy for several miles, thinking I was pacing myself and conserving energy for the big downhill that was to come. I made it to the half at least on pace for sub 2:40, right about 6 min/mile pace. But about this point I started feeling more and more painful thightness in my quads. Over the next few miles they made it clear that they weren't just complaining, they were done with being useful. I tried adjusting my stride or otherwise convincing them to play nice for a few more miles, but they wouldn't have anything to do with it. I ate some banana, stopped at the aid stations to drink extra electrolyte, walked a little in a couple of places, and contemplated stopping to stretch. I got passed by about 30 people. It would have been a lot easier to quit if I hadn't traveled to far for this, and had Pam waiting at the finish line. I was also afraid that if I slowed any more I would get hypothermic. I wasn't breathing too hard, but rather was grimmacing. A number of people tried to encourage me by saying "looking good", but I didn't feel good. (the other comment I got way too many times was "nice blue shoes!") I was able to limp along, and for the last 3 miles even got my pace back down to 7 min/mile. I finished standing up. I've hurt worse after a race before, but not recently.

We then met up with the rest of the family to visit, for lunch, and to tour Brigham Young's winter home, where we learned that George Smith was called St. George, and Brigham Young named the town after him. I'm taking the week off of running, then I'll see how my knee feels. If (when) I run another marathon I'll follow a training plan for it, or else have more modest goals.

One down, nine more to go

I just went through the first week of the next decade (give or take) of my life.  It was interesting in a painful kind of way.  My hardest class is biology, there are over 500 kids in my class with well over 1000 taking the class.  You have to get there 5 min early just to get a seat in the downstairs area. We have an exam next Monday all about eukaryotes, procaryotes, how the earth was formed and the basic steps of evolution. I'm soo excited! 

My day consists of getting up at 6:30, getting ready for school, homework, going to class, run/homework, class, homework, institute, weights, home, homework, sleep.  My last class Friday is a lab that ends at 9:00pm.  Our assignment for this quarter is to come up with a feasible hypothesis about bread mold and come up with an experiment that can test our hypothesis.  I'm also really excited to be working with bread mold.  It's like my most favorite thing in the world.

On the plus side I have a race Oct 25th at Avery Park and the OSU cross-country team got 2nd at a huge race in Auburn, Alabama ranking them 6th in the Pac-10 conference!  :D 

P.S. Grandma, I'm sorry there's no pictures I just wasn't motivated enough to put any in.  Well, I'm off to Study Hall, Have an awesome evening everyone!! 

Linfield in McMinnville 9/26/08 Olsen and Cruz take 3rd and 4th

Freshman Olsen and Cruz Take Third and Fourth in First XC Meet

Courtesy: Oregon State Sports Information
Release: 09/26/2008

McMINNVILLE, Ore. – Freshman Emily Olsen (Medford, Ore.) and Lorine Cruz (Grants Pass, Ore.) finished third and fourth, respectively, to lead Oregon State women’s cross country in their first ever collegiate 6,000-meter race at the Linfield Invitational on Friday.

“For their first collegiate cross country race Emily and Lorine did a tremendous job,” head coach Kelly Sullivan said. “It is just a great start for them.”

Sophomore Kambria Schumacher (Sweet Home, Ore.) finished seventh, and freshman Melissa Kauffman (Hood River, Ore.) finished eighth, making for four Oregon State athletes finishing in the top 10.

Freshman Cassandra Schumacher (Sweet Home, Ore.) finished 12th, sophomore Jackie Brown (Beaverton, Ore.) finished 14th and freshman Laurel Parks (Grants Pass, Ore.) finished 15th to round out the Beaver runners in competition.

“I was very pleased overall with the 6k we ran today. They did a fantastic job. It’s a very good start for these women,” Sullivan said.

Cross country is back in action next Saturday, Oct. 4, in Auburn, Ala., for the Auburn Invitational.

*Lorine Cruz, Emily Olsen and Laurel Parks all participated unattached at the meet

For the latest on Oregon State women’s cross country, continue to check back at osubeavers.com

Thanks Stoddard Reynolds for the pictures

test entry

now Emily can contribute, edit, and delete under her own name. Soon, Emily will click on that little pencil at the bottom right, and this will all be deleted and replaced with something we'll find witty and thought provoking. Or at least with a race schedule. Or perhaps just with this link to her schedule. I think she's running at the Beaver Classic. I don't know about the one in Clackamas.

Sisters trip

Emily finished her OSU cross-country running camp, and I finished my first week in our new office. She'll be red-shirting this year, and I'll be trying to figure out how to hang pictures on the wall.

I got in quite late, and we had an enjoyable breakfast with my folks before their big day at the temple. She drove while I slept. We didn't start running/hiking until after 11am. We knew we were missing a couple of the essentials (I left my good map and all but my back-up flashlight at home.) But this was as much about having an adventure together as it was about climbing. It had been three long weeks since I had flashbacks of dropping her off at the magnet school in inner-city St. Louis for her first day of kindergarden, hoping she'd get off at her bus-stop 7 hrs later.

We ran a bit at first, but not so much when it got steeper. We had to make a course correction to get onto the correct ridge. we sang some songs to pass the time, and made good time until right under the summit in the most dangerous region.

It was harder than I remembered, and I about got stuck. Emily was starting to make mental plans for how to get back on her own should I fall and break my neck, which would be funnier if it hadn't happened to other people in that vicinity before. So about that time we realized we were in the "false bowling alley." So we rappelled, happy to have brought climbing gear (note the helmet hair- we took them off for the pictures) and back-tracked a little to the significantly easier true bowling alley.

There's so much changing in Emily's life right now. I think she's a combination of excited and apprehensive. We've got a bit of a tradition of doing father's blessings at the start of a school year at the top of a mountain, so we did that on the top of North. It's a bit remote, and an effort to get there. It's the closest thing to a temple or the home, and we had it all to ourselves.

So after shedding a couple tears, by 5pm we were picking our way back down, this time staying on the South ridge. This involved a lot of loose rock sliding down with us and in our shoes. From the saddle we made good time to the top of middle sister. The weather was excellent, and the views are great. That's Washington, 3-fingered Jack, and Jefferson above my head.

We made it down the glacier (wishing on the steepest part that we had brought our ice-axes) before we only had moonlight. I found the climbers trail, but didn't worry when we lost track of it. We knew the direction we wanted, but unfortunately for Emily's ankles that meant bushwhacking on uneven terrain. When the vegetation got thicker, we got tired of that, and cut over to the trail we had come in on. The little flashlight was just enough that we were able to jog much of the way from there out. Hopefully Emily's ankles aren't permanently damaged- I wish I had thought of that in her blessing. I had to make some phone calls to coordinate young men's meetings for the next day, so I did that from the woods in wilderness in the dark. I can't get network coverage up high, but I could at 6500' and below. I guess it is odd to use a phone in the isolated wilderness at all.

Emily has now been to each site from Hood to Shasta that is > 10,000'.

lessons from the trail

The local paper did a nice article on my recent Where's Waldo run. It got me thinking how ultramarathoning is similar to life in several ways.
1) If you don't take in sustenance during the event you will bonk. My favorites are Gu, Heed electrolyte drink, prayer and scripture study.
2) There are trail hazards, and we can get lost. Guides can help us avoid these or find our way back, which can be long and painful.
3) We can be off track and not know the lay of the land even if we have a written map. We can be reoriented by radio or revelation.
4) There are truths (such as the position of the sun, and the message of Jesus) that we can't change by rationalizing.
5) there is a reward for every finisher. You don't get an award if you don't finish, even if you were ahead in the middle.
6) If we are faithful to true principles, we will have a renewing of our strength and bodies, sometimes after a period of feeling down.
7) The last 20 miles may be slow and painful, but as long as we move the right direction on the right trail, there can be tears of joy, rest, healing, and a welcome committee at the end.
8) The only pain that isn't temporary is the anguish of wasted possibility