Summer lovin'

This winter I have spent a reasonable amount of time ruing the fact that I no longer live in Salt Lake City with world class skiing right on my doorstep. Every time I check the weather report for Snoqualmie Pass to find that it is raining (instead of snowing, as it should be), Roanne asks to check the weather in Salt Lake City and I refuse since I know it will only drive me further into depression.

However, this morning I was flipping through some photos from this summer and I found reason to cheer: the mountain biking here is stinkin' amazing!!! In August Trev came out for a visit to Vancouver, and Trev, Fras and I did a ride up in Whistler called Comfortably Numb, and oh man was it ever awesome! It was about 28 km in length, which doesn't seem that long, but it was pretty technical so it took a while to ride. However, for me it was just the perfect level of technical: lots of fun ladder bridges and steep rocky sections, but not much of the completely insane riding that can be found on many of the north shore trails. I definitely need to ride it again this summer, and keep it fresh in my mind here are a few photos from the outing. Here is one of me rocketing down one of the descents:


Here is one of Trev navigating a technical downhill section:


Here is one of me inspecting the riverbed:


Here is one of Fras gliding down some pristine singletrack:


And finally one of the three amigos with Mt. Garibaldi (maybe?) in the background:


What an awesome day! Hopefully Trev can make the trip out west again this summer and we can have some more adventures.

On the weight front, another good day this morning with the scales reading 163.4, which brings my weekly average to 164.1. This is 1.1 pounds less than the average of the previous week so the program seems to be working, verr nice!

Inspiration

This morning while having breakfast I was checking some blogs for ski conditions in Snoqualmie Pass, and one of them happened to have a link to a ski video on youtube. I watched it, and afterward was super motivated to ski, and had an amazing time out at Cabin Creek, clocking in 48 km despite some wet, warm, and slow conditions. I think from now on I will watch a short ski video before every time I go skiing, it was really inspiring. Anyone else out there who skis should try it out also, and to make it easier for you I have linked to a short video below. I think it is also instructive to watch elite skiers to see what technique they use in different terrain, one big thing that I got from the video was that your turnover rate while doing offset should be really high, and your hands should be spread fairly wide when you plant your poles. Anyways, watch this video and then go skiing!



Weight: 164.4

Golden Beets

Yesterday was another rainy day here in Seattle, I had planned on getting out for a roller ski but it poured rain all day and I wasn't sufficiently motivated to ski in the rain. Instead I did some work planning out how much trim we will need to complete our recent home renovations, and took a bunch of debris that had been hanging around the yard to the dump.

I did fit in an hour long ride on my rollers in the evening, while watching the 2009 Giro d'Italia on DVD. The workout I did was called "Spin ups", where you slowly increase your cadence for a minute, then spend another minute holding it as high as you can without bouncing on your seat, then recover for 3 minutes and repeat. I was able to consistently hold it in the 130-135 rpm range, with bursts into the 135-140 rpm range. I would love to be able to keep it above 140 rpm, maybe if I keep working on it. Although, I'm not sure it is much of an advantage for me. During the last group ride I did, Jake and Chad complimented me on my fast cadence as they rode away from me on the climbs using their slower cadences but much higher power outputs. Darn these spider legs of mine! Oh well, if you're going to ride slow you might as well have a smooth and buttery pedal stroke.

Another double-edged compliment had come my way earlier in that same ride, when I had been letting some gaps open up between myself and the rider in front of me, and was forced to sprint out of the saddle to close them down. When I really try hard during out of the saddle sprints I tend to lean forward a lot to try and eke every possible watt out of my spider legs (as Phil Liggett would say "put your forehead on the stem and nail it back!"). After one of these episodes, Jen (another member of the group ride) asked me "Can you teach me how to do that?". At first I thought she was "having a go" at me, but when I realized she was sincere I tried to carefully explain that the technique was borne out of desperation rather than cognitive intent, and it was most definitely not a good thing that I was being forced into it at this early stage in the group ride.

Anyways, how did I get started on this discussion of my cycling inadequacies? Let's move on. Last night I cooked up another few items from our Produce Delivery, some roasted golden beets, onions, potatoes, and garlic (pictured at left). They were pretty good, even though I don't normally like beets much. Finally, another good weigh in this morning, equaling the 2010 record set earlier in the week.

Weight: 163.4
Body Fat: 5.8%

Non Resident

For the last year or so I have been considering a career change from Electrical Engineering to Medicine, so last summer after leaving Salt Lake City to move to Seattle I wrote the MCATs and applied to the UW School of Medicine. I was pretty confident in my application since I had done well on the MCATs, I had taken most of the supplementary courses required that were not present from my engineering education, and I had done some other activities like volunteering. The UW Medical School has a strong preference for in-state applicants, non-residents are only considered if they come from a disadvantaged background (I grew up in Ontario without a mountain in sight, does that count?) or show a desire to live and work in rural areas (no thanks!).

I thought this wouldn't be a problem since we moved to Seattle in July which put me here one year in advance of when I would have started classes, which would classify me as a resident by the time classes started. However, it turns out that to be considered as a resident for application purposes, you need to have been here for 6 months prior to the application deadline. We moved here in time to meet that deadline, but I kept my job at the University of Utah until August 14, flying back during the week and staying with friends (Mike and Laura, who were amazing hosts). I found out a few weeks ago that my application for residence status had been turned down because of this, as it constituted a legal tie to Utah within the 6 month window.

This was a bummer as it meant my application was dead in the water before it could even be considered on grounds of academic merit and my other activities. There were still a few other avenues to pursue, so I appealed both to the Registrar's Office (to reverse the decision on my residency) and to the Medical School (to ignore the decision by the registrar's office on my residency). I found out this week that both of these appeals had been denied, so my final slim chance was to change my application to that of a non-resident and then show up for my interview in a cowboy hat and overalls as demonstration of my desire to live in a rural setting. However, I was not given the chance to try this approach, as I found out yesterday that my non-resident application was turned down without even a request to fill out a supplemental application.

So there you have it. It was a bit disappointing to get this news since I have done a lot in the past year towards putting in this application, but on the positive side I am still not 100% decided about whether I want to go through with this so it will give me another year to think about it.

Weight: 164.4

1 down, 11 to go.

Yesterday I took a step towards making good on #6 in the life category of my New Years Resolutions by finishing reading my first book of 2010. The book is called "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care", written by T.R. Reid. I had heard a segment of a talk by the author on NPR and it sounded pretty interesting, so I decided to read the book. I read the book on Roanne's Kindle, which was a first for me. I would say that the book was moderately interesting, here are the main points:

• The U.S. spends the most in the world on healthcare (16% of GDP) but does not have anywhere close to the best healthcare performance (measured in terms of mortality rates, life expectancy, and other statistics).
• The reason that American healthcare is so expensive is it's for-profit insurance companies, they routinely spend 20% of their budget on non-healthcare expenditures (as compared with 2-5% in most other countries), and have high motivation to deny insurance to those that need it (sick people) since it will eat into their profits.

Weight: 164.2

Produce delivery!

Roanne's chemo treatment went well yesterday, and when we arrived home we discovered our first weekly fruit and veg delivery. It came in a large tupperware, and the produce all looked fresh and in good shape. The most unusual thing were the Sunchokes, which we only learned about recently when we had them in a restaurant.

In keeping with my "Mostly veg" New Years resolution, I cooked up a vegetarian cous cous recipe that Roanne had found in People Magazine (that bastion of high culture). We complemented this with a salad made entirely from our produce bin, and Emily stopped by to enjoy the feast. After dinner I hit the climbing gym for a couple of hours which was fun, and then this morning I had my best weigh-in of 2010!



Weight: 163.4
Body Fat: 5.9%

Halfway...

Right now Roanne and I are at the Seattle Cancer Care alliance, where she is waiting to receiver her 4th (of 8) chemotherapy treatment. It is pretty exciting to already be at the halfway mark, and after this one the toxic cocktail changes to other drugs which apparently have fewer side effects. Here is a picture from the waiting room, with rainy Seattle in the background.

Yesterday afternoon I did a nordic ski up at Hyak which was pretty fun, though the snow conditions were not great. They have had a lot of freezing rain and it was pretty warm, so despite the grooming the track was a bit chunky. This coupled with a proliferation of snowshoers who love to walk right in the middle of the skate lane made for difficult conditions. I only skied 32 km, and my average speed was just 12.6 km/hr (as compared with 16.7 km/hr last week at Cabin Creek when I did 52 km). It did include a big climb though, from the elevation profile below you can see that the opening climb ascends 1800 feet in just 7 km.



On the weigh-in front things are looking pretty bleak, despite my best efforts I seem to be getting heavier. If this doesn't change in the next few days I will need to enact some drastic measures.

Weight: 165.8