I Live in Iowa: Week 81

What a week, certainly not normal. How do you recover from a whirlwind tour of Indonesia? Well, for starters you don't feel normal the week after.

Work was an awfully strange week for me. I did not do any finite element analysis. I opened up a couple models, but I spent all of my time doing clerical work and video processing stuff that I just never got around to doing any FEA. That being said, I have two presentations this week and I am still not ready. I even worked on the presentations Friday after I left work and on Saturday. I probably only spent 30 or so hours in the office this week. I was in every day, but not necessarily very long. But then again I did work on my laptop out of the office. I suppose that is not abnormal, working on the laptop out of the office. What is abnormal is that on my Indonesia trip I used my own cameras and I am using my own laptop to do the video editing and creating the report. It's the only Apple laptop I've ever seen at work.

In the running world my mileage was low again. Maybe 30-40. I haven't logged it yet. No workouts, but a couple 200s. Still the lower leg pain that hurts, but not enough to totally stop me from running. It is what it is, I need to keep massaging it and strengthening my feet and ankles.

In the coaching world I went to a couple practices and on Saturday our season ended up at St. Olaf in the NCAA XC Regionals. Neither of our teams and none of our individuals are going to nationals. There were a couple bright spots. A strong race from one of our two seniors. Some other strong races from the younger people. We did not have the success that I expected given our mid season results. We have some things to work on as a coaching staff. Part of it has to do with a predominately freshman team that struggled to endure the whole season. Part of it is that we probably didn't do enough long runs. Maybe we focused on specific endurance too early. We did better than last year, but that only says so much.

On the social side, I have helped to inspire a number of people to start blogs. By my count I have helped to encourage at least eight. One of those is one of the assistant cross country coaches I work with. This needs more backstory. Our track and field coaching staff this year is set to be six white men/boys all coming from relative middle class backgrounds. Talk about diversity... I have heard about it. So we were fortunate enough to have a woman on staff this season. I am very thankful that we did for the benefit of the ladies on the team. I can probably handle anything the ladies would tell me, but frankly I know they have issues I don't understand and having a woman resource there seems like a great idea to me. Anyway, her and I have carpooled to a couple of races and hung out a few times so we have had hours to talk. One of the interesting things about her is that she is also a single mom. This is relevant for a couple of reasons. First, I know of a number of other single moms or people in a dating relationship with a single parent, and it would be good for me to better understand those situations. Second, 40% of babies are born to unmarried mothers. This is a situation that could present itself to me in the future and I made the decision years ago that I would not let a woman with a child deter me from dating her. That being said, I imagine it would certainly make the relationship more complicated. Anyway, she started a blog and wrote an article, which her and I discussed in further detail this past week, about single parents and dating. It is a segment of the population which seems to be growing.

So that's my life. More Indonesia videos to come it's just a matter of doing the stuff I have to for work first and then assembling the other videos into my YouTube channel.