Monday, December 10, 2012

I Live in Iowa: Week 85

Another week living the dream, or something like it. But seriously, I have the best life in the world. No really, I hope you think your life is the best in the world, but I like mine better. Okay enough feeding the ego.

Work was fun. I didn't work as many hours as I usually do maybe only 42 and some of that was spent on the start of Christmas festivities. However, I did finish four project reports this week. In context, I probably write reports for 70-80% of the the projects that I work on and probably file 20-25 reports per year. In other words, while the time spent fixing Jacobians and projecting nodes to surfaces was below average, I am getting somewhat more efficient and getting more done faster. Since I have been doing finite element structural analysis for about two years plus a year in graduate school on the heat treating FEA side, I am getting quite a bit better at what I do. I have probably around 5000 hours of experience doing finite element analysis. Personally, I feel either you learn how to do whatever you do better, or you don't, and I like to imagine I am a learner.

Coaching went well. That is a large part of why I didn't work as many hours. This was our last week of official practice until January and I wanted to contribute as much positivity and desire to train over break as I could. For the next three and a half weeks I can't look any of the runners in the face and tell them what to do. This is their Rocky IV, Russian winter, out on their own mostly alone. I've been through this cycle enough to know that not all of them will train over break, but a few will. That's the exciting part. A few of them want it. Whatever "it" is the point being some of them are developing "the will to win."

My own running went very nicely. I ran 72 miles including two four mile tempos (in 22:40 and 23:53), a short hill workout, a short interval 800 meter pace workout, a 1 mile race (in 4:39) and anchoring a 4x400 meter relay. Dwelling on the mile for a bit, I had a great race! It felt very aerobic for me, which is to say I did not feel the lactic acid burn until the last 200 meters, which I ran in 32.5 seconds. It was also funny because I had mentioned that in indoor it is often necessary to get out hard the first 30 meters because of the tight turns, so some people took my advice and I was in 7th place after 50 meters even though I thought I took it out hard. We flew through 209 meters in 36, which is about 4:30 pace. Anyway, I moved up through the pack and led the last 600 meters in 1:41 to take the win. The 4x4 was a lot of fun! My team was in the lead by 15 meters so I got out moderately paced, scared to put myself in an anaerobic hole the first lap, and thus was passed after 175 meters. Then I had to work awfully hard to pass fellow distance runner J in a classic 4x4 battle in the final 150 meters and maintain the lead as a different J nearly caught up to me. I split 1:00.9, the two guys that I raced split 56 and 58. So our team won in 3:57 and the other two teams were really close in 3:58. I had a great time Saturday morning!


On the social side a very interesting week. I have a friend, who is rapidly becoming quite a close friend, that had an emotionally difficult week due to an event brought about by an unanticipated situation. Thus is life right? Just when everything is going well you break you leg, lose your job, your transmission breaks, and your friends quit talking to you. Basically a standard week that happens to a different someone or another every week. However, this brings up such an interesting question, why me? I don't mean, why do bad things happen to me? The answer to that question is that I have many transgressions and I deserve my problems. The question is, how do I (in this case I mean me, Isaiah Janzen but you might ask yourself this) contribute to a positive outcome and a positive relationship from this experience? I also mean, of all the people that might be privileged to participate in such a relationship or experience what set me apart for this opportunity? Those last two questions could really be asked for more than just comforting a friend, they apply to my role in Indonesia, my daily engineering role, my coaching, or even this blog. Regardless, I tried to get the "why me?" question answered this past week because as I mentioned at the beginning, I have the best life in the world and I feel it is worth trying to find out what traits or attributes I might have that leave me so fortunate.

1 comment:

  1. You really come across poorly when you do your "feed the ego" thing. Grow up, Isaiah.

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