week 11: spring break, by which of course I mean, visiting Stanford again.

(Monday, 24 March)
Drove up to Stanford, with the joyous company of Herr Kiesz up to 152, which was a wonderful treat. Met with the biomechanics guy, which was pretty sweet. He seemed impressed that I am mathy, which I guess is good. Some cool stuff going on in that lab.

Ran the Dish, which was a pretty fun exercise in dodging girl scouts and feeling superior for sweatily hurtling myself up the hill at a pace slightly faster than a trot. At one point I was hammering it up a hill when this guy passing me the other way was like, "holy crap, that gal is running HARD" which came out as a rather uncomfortable sounding "looking good!" to which I smiled, because I knew I looked crazy. (Yes, I was also wearing the super huge Susan-style sunglasses. Awesome).

Saw the women's BB (Cal v. George Washington, Stanford v. UTEP). Pretty amazing stuff; Cal got shafted, which I could relate to after seeing so many Caltech games. And Stanford's Candace Wiggins is phenomenal.

(Tuesday, 25 March)
Off, just because I felt like sleeping in and I figured one more off day wouldn't kill me. Convinced my mom to drive down to Stanford with me (again) with bikes so we could tool around. Had lunch with Pat (really nice, we had lots of things to talk about) and then Ken (I wanted to tell him, "I love your steak!"). They want to do haptic/virtual reality surgery, which is scary but also interesting. Butted my head into the virtual surgery group meeting as well. A much more positive experience than last time.

I got back and set up my dad's new TV. Also made another lemon meringue pie with my folks' lemons, which are pretty goddamn good. Not as good as the "Joy of Cooking" recipe though.

(Wednesday, 26 March)
Good times with my mom. Ran down at the San Leandro marina, and she came with me on her bike, which was pretty fun. She was punishing me an awful lot though. Felt really good, except for the headwind on the way back - that was not fun. Again, it was pretty quick.

Turns out we had a TON of lemons, way more than I even dreamed of last night - I started a batch of limoncello, made lemon curd, and juiced a whole bunch of lemons for future lemonade etc. Mmm.

(Thursday, 27 March)
Drove back to Pasadena. I think I really have lost weight recently, or at least have redistributed some muscle, because my butt is not nearly as comfortable as it has been in the past. How to men deal with this? They tend to have way bonier butts than I could ever dream of achieving. Megumi, why do you aspire to this?

Stopped at the RB on my way back since it was still light outside. Yes, I did get naked in the car parked right by the side of the road, but I figured no one would care since they'd all be watching the group ride go by. Ran a very easy couple of miles, felt good to get the legs moving.

(Friday, 28 March)
Ran about 8 easy with Ian on the trail at the RB, my legs were really tired, I suppose from the hard run Wednesday and from the sitting around yesterday. Still probably about 8.30 pace, which is faster than previous mellow paces I have enjoyed.

Then drove out to Encanto, rode to GMR to spectate Alec kicking ass. Noticed that sitting around was really uncomfortable (see above).

(Saturday, 29 March)
Rode about 3 hours with Tracy, she makes me feel slow and out of shape. Encanto/river trail/back up the other river trail by the airport. A little less than 70k. Very pleasant to talk to Tracy about grad school etc, she's so cool.

(Sunday, 30 March)
Ran at the RB from pond to just north of the JPL parking lot. It was awful feeling. Lazy as heck today, and I just couldn't get myself rolling. The run felt like I was swimming in a pool of my own laziness. I blame it on eating too much pie.