It's See Ya Later, not Goodbye

This post will be my latest but hopefully not my last, as I'm going to start off by saying that I'm indefinitely taking a break from competitive running. After about 9 years of training at a high level, I'm definitely feeling burned out. I still enjoy getting out to the trails on occasion and running, but the desire to run for the sake of winning has, for the time at least, left me. I've had brief periods in the past where I've wondered how much more I can take it, but the last semester has, without a doubt, been more than I should have subjected myself to. With any luck I will return to a high level of athletics, I know I'm going to feel lost without it. It's also a shame that now that I have the time to work on the blog, I won't have much to write. I don't want to let it die, so I'll try to figure out something to give it life.

Until I find something else to write about, I'm going to leave you with what I've been up to since the last post. Until then, best wishes to everybody.

April 2010 through May 2011:
The remainder of the track season for 2010 wasn't as great as it should have been. As a matter of fact it was disappointing considering how well it started off. I've been trying to figure out what went wrong, but it seems that the culmination of everything that was going on in my final undergrad semester took it's toll. I was trying to excel in my classes, stressing about whether or not I'd get into pharmacy school, and constantly pressed for cash as is usually the case with being a college student. To keep it brief, my running went downhill, I didn't hit a national-qualifying time in any distance, I got a B+ in a Drawing-I class which invariably led to me getting Magna Cum Laude rather than Summa Cum Laude. I did, however, get accepted to the Feik School of Pharmacy, which I then turned down (sounds like a bad joke, don't it) in anticipation of starting an M.S. in Research Statistics at UIW in January 2011. I graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.S. in Mathematics and a minor in Chemistry.

After graduating I had a hell of a time finding a job. I was working for the school, but since I wasn't enrolled for the next semester I lost that job. Then I worked door-to-door sales, which was crap. Absolute crap. Especially when they send you to a neighborhood near a Jehova's Witness church, and you're required to wear nice clothes. Of course people want to open their door to see what you have to offer, why wouldn't they? I did that for less than a week, for obvious reasons; then my friend Chris got me a job at the Academy shoe department. That may not have been as bad, except that I was making minimum wage, working the closing shift, during back-2-school, and not getting enough hours to make enough money to pay my share of the rent. There's something unnerving about graduating top of your class with the education that I had and resorting to making money by confirming to people that Skechers Shape Ups will help you lose weight (a lie, please don't waste your money). Fortunately after about 2 months of that I got a temp job at Southwest Research Institute, which paid well and was the 9-to-5 job I was looking for. I worked there from August to January until I went back to school. All the while I was making a serious effort to stay in shape so I could use my last semester of athletic eligibility when I got back to school.

When school came around I was in decent shape, at least for long runs. On the other hand, I wasn't in racing shape, and I never really got into racing shape throughout the season. Normally the training we do would have developed me into peak shape as the season went along, but for some reason it never happened. Again, this was probably caused by the fact that I just had too much on my plate. Between running, class, and working two jobs I was pressed from the start, and in addition my girlfriend and I both experienced a personal loss early in the semester, which seemed to be the last straw. I wasn't getting enough sleep because I was often up late working on homework and then getting up for whatever job I was at that day, then going to practice, then right back to class so I'd have another reason to stay up late. I was constantly struggling to keep my body weight up, my energy was seriously lacking, and I was rarely in a good mood. The best races I had were mediocre 1500's, a race that is usually just used for speed work for me, a testament to the horrible shape I was in. If there is a positive note, I ended up getting a 4.0 for the semester.

For the summer I'm back working at SwRI (evening shift this time), which is a nice change of pace. I don't know if I've ever had a point in my life where the only thing I really had to do was go to work, and as far as jobs go it's pretty laid back. Even though I've always wanted to run during the summers in the past, it would be a lie to say there wasn't some type of pressure to keep running so I'd be in shape for the next season. That's now gone. Aside from still being broke, life is pretty good right now. I wake up late, go run if I feel like it and the heat isn't too bad, watch TV and play PS3, then go to work.

*Edit 6/26/2011:
Apparently I come off as being bummed out. I am not depressed, and am actually quite happy with where I am in my life, but thanks for any concerns. Also, for clarification, the personal loss was a death of an old friend of mine; hopefully that will clear up any confusion.