I think I did a bad thing.

So hamstring recovery was going okay. Still a little sore after I ran, but I wasn't having the *days* of soreness after running. In fact, a little stretching and a little ice, and I wasn't sore the next day. I had been sprinkling in about one 3 miler every week (I normally run 1.5 - 2 these days).

Then on Thursday, we did Fartleks (teehee - those Swedes and their funny words!).

(Lisa, if you had moved to Sweden instead, I would have silkscreened you a shirt with Binky on it, so you could wear it with a belt like that.)

It was a pretty low key Fartlek workout, 6 30 second sprints interspersed in a 3 mile run. But my hamstring hurts. Bad. As in "ache all day, keep me up at night" bad.

I'm so stupid.

Back to the cycling and swimming I guess!

Last night I planned on doing a 35 minute swim and it was as if the world was conspiring against me. First, I show up and it is family swim time, which means there is one lane, and this older lady beat me by mere seconds to the one lane that was open. And of course, she wasn't a normal lap swimmer. She was doing all sorts of weird stuff that took up the whole lane. It was only ten minutes until family swim time was over (although after last time, I was thinking "there's no way I am going in the pool after the kids" but I didn't have sneakers or anything so I figured I should do something since I went all the way t the gym).

I started going and my first 100 yds took 3 minutes. Three minutes! I am not fast, but I am pretty consistent at the 2:30/100 yds pace, sometimes down to 2:15. Things didn't improve all night. I had a headache, so I took off my swim cap, then I lost my pony tail holder so I would inhale a breath full of my hair every time I turned to breathe, I was nailing the "swallow a mouthful of water every time I flip turn" thing. I got to 31 minutes and I pretty much was going to throw up if I swam anymore. I couldn't even make myself do 4 more minutes. So I got out.

Note to self: probably should work on that swim thing, since you won't be running for at least another week.

Okay, time to end this Whiney McWhine-a-lot thing.

And now time for some science rambling (because I don't feel like grading statistics homework)!

I have spent the last two weekends encouraging the yoots of Iowa to pursue science. Last weekend I administered the oceanography portion of the Iowa Science Olympiad to middle school and high school kids. The woman who runs it asked teammate Pete if he knew "any oceanographers in Iowa?!" and lo and behold he did. I think they all hated me because I made them figure out questions about salt fingers, when I knew they would definitely not know that stuff, but they should have been able to figure it out from what they did know. And out of the 16 teams (HS and MS), one middle school team, the only all female team I had the entire day, were the only ones to figure it out. Yay girl power!

And I just finished a day and a half of judging the state science fair. I had to judge 6th graders through high school students doing seminars. All I could think was "gees, when I was in 6th grade, I would be freaking out if I had to give a scientific talk in front of judges." In one seminar, I learned that dissolved oxygen can kill aquatic life if there is too much. Sigh. Um, yeah, dissolved oxygen bubbles out of the water once it reaches a relatively low saturation level. For my masters research, we killed some salmon inadvertently by over-oxygenating the water, but that was because we had 4 air bubblers in a contained space and we managed to over-saturate the water with oxygen, which doesn't happen in normal conditions. In even more girl power, the top three places in the high school physics seminar I was judging all went to girls.


But please, if I hear one more talk about ethanol, I might have to shoot myself.

Oh wait, I think my department seminar this week is on water use by ethanol plants.

The joy of living in Iowa.