Run a Mile in Evan's Shoes

It’s getting to the point in the semester that we are tired, just plain tired.  As of right now, I have exactly two weeks (10 days) left in the semester.  10 days.  Two to finish off this week, three next week, and then a full 5 day week post-Thanksgiving.  If I can hang on that long.  This has been the semester of unending work, arguably brought on entirely as a result of my own fault in taking 6 classes (3 engineering, 2 sciences, and 1 fun web design class).  This particular combination has definitely proven to be overwhelming, but I’ve almost made it out alive, almost.  If I can hold out for ten days of class, one final project, and 5 finals, I’m home free.  I really think it would be helpful if USC had a fall break.  Some friends and I were studying for our final Physical Chemistry midterm, and were having major difficulty concentrating.  We’re just plain burnt out.  Although I’m glad the midterm is before Thanksgiving so I don’t have to worry about it for the holiday, I’m having a good deal of difficulty caring about it at all at the moment and really have to bully my brain into studying.  I think a week, or even just a few day, break halfway through the semester or so might help alleviate the burnout a bit.  It’s like a long hike.  After you climb the mountain, you get to sit, take a breather, have a snack, and enjoy some scenery before trudging back down.  This makes the trip down a heck of alot better than if you just plunged straight through.  You get to pick up a bit of a second wind and the two chunks of the hike seem more managable on their own.  The good news is USG seems to be trying to implement this.  The bad news is it probably won’t happen while I’m still at USC, since I only have one fall semester left after this (what? how did that happen?)

Tonight, I went to see the musical Spring Awakening with ALD (Alpha Lambda Delta – freshman honor’s society) in Orange County.  (Yes, I know, a bit far away, but worth it!)  The performance was fantastic and I loved the music and the theme and the questions it raised, and as much as I would like to expound on it here, I would be writing for the next three days (…or hours) and it’s not quite in the trajectory I’m off on right now.  On the bus ride back, I was just watching the scenery pass and just thinking, meditating almost, as strange as it sounds to say I was meditating on the bus.  A bus just doesn’t seem to me to be the proper ambiance for meditation, but maybe the dark helped.  I was rather struck by the wanderlust.  I really wanted the bus to just keep going and drop me off somewhere and I would have no idea where I was going, but just start and find someplace to stay and find work and just lose myself…or find myself.  Maybe to find yourself you have to get lost first.  I’ve felt so weighed down by classes and studying and homework of late that I thought I’d like to go somewhere plan-less, due-date-less, and unburdened by at least one heavy textbook.  Maybe it all stems from this unbalanced semester.  But hopefully because of it, my semesters to come can be more relaxed.  In the meantime, getting to Thanksgiving…small steps.

Dies irae, dies illa
solvet saeclum in favilla
teste David cum Sybilla
Dies irae, dies illa
Quantus tremor est futurus,
quando judex est venturus
cuncta stricte discussurus.

English:
Day of wrath and doom impending,
Heaven and earth in ashes ending
David’s word with Sibyl’s blending
Day of wrath and doom impending
Oh, what fear man’s bosom rendeth
When from heaven the judge descendeth
On whose sentence all dependeth.

While I do dearly love almost any and all orchestral/choral performances that I have been to and am always excited to attend a performance anywhere, especially at Disney Concert Hall, I was especially stoked about Sunday’s Visions and Voices excursion to see LA Phil perform Verdi’s Requiem conducted by their new music director, Gustavo Dudamel.  All summer I saw a variety of Gustavo! banners around LA something like this:
Looks exciting!  When the Visions and Voices event to go see the super-hyped Gustavo came along, I was determined to go.  How could I miss the one, the only Gustavo! ?  The apparently empassioned and, undeniably, young and good-looking, new music director.  28-year-old  violin prodigy from Venezula.  And (according to a Visions and Voices handout), a cellist in the LA Phil said, “What can I say, I’m high on Gustavo.  He makes us not nervous when we perform.”  Being a musician myself with the worst nerves imaginable, what a inspiring thought that was to me.  Imagine not being nervous, all thanks to your conductor.  The comment indicates that this experienced cellist from the LA Phil actually used to get nervous and no longer.  BAM.  Gustavo!

He did not disappoint.  The Requiem was a fanstastic performance all around.  The chorus was awesome, the soloists, fantastic, the orchestra, breathtaking, not to mention Gustavo himself.  What a fun conductor to watch.  Normally, I have an issue with hyperactive conductors, like Rachel Worby of the Pasadena Pops orchestra.  She tends to shake her behind quite a bit, and I find her in general immensely distracting.  When visiting Descanso Gardens to see the Pops play in the summer with my mom and some family friends, I am defintely of the mind to position myself behind a tree to block my view of her and still see some of the orchestra.  The few violinists that also get blocked are an unforutnate sacrifice for my enjoyment of the rest of the musicians.  Many of our friends like Rachel, but I feel that she is trying to steal all the attention of the audience for herself instead of sharing with the musicians, whom, in my opinion, are really doing all the work.

Gustavo first impressed me when he came out to no music stand. The man had the entire piece memorized. And not only could he cue everyone with no prompting from a score, he knew all the words. In Disney Concert Hall, the seats surround the orchestra so that some sit behind the instruments and thus in front of the conductor.  I was sitting on the right hand side next to the organ in the top row and could see Gustavo’s face and watch him mouth all the Latin words while cuing the chorus.  And watch him jump around during the Dies Irae, the most distinctive section of the piece.  Arm up then one, down, two, BOOM, three, jump, four, CRASH!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOybOtYT1-0

Unlike in my past experience with over-theatric conductors, Gustavo’s excitement did not detract from the orchestra.  His enthusiasm, his pasion, bolstered them and connected me to them.  His ethusiasm seems pure, by no means a show, and communicates to the audience what the music might make you feel.  He shows a way to connect with the music, bridging the gap between musicians and audience.  When you play an instrument yourself, upon hearing a piece, you can imagine the emotion it might invoke to play it because you have experience with what feeling you need to put behind a type of music to play it well.  If you do not have this experience, Gustavo shows you how you feel it in your soul with his body language.  For me, I can look down into the viola section, see what they are doing and hear what is being played and have some idea of what their motion feels like because I have experience with the instrument.  Anyone can look at Gustavo jumping and twitching to the music and know what that motion feels like.  He’s like a translator of musician body language to the language of the music-lover who never got to play himself.  You shouldn’t need to be able to play an instrument to enjoy a piece to the upmost.  Gustavo demonstrates how to physically access a piece for those who have not held an instrument themselves.  As in any art, science, or area of study, this communication with the greater public is essential to that discipline’s survival.  Public support comes from understanding and appreciation, and Gustavo will surely garner this for the LA Phil.  The performance of a Latin Requiem Mass received 4 rounds of applause – the soloists had to return to the stage three times.  What I might imagine to be a somewhat inaccessible art form (due to being in Latin and traditional Catholic worship) received an ecstatic response from the audience.  I do not think I am giving Gustavo too much credit due to my high expectations of him.  Imagining the performance with a stolid conductor, I do not think it would be nearly as fun.  At the same time, I do not think Gustavo deserves all the credit alone.  The success of the afternoon was due to the collaborative effort of a well-rehearsed, talented, and hard-working chorus and orchestra with the support of a translator, their new young music director Gustavo.  Remove any link, and the performance falls to pieces.  It just so happens that the one whose name we see and collaborator we can most easily relate to as another human being is Gustavo.  If you have never played in an orchestra, the concept of being a part of one is abstract, but all can understand a man moved by music.  The conductor’s individual part is so distinct as he stands at the front that he acts as the head of state of the orchestra, a symbol for the rest.  By hailing Gustavo, I hail every musician in the Philharmonic, as Gustavo is merely the man set forward for me to call by name.  Bravo Gustavo!

I do not like the loss of daylight savings time.  Sure, I’m always up for an extra hour of sleep on Sunday morning, and I like that it is light when I get up at 6 (makes getting out of bed much easier)…but, a glance at the clock right now tells me it’s 7:26 pm.  I’m pretty sure it is more like 9:30 pm.  Not that I’m ready to sleep right now, but in 2 hours, when it is 9:30 and I think it’s 11:30, I will be.  Maybe that means I’ll get a proper amount of sleep for the second half of the semester.  Although it also means I’m going to have a tough time getting myself to any event starting at 7:30 or 8, resisting the urge to go home because it’s “getting late” at 6:00.  Once I get to whereever I’m going, I’ll be fine, and I guess I’ll get used to it, but right now, my biological clock has definitely been thrown a loop.

Even though once it has gotten dark, it’s hard for me to go out again, be it to an event on campus, a study group, or going to work out.  If I start out before it is dark, I’m fine.  As long as I get on my trajectory and get started with or into whereever I’m headed, not a problem.  Getting there is the challenge.

Take today for example: first marathon team evening practice without daylight savings time.  When we start at 5:00, it is still just light, and that is just enough.  Once I start to run, no problem; in fact, I love running at dusk/night.  As with running in the wee hours of the morning as the sun is just coming out, there is something mystical in the half-light.

Running at the end of the day is a huge release.  If some not so great things happened during the day, you can run away from them.  No, run away is not the right word, because you are not in flight.  Rather, you are gaining perspective with the distance you run.  Run into the distance, turn around, take a look at your troubles from some miles away, and they don’t seem so big and daunting anymore.  And as you come back, you feel bolstered to deal with them, tackle them head on, with a running start as it were.

Or was it a good day?  In that case, you are not running, but soaring.  Use your run to relish in your joy.  You may amaze yourself with how fast you can go.  A friend once asked me if I think when I do long training runs.  After thinking about it, I realized that I don’t necessarily think when I run, I feel.  I let gut instincts take over and guide my mind rather than so called “rational thought.”  Who needs that anyway, I do enough of it during the week without letting it infiltrate my runs. 

This marathon team season, I have discovered the value of a running partner.  While my teammates are always a good support network and I usually ran near the same group of people last year, this year for the first time I consistently have been running with a new teammate Chris and have found that running with another person and actually talking to them, and even not always talking to them, brings a different feel to the run.  I have always run with music on.  However, I have found that running with Chris, I don’t need to have my music going, even when we’re not talking.  If I’m by myself when I run, I still need the music, but on team runs that we stick together, I don’t need it.  I end up running holding my turned-off iPod or radio with my headphones around my neck.  Sunday I ran 11 miles and didn’t listen to a note, and didn’t miss it either.

Friday night/Saturday morning at midnight was the Nike Human Race.  Crazy as it sounds, I ran a 10K at midnight.  Wow.  (I’m actually writing this at 3:30 in the morning after the race, although it’s just coming up now on Tuesday.  I definitely want to write about the race and I thought it would be best to get my thoughts down right away.  And I’m still rather adrenalined up and can’t really go to sleep.  This is going to wreak havoc on my biological clock…) 

I decided to do the race just a few days before.  Many of my marathon team friends were doing it and I didn’t want to be left behind.  My initial reluctance was because of the race being at midnight.  By Friday, I am usually exhausted and ready to go to sleep at 9:30, forget staying up until 12, let alone running 6 miles.  I’ve got a pretty regular circadian rhythm and that does not usually include middle of the night jaunts through Los Angeles.  However, once enough of my friends asked me if I was doing it and Nike reps started taking up residence at the Lyon Center, I started to feel left out and wanted to be there at the insane midnight race with all my friends.  So I got online and registered.

The race was very fun and I’m definitely happy to have done it.  Running through downtown at night is a completely different experience than during the day.  And running at midnight at all is an incredibly strange experience.  I knew the only way I’d make it to the race was to get super hyped up and excited.  I teach my spin class Friday night at 5:30, so I harnessed that “go-go-go” instructor energy (trying to get my class excited about working out) and didn’t let go.  I got myself completely wound up and excited about the race so I could stay up to run and be a happy presence doing so.  And I made it excited and happy.  quite an achievement for one usually dead to the world at 11 pm.

6 miles is a pretty easy distance for me.  I’m used to doing at least 8 most days, so getting trained up to the mileage was a nonissue in this situation.  I knew there would be no finishing trouble.  The question was, how will I perform.  I really didn’t care about my time – this was totally just for fun and to be with my friends.  Somewhat like a Sunday run, but Friday at midnight with alot of other people.

I’ve heard experienced runners talk about running a smart race, having something to do with pacing yourself properly.  This always made sense, but I never properly understood it until this race.  Typically, I just start running and whatever pace I sink into in the first minute or so is pretty much what it’s going to be for the rest of the run.  I don’t go out too fast because I don’t usually go out fast at all.  I can hit straight into my groove and then go.  This race, I went out way too fast.  Way, way too fast.  A couple things contributed to this. 

The first was plain and simple: I was excited.  I intentionally made myself overexcited to mask how tired I would be by midnight.  I had to get up at 5 am to be on campus at 6:30 am work at a Parent’s Weekend event and had not had a proper night sleep all week.  If I do say so myself, I did a great job keeping myself riled up.  However, it came back to bite me.  Usually at a race, you are tempted to get off fast to keep up with the faster runners anyway.  Tonight, I was hyped up and alongside the other runners I just took off.  My overall time was 46:40, which breaks down to 7:30 minute miles.  I can tell you for sure at the end I was going well below that, which means I rocketed off at the start probably hovering under 7 minute miles.  WAY. TOO. FAST.  There were no mile markers on this race and had I gotten to mile 1 in almost under 7 minutes, I would have realized that I was way overdoing it and that I needed to settle in, but as it was, I was probably past mile two before I started to level out.  After about mile 3, by my estimation, the going got relatively tough.  Because I had been going faster before, I started feeling stupid about slowing down.  Even though I knew I had to, it still doesn’t work wonders for your spirit.  The last maybe about 3/4 mile I had a somewhat nasty side cramp hit that I had to push through.  I got there without slowing too much, but would have altogether preferred not to have had to deal with that. 

Secondly, in this race, I unintentionally ended up much too concerned with what other people were doing and how I compared.  I know when you do a long run or race, you just have to forget everyone else and run where you need to be.  If others happen to be there too, that’s great, but not essential.  I had one friend tell me he wanted to try to pace with me.  I had another friend from the gym who jokingly made some comment about racing me and how I would probably whoop him (even though I tell him I run far, but not fast).  I then inadvertently started trying to make sure that I did those things.  I started actually racing and not the simple running with people that I normally do at a race.  This may come sounding like an advocation to never push yourself because it might be painful in the last miles, but that is not at all true.  Constant 7:30 minute miles would have been pushing myself.  My time was certainly a PR, but I could have done the same going at constant pace and felt better and still would have been pushing myself.  Perhaps I could have even done better had I started at 7:30 pace and kicked it up at the end rather than the big slow down I did.

Overall, this was a great race to have this pacing learning experience on.  Since it was only 6 miles, my pacing mistake did not cost me as greatly as it would have on a half marathon.  I could jam it out for a couple miles to finish the race in still alright time.  If the distance had been twice as long, it would have been a rather nasty long haul.  It was a great experience, although my body is extremely confused as to what time it is and whether or not it should be sleeping.

I really like having this blog because it makes me write every week.  And I really miss writing.  Don’t get me wrong, I love science and engineering, but at some point, I need some words in my life.  I’ve been hanging on pins and needles waiting for the Thematic Option course descriptions to come out, so that I can pick a non-chemical engineering class for next semester.  This semester has been all science, all the time and I think I’m going insane.  I need some balance in my life!  To my deep and bitter disappointment, the TO CORE 103 (my last one) classes for Spring 2010 are, all physics related (usually there is at least one neuroscience or something), and, well, no good for me.  To put it lightly.  Being an engineer, I refuse point blank to take a class about physics with a target audience consisting mainly of humanities, arts, and film students.  Forget about it.  I took the honors physics track here for my required physics classes.  I have done relativity calculations; I’m not going to sit around listening to the history of physics and being told to know force = mass X acceleration, but you won’t have to calculate anything.

So therefore, I decided that I would take matters into my own hands.  For the past few weeks, I have not been able to stop saying that all I want is to get handed a book in one of my classes and be told, “Go home and read that.  Then come back and we are going to talk about it.”  Next semester, on the docket for me is ENGL 467 The Modern Novel.

Studies of the narrative experiments and innovations in fiction following the realist novel; emphasis of gender, empire and class and the pluralities of “modernisms.”

Of course, the important part is the book list:

• MCEWAN. SATURDAY
• CUNNINGHAM. THE HOURS
• GRUMBACH. LIFE IN A DAY
• JOYCE. ULYSSES
• WOOLF. MRS.DALLOWAY
• ISHERWOOD. SINGLE MAN

I’m taking this class and I don’t care what anyone says.  I don’t care how much reading or writing it might be (the booklist doesn’t look that daunting compared to TO classes I’ve had.  I’ve already read and loved Mrs. Dalloway).  Evaluation of this list: only read one book, good.  Loved that book and would happily read it again, good.  Thinking that book should give some sort of idea of the style/subject manner of the others, good.  Read Atonement by McEwan and loved it, great writing style, good.  Read (almost) Life of the Artist as a Young Man, which I actually didn’t like (couldn’t finish it), but I’ve heard better things about Ulysses so I’m game for that, good.  The Hours movie was supposed to be really interesting, and the book is always better, good.  The others I know nothing about, but that is the entire point of taking classes like this, to find new books!  I imagine I will enjoy them based on their grouping with other books I like the genre of.  I am so excited for this.  A real college literature class!

Alongside the English class, I’m looking at:
-BISC 330 Biochemistry
-CHE 444aL Chemical Engineering Lab
-CHE 446 Mass Transfer
-CHE 489 Biochemical Engineering
-ITP 109x Introduction to Java Programming

I’ve loved the ITP 104x class (Web Publishing) I’m taking this semester (had that midterm Monday and it’s the first one I’ve really felt good about).  I had no idea I would find this internet business so much fun.  Looking around in course catalogs, I realized that there is an ITP minor that I wish I had known about or I might have done it.  When I came in, I thought I wanted a Nutrition Minor and after taking two classes in it, found that Health Promotion classes were not my cup of tea, so much not my cup of tea, that I no longer considered the minor worth my time even though I had done two classes.  Had I known of ITP at the beginning, I could have used those 8 units towards that instead and been able to finish it, even though it’s a rather big minor (25 units, but I think CSCI 101 could have counted toward it).  Well, I would have had no idea about ITP even if I hadn’t tried for the HP.  I took 104 on a whim this semester to fill up two units, but it’s been my savior class – it lets my artistic side out in web page design.  It’s not all about coding, definitely aesthetics involved. 

Next semester hopefully is much nicer than this one.  Gotta have the balance.  A bit overwhelmed right now, but hopefully the major load this semester will give the last three (what?  how did there get to be only three left?!) some variety…and BOOKS!

For those of you who might not know me, I teach cyling (spinning, I hear both terminologies thrown around and use them interchangably) classes at the Lyon Center (USC gym) for the USC Workout Program on Friday evenings.  I started going to SCycling (as we spell it) when I was a Freshman and immediately fell in love with the music, the difficulty, and the energy.  SCycling gets me dripping sweat faster than any other exercise I do (which, in all honesty, might have something to do with being in a room full of people without much of a cross breeeze to blow off said sweat as well as the exertion).  But whatever the reason for the puddle of water on the floor when I’m done, spinning gets me pumped up and energetic because of the working out in a group and coordinated with great music.

At the end of Freshman year, when I heard they were hiring Workout instructors, I got this idea in my head that I could teach SCycling.  (crazy things can happen when I get ideas in my head…like running marathons)  Conceptually, it didn’t seem that difficult.  Pick cool songs, yell out some commands, bike really hard.  Great!  Just need to get some practice with a teacher.

Long story short, that summer I was supposed to train with an instructor at her class, but she ended up not teaching…so fall came and I wasn’t ready to teach myself.  Toward the end of the semester, I started practicing with a different instructor and finally learning how difficult it actually is to talk while doing a spin class so when the Friday instuctor had a knee injury and wouldn’t be able to teach the following semester, I was in the right place and the right time and got a class of my own.

I didn’t just tell this lovely story of how I became an instructor for the heck of it, but to give some context for this:
This past Sunday, we (meaning myself and all the other SCycling instructors) got certified by Keiser as instructors.  Most, or maybe all, of us got into teaching similarly to how I did.  We started going to spinning, liked it, and got a crash training from a senior instructor at USC.  None of us were actually certified.  Most gyms and health clubs require a certification for you to teach, but USC had not required this.  The Workout program is mainly taught by students with fitness background and we had all demonstrated our capability and let loose without that “official” certificate.  Prompted by some of the instructors, USC RecSports decided to provide the certification for us.  Since we had a relatively big group, we could do this at USC all together on a weekend.

The class was incredible.  I am super re-invigorated about teaching!  I loved our instructor Buddy’s enthusiasm and energy.  It was absolutely infectious.  We did a couple sets of spinning with him to show us the way he leads a class.  It really demonstrated to me how to be more effective at getting the students pumped up.   It was also a treat to take the class with all the other instructors.  We rarely all see each other at once, and it was nice to get to know the others better and to swap ideas about music and drills with them as well as with Buddy.  We learned lots of new types of drills that we can implement in our own classes.  I’ve rather felt like in my classes I was doing mostly the same things over and over again in slighly different order and to different songs.  We received a whole arsenal of drill types to try out and play with in our classes. 

So here’s the main points that I will take away for my own class:

• slightly longer warm-up, get off the bike and walk around the class a bit during this time to make sure everyone’s properly adjusted, using good form, and doing well
• (if possible, depending on how crowded) move my own bike around/get on different bikes among the students once in a while throughout class to be more with them and encouraging…and make them pay attention to what they’re doing better
• be sure to thank students for coming at the start and ask them to think about what they want to get from this ride.
• more visualizations during exercises (ex. riding up hills, in the forest, etc…get creative)
• more cues to the students; namely, how long we will be, for example, sprinting, what’s coming up next
• use of challenging/empowering language; ex. can you give me one more gear, 10 more RPMs, etc.
• add in the new exercises and drills given

The main thing I want to implement better in my classes is being positive and energetic.  While I have always tried to do this in my classes, I would like to work on making that come across more effectively and equally make sure the students are excited as I am.  I know that my personality type is more introverted, and I don’t naturally bubble all over the place when I’m excited.  Going over teaching with Buddy, he specifically pointed out places where it is especially effective in the class to give encouragement, how to talk to students, how to give cues in manners that convey that energy better.  This, as well as being more prepared so I can gives cues better (as mentioned above) is where I will put my prime focus in improving my classes and I think the rest will fall into place with that emphasis.

I’m ready and raring to go!  Are you?  Come check out my class!

 
These are the bikes we use.

Monday evening, I went to see the USC Symphony play for another Visions and Voices event.  Michael Tilson Thomas, who attended USC Thornton School of Music for his master’s in music, was the guest conductor.  I ended up heading off to this one by myself after class hoping to run into someone I knew to sit with.  Unfortunately, in the crowd, I didn’t find any friends, but ended up sitting next to an elderly gentleman alone in the balcony.  I struck up a conversation with him while we were waiting, and we had a lovely chat.  He was at USC at the same time as Tilson Thomas and knew him.  One of his students was supposed to be playing in the Symphony that night.  What does he teach, but VIOLA, my instrument! (Fate, I tell you, has funny ways of bringing people together).  He told me several stories from his life, one of which was this:

When he was in college, he attended LA City College for a couple years.  While there, he went to play in an orchestra.  He had played the violin since he was 8.  When he got there, the director told him that his name would be on the stand where he was supposed to sit.  He went all through the second violins, but wasn’t there.  Then he went through the firsts and wound up in the first chair, second stand.  Shocked that he was put so far up, when no one in the orchestra knew how he played, he sat down and introduced himself to the girl in the chair next to him.  She said hello, but wasn’t particularly friendly.  He kept trying to look at this girl.  Obviously, he coudn’t see her very well from right next to her.  He noticed that across the way, there was only one violist in the section, where he would have a clear view of this female violinist.  So he volunteered to the director to play in the viola section, although he had never played a viola in his life.  After rehearsal, he rushed to his teacher and begged to be given a crash course in viola, explaining his situation and the lovely violinist in the front section.  Laughing, the teacher gave him a few hour lesson and at the next rehearsal, barely able to read the alto clef, he started in the viola section with a clear view of the lovely girl.  Four years later, they were married.  And that was about 4o some years ago….He’s been playing viola ever since.

I thought it was a beautiful story, and it brightened my evening.  Score one for romance.  You never know what you’ll find when you sit with a stranger.  One day it might be as simple as a heartening tale, and, who knows, another it could be a lifelong love.

I probably will expound on running many many times over the course of this school year.  I could go on about it every week, but I don’t want to bore you or stagnate myself, so I’ll keep it mixed up.  Consider running a recurring theme.

Marathon team preseason started two Sundays ago and I am once again in love with it.  Not that I ever doubted how much I adore the team, but my conviction has certainly been restrengthened.  The past two Sundays have turned into completely spontaneous running adventures.  I have found some new teammates who also don’t want a light preseason (distance-wise) and we spent the last two Sundays exploring Downtown with the assistance of my handy-dandy Garmin (GPS).

Week 1:
North on Figeroa (+some detours onto Flower due to the Emmy’s at the Staples Center that evening) to 4th (or so)
East to Disney Concert Hall
South on Grand to Jefferson
West on Jefferson to USC
Around Campus
8.5 miles

Week 2:
South on Vermont to Martin Luther King
East on MLK to Fig
North on Fig to Chick Hearn Ct. (Staples/LA Live)
North on some street to Wilshire (don’t remember)
West on Wilshire to Western
South on Western to Washington
East on Washington to Vermont
South on Vermont back to campus
11.5 miles

I love the spontaneous runs.  We had no idea where we were going before starting out.  We started the same direction as the team and then just kept going.  This is my favorite type of running.  The just going, just feeling the pavement under your feet, the wind in your face, finishing tired but satisfied.  Nothing can surpass it.  Utter freedom.  What really makes it is the company.  Like any experience, it is better shared.   A solitary run can be good for the soul and very centering, but runs like these escapades are meant to be remembered in company.  I’m excited for what the next weeks will bring, knowing that I have cohorts.  They always push me to go distances I wouldn’t have done alone.

Visions and Voices is one of my favorite things about USC.  Last Friday (9/18), I got to go see the play August: Osage County for free at the Ahmanson Theater.  For those of you who have never been there, the theater (and surrounding Music Center) are beautiful and I would love to go spend an afternoon just sitting outside there looking at the architecture and public art around the outside.  Getting to see a work of art performed as well is even more of a dream evening and I am immensely grateful for all the performances that I have seen there.

Of course, Visions and Voices always manages to make the experience out of the ordinary – we got to speak to a couple of the Center Theater Group representatives about how the Center works to put on theater productions affordable by everyday people in Los Angeles and also general comments about how plays are commissioned and how difficult it is for excellent playwrights to spend their time writing plays and not more mainstream media such as television scripts.  The play August: Osage County was actually written by a playwright given free reign and no boundaries on his writing.  The play has 13 actors in it, which is very rare for a theater productions due to the financial cost and the risk associated with the possibility that the play will flop.  Companies don’t want to have invested in so many performers on the risk that they will not make that money back.  August’s production was a blind leap of faith in its original Broadway debut.

With all this background, I could greatly appreciate the play.  The plot centers around an extremely disfunctional family brought back together under the same roof again when the patriarch of the family goes off one evening and does not return.  While the family portrayed in August has many many more issues than most families (including multiple cases of adultery and incest), I found that I could relate quite a bit to the family members driving each other up the wall, especially some of the mother-daughter griping.  It seems an inescapable fact of life that mothers and daughters will drive each other crazy to some degree and get fed up with each other over something.  A great amount of the family yelling and cursing at each other definitely hits upon some challenging questions of family relationships and treatment of each other.  The extremity of this family’s issues helps to drive those questions home in a way that would not have been so striking had the they been more mainstream disfunctional.  Many times the plot got me to thinking, well, my family is not this extreme, but do we have this communication issue even if it’s not so glaring?  The ultimate questions of the play, in my opinion, are: how far can you push people before you ultimately push them away, even if they are family and supposedly obligated to stay? and how important is proving yourself to be strong and independent at the risk of isolating yourself?

Intrigued?  Go check it out.  (and I’m not being paid to give an endorsement, I promise)

http://www.centertheatregroup.org/tickets/productiondetail.aspx?id=9652

This evening I participated in a Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Research Laboratory’s study on the effect of hip strength on athletic performance and got to test out my hip strength in abduction and extension on a cool pressure sensing machine.  I really enjoy anatomy and physiology, so I was grilling the PhD candidate conducting the study on how he decided to study this and came up with his methods and the results he’s seen so far and on and on.  Having been involved in research projects myself, and I guess just by virtue of being an engineer, I want to know all this nitty gritty stuff.  I started to wonder, though, if PhD students conducting this sort of research like when they get hyper-curious subjects like myself, or would prefer just to have someone they can tell what to do and get it done, quick, easy, brainlessly.  I have always liked to think that the former (like I always tend to be) is true.  And although I am shooting off on this musing right now, I don’t mean to insinuate like John, said grad student, didn’t seem like he wanted to chat with me about the research.  He seemed to care very much about communicating his road to the current research and goals to me.  I hope all grad students – and undergrads – like what they are doing enough that they always want to teach others about it.  It’s one thing to DO whatever you are studying all the time, but another to have to relive the process of coming to it, and possibly having to dumb it down for inquirers lacking your background.  I hope I always want to do this.  And also hope I always want to ask questions too.  It’s the combination of the two that get us anywhere in science.

Wow, all that sprung forth from pushing on a machine with my leg this evening.  Never a dull moment in the brain…