Racing

Four Miles!!  This may not seem like anything huge, but for me ... monstrous.  This is the first time I've run this far continuously in over four years.  I felt like I could just keep going forever.  As soon as I hit 33 minutes (3 min warm up and 3 miles) I got so excited.  I started looking at the people next to me on the treadmills, and I was running faster and farther than them.  Yes this is a race, and I'm crushing them both.  I didn't even hit the wall today.  I've run 9 miles this week, and that's a personal record.  I feel like the rest of my time in Chicago is starting to feel like this.  I'm not bummed if I have a night with no plans, I'm excited because it rarely happens.  I'm not hitting walls making plans with friends.  I'm having the opposite problem, I don't have the time to see everyone I want to see.  I think sometimes when you go through a break up, it takes you a while to reconnect with all your friends and get close again the way you were before.  I'm a naturally introverted person ... So this took me a while.  But now I feel like there is no wall.  I just wanted to grab the person next to me on the treadmill and yell "I'm running farther than you!! It's awesome!!"  One change, well on its way.

Second pain in the a$$.  Work.  I can not stay focused.  Maybe I'm just so excited thinking about my next step, but it's like trying to pay attention to a tennis match.  I miss having a manager that pushed me and I learned from.  I want to be challenged.  I did something risky this week and applied for a job at a hospital.  It's process improvement inside a hospital.  Improving customer experience, quality of care, and the experience of someone extremely sick or injured.  Post graduate school, this is where I want my career to go, for personal reasons.

Four years ago I was in a skiing accident, and it was awful.  I broke both my hips and really messed up my knee.  After spending two weeks in the hospital, I know there is so much that can be improved.  I remember so many things that happened to me that made the whole experience a nightmare (aside from all the broken bones).  I remember laying in the hospital bed after the initial assessment hoping I would make it back to the cabin to sit in the hot tub.  I had fallen rolled and was stopped by two trees.  One tree to my hip breaking both of them, and my left leg wrapped around the other tree.  The surgeon came into the room and just looked at me and said "It's time to call your dad, we're clearing the operating room for you because we need to reattach your leg."  He started explaining all the damage I had done to myself.  My right leg was not attached to my body.  My left hip was broken.  I had shattered three ligaments in my left knee and broken two other bones in my knee.  I think he must have noticed the blank stare on my face because he started to draw a picture on the wall of where my leg had broken and come off my body.  Mid sentence I just burst into tears.  I was about to start a long long long rehab.  Today for the first time since then, I ran like before the accident.  That surgeon told me I would probably not run the same as I did before, but I'm going to show him now.

30 Miles Down 220 Miles to Go