Sept 16 2012

            For this week school has started to get a little more challenging. I need to do a better job of keeping up on all my tasks. I have two tests tomorrow and I hope that I can do well. I’m not too concerned with my psychology class but I am concerned with my Anatomy. In the back of my head I remember the teacher saying that we can drop a bad test score but I believe pondering this option as the best option probably isn’t a good thing. This is the second test of about 8 total tests, and from the look of the material of the next test (the numerous points on the skull) the test on the inguinal system shouldn’t be the one I attempt to drop. Apparently my thoughts are enveloped around my anatomy class.

                Ted Brimley, a really close friend from high school, barely entered into the military and will be doing that for the next while in his life. Kelsey and I received a phone call from Adam Brown (another long time high school friend) in which he said that he was organizing an ultimate Frisbee night in celebration of him. While we were there we saw Brendan, Tate and their wives, Sterling, Adam, Ted, Carlos and others.

                We visited my grandma and grandpa Adams this week. My grandma has had issues with diabetes and much to my surprise; she had to have her big toe amputated as a result of a situation that arose. My grandpa takes really good care of her and she is in good hands, but it was nice to go and stay with her for a couple days last week.  

                While we were there, we let Beta out with all the sheep. Beta loved it and would sprint around directing all the sheep wherever she desired.  We took Beta on a walk again around the small lake here in my Grandma’s housing community. She likes the exercise and acts up if she doesn’t get it. We have thrown her into the lake the last couple times partly for fun (with the hope that she will not be as scared), and secondly as a quick bath for her. Beta has a lot of hair and the dirt will stick to her as the time of her bathlessness expands.

                We went to the dollar movies yesterday in Tempe. We saw Men in Black 3 and it was actually really entertaining. I have had bad luck with previously seen sequel type movies.

                I can tell that my level of fitness is increasing. I have felt very good in some of the workouts I have ran lately. I am excited to have my first race in 12 days. It’s hard to predict what kind of shape I will be when the race comes because I haven’t got a chance to practice with others of whom I know their ability, so I’m going in blind into this race. I ran the same course as the Chandler Invitation a week and a half ago and got 19 minutes flat running in trainers, alone without too much pressure to perform, but I have felt that I have done well in some runs by myself… I’m guessing anything from around 16 flat to 17:30 as long as I do not receive any injuries before race day.

                My grandma returned to her house a couple days ago and so it has been fun to have her around. We went to church today all together. Kels and I received the calling to be ward missionaries so that will be fun, we will get sustained in church next week. After church, my grandma cooked us dinner. We had fajitas, fried squash and a nice French salad. Kelsey and I are in charge of dinner next week.   Things are working out well and challenges in our lives are still at the “manageable” level- Nothing too hard.

9/2/12

 This last week has been fun. Before Kelsey’s Mom and sister left the house to go back to California they went to the store and loaded up the fridge with food. That was really nice, not that we starve but it’s fun have food around the house that isn’t the Royer traditional meals we have all the time.

Kels and Chandler’s XC team had their first Invite of the year this last weekend. The runners ran well with several medaling performances from the girls team; overall the girls got 6^th overall. The guys didn’t score due to a miscommunication with one of the runners and ultimately ran in the wrong heat on purpose which messed up the scoring, typical issues for the first meet of the year. The assistant coach (Sasha) for the team is the head coach of the soccer team and doesn’t have a ton of experience coaching XC but though he was a dilettante initially, his passion and love of the athletes is converting him to love and appreciate the sport. Sasha is a perfect assistant coach and unlike other typical dogmatic coaches, he is understanding and athlete-based.

After the race we said hi to some of the other coaches. Josh Burton a runner I used to run with at MCC is the assistant coach of the Mtn View Toros. It was nice to see him. I remember running a hard workout with just me and him a couple of years back on MCC’s track. Most athletes are not discipline enough to run tough workouts under such conditions. I remember switching the intervals back and forth throughout the 5-6 x 1000 meter repeats at 4:55-5 min/mile pace. We talked with Messer a little bit and he said he was planning on running at Desert Twilight and the end of the month. I have never ran Twilight, but I have watched it a couple times. It inspired me to run also. I planned out that I will be running 4 races in the next 4 months. Twilight 5k, Mcc’s 8k, Turkey Trot 10k and Sally Meyerhoff 5k are all on the list.

Yesterday I had fun taking Beta out for a run in the desert. Because of her obdurate and stubburn personality no matter how much I say “Beta Sit!” if she sees another human being she will instantly run straight toward them and make attempts to cuddle. So the desert runs are fun. I can take her off the leash and her and I can both run free. I want her to chase jack rabbits but by the time she sees them, they are long gone. She is so funny because she will run all out with me (I limit my runs to around 20 minutes with her) and once she gets home, lay out in her typical torpor positions.

My anatomy class voted on delaying the first test so rather than already having it, my first test will be this coming Wednesday. I hope I can do well. I plan on studying a lot the next couple days. My neighbor came over the other day to talk about a business proposal for me to join called legal shield. It honestly sounds like an interesting idea and predict that the company with continue to succeed in the future.

The last couple days I was able to perform my second set of running analysis videos, this one for the Chandler runners. I hope it helps, I know that I would have appreciated it if it was done for me when I was in HS. I am interested on how there gaits change throughout races, so I may get footage of them in one of their upcoming races and compare the two with them. If optimizing performance is the quest of a runner, feedback is a must.

I am determined to be more successful in what I do in life. I have recently been running, but not very consistently. I have been studying but not efficiently. I have been organized… some of the time. I want to train to race, study to excel in classes, and establish order in my life to enjoy it to the fullest. Though there are trials in my life, recently they have all been ephemeral and controllable. I’m excited for the weather to subdue and be able to walk outside or train at other times in the day besides being restricted to mornings or evenings.  Finally, I am secure in the fact that I know that no matter how bad I fail I have a beautiful loving wife with me through the good and the bad. Kels means everything to me and I love her so much, and though we joke, make fun of and at times get upset at each other, we are always there for each other at the end of the day.

8/30/12

    The last week has been a rough one for the most part. Kels has been dealing with a bladder infection. She has had issues with her bladder and kidneys for the last couple years. We went to the local urgent care and got a prescription for antibiotics... but they didn't work very well. We went again to try a different round of antibiotics and it appears that it is working this time. It has been tough, because she likes to run with her runners but due to this issue she hasn't been able to run with the group. Her and her high school xc team have their first invitational of the season this Saturday in Scottsdale.

    Kelsey's mom and sister came out here to Arizona this week. It has been a fun change of scenery and makes our games like boggle fun with more people. 

    I completed my second week of classes. I only have classes Monday-Wednesday so it's a little different then Mon-Friday like back at BYUH. Sure I have reading assignments on the other days but my schedule is a whole less crowded. I have my first Anatomy & Physiology test next week. It appears that it will be challenging, but the question will be how challenging... This will be a good indicator to how difficult the semester will be. So far the main issues I foresee are the requirement to memorize the parts of the body with correct spelling & correct identification of tissue types and their parts (epithelial tissue seems especially tricky).

    I took the GRE test this last week and did all right. I got 144 verbal, 152 quantitative and not sure about the writing section yet (it takes about 3 weeks for the actual grade to come out). The math score is okay, but I may need to retake the test to boost that verbal score. 

    In the world, Lance Armstrong was stripped of his 7 Tour De France titles due to testing positive to performance enhancing drugs. If you do much research about the issue lance has had not just one or two teammates-but handfuls-of training buddies tell newspapers that their group used performance enhancers. So I personally believe that Lance has used drugs... Having said this I have no personal distrust with Lance as a person. Amazingly he formed the will-power to not only overcome cancer but take on the world's best and defeat them. Why do I think this is fair (having already acknowledged Lance as a doper)? Mainly all of those riders dope. The system is flawed. For example, if I wanted to take epo legally I could easily get a medical prescription from a doctor and as long as I say that I need it for heath purposes and smooth talking I would be approved. It may be hard to get the approval from a doctor, but when your training team has their own team doctor... things seem to get a little more grey, especially if money is there to support your argument. I predict future developments will come out to uphold this perspective's veracity. To conclude my thought, Lance is a positive influence due to his recovery from cancer and a little from his bike riding skills. 

     What else is going on in my life? I had an experience at Central Arizona College which concreted my belief that college faculty workers everywhere malinger. My latest example of their avoidance of  responsibility concluded will a lady telling me that I would need to pay off my tuition before I could fill out my paperwork to get a student loan. Which doesn’t make any sense… I need a loan to pay off my tuition. We are on a payment plan, so this issue may not be essential but the thoughtless procedures of schools never seem to surprise me.

      Kelsey had an interview yesterday with the City of Casa Grande for a video production position. She gave her interviewer an online collection of the video she had produced while being the editor-in-chief of multimedia back at BYU-H. Unfortunately a whole collection of her videos she produced entitled “The Daily Dose” had been deleted from the archives of the schools system. We are not sure who actually deleted them (Kels knows all the employees and has her suspicions) but it’s a sad situation especially since earlier videos are still stored on the site and all of her 70 or so videos are nowhere to be seen.

    I can’t really think of too much else going on. I rode my bike yesterday to return a redbox and noticed that there were a bunch of rabbits out yesterday. When I returned to the house I got Beta and took her out to the desert next to our house and let her chase some bunnies. For those of you who don’t know Beta herself she is only about a foot tall and about 2 feet long due to her pedigree (Shi tzu / Basset hound mix). So given that one of these days she actually catches a rabbit (which is unlikely due to her 15mph max speed compared to 30 or so found in the rabbits), she probably won't hurt them due to the size of her small mouth; she isn’t that nice to the crickets though. Crickets have become a new play toy for Beta.

   Overall things are good around the house. Life’s challenges have been, and most likely will continue, to be eclectic and educational. I wonder what the future will have in store for us for the coming week.

    

Blog-Journal Entry 1

     As I was at the dinner table with Kelsey here on Sunday I was thinking that it has been a long time since I wrote in my journal. I wasn't sure about the best way to start writing because I am not a big fan of clutter, so I thought that an online journal may be a great choice for me.
     The last several months have flown by but I will try to recap a little from the time I graduated from BYU-Hawaii... Kels and I had to sell pretty much everything we had in Hawaii before heading back to the mainland. I remember having a tarp full of stuff that, by the end, we were just giving away. Its amazing how much stuff we accumulated within the year or so we were there living in Temple View Apartments. Anyways, I remember looking/running at the amazing trails the last week I was in Hawaii and realized how much I'm going to miss the good loops; Pine Forest, Ha'aula Loop and Gunstock were  some of my favorites. I also missed the beach, not that we went there excessively--perhaps once a week on average (once every two weeks to actually spend time there) but it was nice to wake up in the morning and go on a good run and have the beautiful horizon of the Hawaiian islands right there. I loved living in Laie, I am so grateful that things worked out so perfectly.
      After Kels and I graduated we headed back to the deserts from where we were raised. We stayed the first 3-4 months with Kelsey's family. It was nice, really nice... Almost too nice because we were pampered excessively. YMCA passes given, free food, free movies, free pretty much everything. We attempted to pay for our costs but would be denied by Kels' parents. They would tell us that we would need the money for the future. There we faced the challenge of basically not having any challenges. What does that mean? Sleeping in was a usual occurrence, laziness became more and more a compromising outcome throughout the day, and ironically with everything we could possibly ask for right at our fingertips my personal training seemed to be more and more difficult to manage. Not to say that we didn't have anything to do during the day. I had an online Pre-Calc class through Central College, my sister came out and stayed with us for some time so that she could work out issues in her life which took a fair amount of time and energy, and walks for Beta and Cedric were fairly common.
      Towards the end of our stay in Lancaster things became a little more adventurous. I finished up my math class earning a B+ (due to a 55% test 2 which killed my grade). Online classes can be challenging, I knew how to perform the tasks, but without any consideration for my work, if I were even one-tenth off on a final answer the problem was completely wrong. I don't think I will attempt any math classes online for a while. For those who may be asking why I am taking math classes when I have already graduated, I didn't know that I wanted to be a physical therapist until a little less than 2 years ago. Though I have my bachelor's I will still need several more classes before applying to PT schools. I actually start school again tomorrow with a class-load of physics, anatomy & physiology, and psychology. I am excited to take on these classes and am most excited for anatomy & physiology. I have already taken these courses at BYUH, but they were taught from an exercise science perspective rather than from a biology perspective (which is required for Grad school).
       One of the reasons I am excited for school is the fact that I will be biking to and from school. The reason this is a good thing is because of the bike I get to ride. I have never had a road bike before. Though I have biked for a long time starting way back in the days with Juse, Nathan, Matt and Jason when I was about 13, I was always riding a fairly clunky full-suspension off-road bike, which was nice, but the only problem was I rarely went off-road and would wear out my bikes by miles and miles of distance. This is if they weren't stolen first. I had 3 bikes stolen from ages 13-18. I just figured it was karma from stealing candy and basketball cards from when I was young, but nonetheless it was annoying. My newest bike is pretty nice it is actually made by GMC, who would have thought that the same company that makes cars would make road bikes. When I bought it, it was between itself and a blue Schwinn, but though the schwinn was a little lighter i didn't think the half pound was worth 100 bucks. Besides, my yellow bike had more gears anyway.
      I skipped ahead, back to the time when we were leaving Lancaster... Kelsey and I would run with her old High School's XC team in the mornings for a while. So we got really interested in running again. As we sat down and were talking during breakfast we were thinking of what jobs we would want here in AZ when we would move back. We thought it would be cool to coach a xc team. We had both coached track and field earlier in the summer, which by the way our 7th grade boys owned the section. This was mainly due to one standout sprinter that got 40 points by himself (max of 10 points per event and each athlete could only participate in 4 events) having a perfect championship couple of days. Anyways, Kels found that there was a position for a Head Coach in Chandler, Arizona. At one point we ending up driving the 6 hours to Chandler just for the interview, and after finishing drove back to California. Our poor little car has made that trip a lot and luckily hasn't pooped out on us yet. We did have a tire blow out on one of the trips recently though. Kelsey was the one driving and reacted like a pro, even though afterwards she admitted that she didn't understand what was wrong and did not know that there was a blow-out.
      Kelsey's interview went well... very well. After about 30 minutes of talking with the athletic director Dave Shapiro, Dave told me that "she got the job". Needless to say the drive back to California was a happy one. Once we got back to Cali we spent a couple days out on the lake with Kelsey's family's friends Heather and Steve. Which was sweet, I got up to 58 MPH on a jet ski with Kels. I got a chance to wake-board as well, though I can tell that a lot of my strength was missing from the last time I did this a couple years ago. I think its from the consistently high mileage I had from the last couple years of training at BYUH. Skinny legs= less strength. After that trip we went straight into a week long xc trip up in Mammoth Lakes, California with Kelsey's old High School. I was really excited to do well but after a 10 mile trail run at the half way point my IT band seized up and I had to ride back in a vehicle. I would run occasionally throughout the week but it definitely wasn't as much of a health benefit as I was hoping for. As if our running spirits weren't focused enough we attended a Coaching clinic at Mt Sac. It was good to see Jeff Messer again. It had been a while since we had talked and it was a really good experience. Jeff was by far the best speaker there which is pretty impressive due to the caliber of coaches that teach and attend those meetings.
      That was pretty much the last major thing we did in California. As we left to go to Arizona we were hoping to stay at a resort for a couple days in Palm Springs but that got cut short due to not having Beta's shot record on hand. This was important because in order to have Beta stay with a kennel  we needed her paperwork. So ready or not, we headed back to the hot, hot valley of the Sun. Kels and her coaching and me and my school work. We both hope to substitute teach for a little more income and look forward to doing that shortly. We arrived in Casa Grande about 3 weeks ago. The memories of the home we stayed in for a couple months as newly weds flood back all the time. Things are great though, we love staying here. My grandma currently travels around a lot especially due to her husband passing away not too long ago. It's her house and we are pleased to stay here while we are taking on our challenges at this point in our lives. We hope to stay here for the school year and plan on moving out at the conclusion of this school year (hopefully as being an accepted student of NAU's PT program).
      I recently was able to go up to Flagstaff with my long-time friend Nathan for MCC's annual Summer Camp. This is a tradition that has stuck since my last year at MCC when I presented this idea to coach Condon and decided to give it a try. All of the credit goes to Brother Nelson-- the ranch is his. Kelsey meanwhile couldn't come up to the camp because she had her newly acquired responsibility as the coach of Chandler High. Kels recently had an extremely successful parent's meeting and the athlete's, assistant coaches and parents are all on route to have, I predict, a very successful season. At camp, it was fun to see Coach Condon again. Coach Condon is such a fun coach and I am so happy to have had him as a mentor for my early college-running life.
     Today Kels and I watched Tangled and we both got all emotional because within the movie is one of our many wedding songs. Turns out Tangled is a really good movie. I have my GRE test coming up on Saturday.(Who would have guessed that in my spare time I am studying for and spending 175 bucks for tests on weekends). I took a practice test and I got 145 verbal, 149 quantitative. For those who do not understand that, its slightly less than the average score participants get. Hopefully a week of studying can help me boost that score.
     There are a lot of things that I'm sure that I will forget about due to not writing about them now, but the last year or so has been overall so good. I have been so blessed. I have a wonderful wife that loves me, a little dog that looks up to me and friends and family that make life so wonderful. I hope to write in this Journal on a weekly basis, most likely future posts won't be as time consuming to read but I feel that if I don't start writing now, these memories will be lost. I will report back next week. Hopefully I can do well on that GRE.