another online alter-ego

Some self-promotion here.

For my senior project, I'm developing an outdoor magazine about this wonderful state of Ohio. I realized that a website is really easy to make, too.

Behold, everything that's wonderful about Ohio (and my site avatar, which is an awesome Scottish cow):

If you're interested, check it out here. Much appreciated, friends!

conference 2012

Well, that was exciting.

I went into the race feeling awesome.

About three minutes later, I wasn't feeling quite so awesome. I finished the race about a minute slower than my usual 6k time, feeling like my legs had been run over with a dump truck. Repeatedly. 

Just about to die at the finish line. 

Thankfully, we had an awesome crew of parents grilling their hearts out after the race. Nothing makes up for a bad race like a lukewarm hamburger. Seriously, though. The food was incredible and now I've got enough leftovers to last me a week. 

I'm going to blame my performance on bad weather and not eating enough muffins. So I made a batch last night to counterbalance the Frankenstorm.

These smiling ghosts make me so happy. Recipe here. Ghosts optional. 

Autumn is falling away from us fast. Temps are dipping low, we're running the conference meet in a week, and my schedule is jammed up with interviews and deadlines.

Today we're taking an impromptu camping trip at Salt Fork. It's gonna be cold, but we're bringing lots of hot chocolate. Time to bust out the hiking boots and woolen socks.

busy, wonderful fall

This time of year is absolutely brilliant. Here are four great things lately:

1. Little kittens on quilts (and the process of slowly turning into a crazy cat lady).

2. Animal waffles on Sunday mornings.

3. Hair-braiding parties (otherwise known as cross country meets).

4. Beautiful afternoon light.

5. Sunday night bluegrass jams in the arch.

I hope everyone's having a lovely October.

P.S. Montana's hatred for all things Ohio has derailed my fall break plans. He started whining when he read my last blog post. Instead, we'll be going to Davis, WV to find coonskin hats.

fall break

School is inching towards the unbearable yet again, and I'm getting burnt out on reading poetry and running the same traffic-y strips of concrete over and over again. I also might be turning into a vampire from spending so much time in the darkroom for photography class. (Totally worth the lack of Vitamin D, by the way. I'll share some sweet black and whites later on.)

My huge and imposing Senior Independent Study project (it's so important it gets a capitalized name) is coming along nicely. I'll be spending this year producing a magazine about the outdoors in Ohio. Hopefully people will read it and enjoy it so I can feel justified in getting shitfaced with the rest of the senior class in March.

So for fall break (those blessed four days off from school) I'm planning dusting off my mountain bike for a tiny vacation. I'm trying to hit all the best singletrack in Ohio and write some trail reviews along the way.

While it's not quite as grand as a trip to Colorado, it'll be nice to get out of Wooster for a while. I need some more trees in my life.

Any other suggestions are welcome.

So I'm not very fast right now - right now I'm barely clinging to the 3rd spot on the team. But that's okay, because my favorite part of cross country season isn't really the running.

It's the team activities,

the team cheers,

and the new friends.

It's also the pre-race anticipation.

and then the post race endorphin rush.

And the long, long weekend long runs through the dried-up farm fields and the changing leaves of northern Ohio. These are best when they're followed by pancake breakfasts.

So that's all I've got for now. Here's to a new season and a new school year with a shit-ton of miles to run and a shit-ton of books to read.

Hope everyone's having a delightful fall after the hottest summer on record ever.

the coolest kid on campus

Monday - the first day of my senior year of college. I flounced across the dewy academic quad in my new dress, backpack stocked with new pens, waving excitedly at all my old college chums I hadn't seen since my semester in New Zealand. (Okay, that last sentence is a lie. I didn't actually see anybody I knew. Somehow 80% of the student body look like freshmen this year. But so do I, so that's not saying much.)

I hurried into the grand old stone castle of the humanities departments to be a fashionable 5 minutes early for my poetry class. I sat down on a bench next to a dumpy girl in sweatpants and glasses.

"Are you here for Spanish class?" she asked.

I glanced at her and shook my head. Why was she waiting outside of the classroom for modernist poetry? Weirdo. A student walked into the room and I jumped up to catch the door before it shut.

I sat down at a chair in the middle of the room and looked around. I knew a couple people there. My roommate Libby was supposed to be in this class, but she wasn't there yet. More kids filtered in. A couple political science majors. A girl who'd once thrown up on the cross-country team's couch. A kid in a flat-brimmed hat. The dumpy girl from the bench. Where were the ironic square-framed glasses? Where were the leather messenger bags? This was all wrong.

I opened my planner. The numbers didn't jive with the numbers on the door. As quietly as I could, I shut the planner and slid it into my bag. Then I snuck out the door and hurried upstairs into the loving arms of my fellow English students.

I never found out if it was a Spanish class or not.

Coming back to campus is a bit of a shock, mostly because everything has shifted about five feet from from where it used to be: the printers in the library, professor's offices, the dressing at the salad bar. There's an entirely new gym and fitness facility, so I never know exactly where the exercise machines are or how to use them correctly. The English faculty's gotten rid of a bunch of old people and brought in a bunch of new ones. And the library's been reorganized yet again to help people locate numbers in order on a shelf.

Sometimes I find myself wandering around lost trying to remember my mailbox combination, and then some nice person intervenes to ask me how I'm liking my first semester of college.

Very much, thanks.

Besides being a poorly-adjusted upperclassman, I'm also kind of busy. I've got a senior project to work on (details pending), cross country practice every day, a whole bunch of photography supplies to buy, and a digestive system that's still adjusting to the cafeteria food.

Luckily, I found this blog to distract me.

I love this ice-cream-headed man so much I might set him as my desktop background. Or marry him, because what says romance better than an edible face?

Also coming soon - a compendium of Coach Rice quotes and pictures of tie-dye shirts.

Preview: "You all look like you've got tar on your shoes right now. But by the end of the season, you'll be so fast you won't believe it. You know what? I'm going to dip all your shoes in tar and see if it comes off at the end of the season. Right in time for the Conference Championship. Heh, heh."

1/26

Remember when I said I was running a race on the little track? Well, I did do that... five days ago. It was a pretty good race. I tried to run a steady tempo and then quickly realized how out of shape I am. Then dragged myself around the track for another 14 laps.

Still, second place and a time that would've beat my PR in high school? Not too shabby.

And the most interesting photo I managed to capture for the residents of blogtown?

Oh, Ohio.

Has anyone ever been to a state that just oozes this much lameness out of its highways? Nebraska might be a close contender.

Oh and also, a big happy birthday to the Boyfriend!! He's 21 and pretty skinny so he's probably getting all trashed on gin and tonics.

back to the little oval of hell

So someone recently asked me: "What do you eat to build up your glycogen stores?"

Answer: ice cream. Lots of refined sugars = energy for miles and miles and miles.

Just kidding. I'd love to geek out on foodie stuff, but I'm busy gearing up for the moment of reckoning for the Fighting Scots in our beautiful new GYM.

YUS. No more midnight practices at the local high school. 

I haven't been in the finished building yet, since I'm not on campus. But I hear it's a gigantic new 123,000 square foot building with a bunch of courts for court-sports (which I quit when I was 11), a few jumping pits, a beautiful new fitness center, rowing machines, a bunch of weights to throw around, rust-free locker rooms, new offices, and an NCAA regulation size 200 meter running track.

Or as I like to call it, the little oval of hell.

Even though I'm not going to Hobbiton for another month, Coach was nice enough to enter me in a few indoor meets this winter.

Like running on treadmills and treating ingrown toenails, indoor track is an unpleasant necessity. The track is tiny, so you have to do twice as many laps per race. The air is dry and raw. You get lapped a whole lot and cough like a chain smoker after the race. I know few distance runners who actually like running indoor. Look at these girls.

waaaaaaah D:

They're professional runners, and they're winning this race. But they look none too pleased.

Still, there are some seriously wonderful things about indoor season. After a whole season of sprinting around a hard little rubber oval under a canopy of fluorescent lights, you turn into a mole-person. You forget what sunlight feels like on your skin. You forget about things like wind and rain. You forget that sweat doesn't have to sting.

And then outdoor season rolls around and running gets real again - after your eyes adjust to the sunshine. Even though spring season's cold, rainy and miserable (much like winter), it's good for you. Outdoor season peels off the winter layer of soft, temperature-controlled flab built up on the indoor track (or is that just me?). It makes you hard.


Plus, a fervent hatred for indoor track makes just about anything else bearable. With every nostrilful of snot you blow out onto the track during a frigid 10k in early April, you wonder why the hell you signed up for this shit. But then as you splash through the flooded backstretch, you tell yourself: You think this is bad? Just imagine, you could be inside doing twice as many laps. If you're waiting in an absurdly long line at Macy's to return a pair of $12.00 slippers your brother rejected for Christmas, at least you're not running a 10k on an indoor track. Or if you have food poisoning from bad sushi, at least you didn't buy it at an indoor track. 

Then it's time to transition into cross country season for some real running.

It just happens to be my luck that New Zealand's cross country season begins in March, since it's fall in their hemisphere. So all I've got to do is survive a couple indoor meets, and then I'll in cross country mode all over again. And that's pretty terrific.

inspiration in the state of cold

Back at school, and life's getting boring again. Still, I've seen a few lovely things today.

1. Wooster's first spring flowers pushing up through a bed of dead leaves by the sidewalk.

It's only about 30º here right now, but these little lovelies gave me some hope for warm weather.

2. And this terrific Asics commercial makes me proud to be a runner:

If I didn't know that Asics running shoes weigh about three hundred pounds, I would totally buy a pair. But since I'm older and wiser (and more pretentious), I'd rather run in my badass green flats instead.