Oh man, it has been a really long time since i posted. I must have just been really busy and tied up the last couple weeks because i don't even know where they went...

The Job: I have been working for my coach's company AQx the last month trying to sell aquatic training gear and do various projects for him. It has been a very interesting experience. I have all the freedom in the world to approach the sales however I like. I have been doing a lot of sales calls and a lot of emailing to aquatic directors all over portland and the surrounding areas. It's fairly discouraging though since the economy is so poor right now and even if I am able to generate interest there is very little money availble to spend. However, learning is best done by doing, right? And I am able to do a lot.

I was able to arrange a meeting with Portland Parks & Rec at which Garry spoke yesterday and he was able to spark negotiations for a big sell with them, which is especially exciting because the 10 pools or so within the system must all be standardized. So if they buy for one, then they buy for all, or if the plan to train their persons using our system then they must all be trained and we charge to put on clinics, so that is more income as well.

Garry has asked if I will be able to help him during spring term as well so at least that makes me feel like I am accomplishing enough so that he feels like he is getting something for the company's money.

The Sport: We had our first indoor meet last weekend at Washington State U in Pullman which is about 10 miles from the border of Idaho. It was something like 23 degrees outside and it dumped an inch or so of snow during the day so I was sure glad to be racing indoors, even if it was just a 200 meter track (so twice the laps) and only 3 other girls in my 3000 m race (two of which from Gonzaga and one from Whitman College). I lead the race against the 3 freshman and finished in 10:24 (about 10 seconds off the meet record. This is only the 3rd year they have put on this meet). It was a good start to the season. The 10:24 relates to around an 18:00 5k. Or about what I was running when I was peaking in cross. I have only dipped under 18 once and that was last track season in my breakout at Willamette in a time of 17:47. The next meet will be the first weekend in Feb in Moscow, ID. It is sounding like I will most likely double in 3k again with the mile before hand in the same day. It would make for a good day of training and more worth the 7 hour of driving through the snow.

The big one is in 3 weeks at University of Washington. Their DI women's team is one of the very best in the nation, which most of their top 5 around 16:00 for the 5k. I would really like to run the 5k at their meet but you must run a 17:35 to qualify. Garry is going to try to talk to the director and squeeze me in some how... keep your fingers crossed.

But the legs are doing pretty good. The achilles is feeling much better, my knee is bothering me marginally. I am up to running 5 days a week and back around 40 miles a week or so... a huge improvement from the 10 miles a week I was stuck at for nearly 2 months at the end of cross and into the off season.

The Break: We have a week off after Jan-Term and before Spring term starts. I am leaving tomorrow afternoon for Olympia to stay with Chris until Monday and then I will be coming home until Thursday so that I can be ready to leave on Friday for the Meet on Saturday and then back late Saturday and get ready to start class on Monday..... WHOOO... it's going to be crazy! But it will be fun and free of work and class and just a little break before everything gets going again.

I have never been to Olympia. So it will be fun to see what it's like and to meet his family and see his home. An adventure for sure. :)



So that's about where I am at for now. Hopefully I will have a chance to write in the next crazy week about the semester coming up and also about the Sports & Entertainment fair that I went to last night at the Rose Quarter. Quite the experience that was. Ah, the real world is sneaking up on me. Not a nice trick at all.

Enjoy your night. All love.

Sacrifice

Sacrifice: a loss entailed by giving up or selling something at
less than its value.

I have really been thinking about the idea of sacrifice. It is a commonly accepted idea that in order to get what you want you must give something away at a loss. The more I think about this idea, the more unsure of it I grow. To get a new pair of shoes you must pay $70.00, to keep friends you must spend time communicating and staying in touch, to loss that extra 5 pounds you have to go without that chocolate donut, there is always a trade off. There is a decision to be made... you can go one of 2 ways.

(A.) Do what gets you closer to your ultimate goal (ex. new
shoes, life-long friendship, lost weight)

(B.) Do something else (save the $70.00, read a book instead,
enjoy the chocolotey goodness)

What is the difference between a decision and a sacrifice? I realize that a sacrifice usually has a negative association with it... it is a loss. A decision is not necisarrily good or bad, it is simply a crossroad.

Decision: a position or opinion or judgment reached after
consideration.

The other thing to consider about a sacrifice, if you accept it more simply as a decision, is that you really aren't forced to give something up. It is impossible to have both, you can not have your cake and eat it too. There for what you feel like you are "giving up" you are just going without... and it is impossible to avoid this in any decision. You can not keep your $70.00 and get the shoes. You can not talk to your friend and read your book at the same time (at least not very effectively). You can not eat the donut and loss the weight. There for you are not really giving one or the other up, since you didn't ever have it to start with.

It's not so much a sacrifice because without making a decision, and taking one, you essentially have niether. By making a sacrifice you are actually gaining something either way, although it is also true that you have therefor forgone something else, but you aren't giving it up, you are going without.

Every day of our life we make thousands and millions of small decisions and with every decision a door closes and our possibilities diminish, but also with every decision we are directing our life and moving forward, rather than standing still. You have to let go of the things you can't have or don't have any longer, try not to base your decisions on what you stand to loss and not think of it as a risk, but an opportunity and consider what you have to gain. You can't go back and change what has happened, and even if you find a source of blame or failure or mistake it won't lessen the wrong... all you can do is build and grow and develop into something greater... you can only add and never take away from your life. You can paint over and build on top of, but it is always there, there for you to make something beautiful and grand out of.

Maybe I have this all wrong, but isn't it easier to accept a sacrifice if you can look at it this way?

This has been my first week back on campus after the holiday break. I have been working for my coach helping him do marketing and various projects for his business AQx sports. (http://www.aqxsports.com/) He has developed under water shoes for increased efficiency while doing aquatic excercise. I have learned a lot about his products and also it has been interesting to compare the structure of his marketing aprroach to that of the Oregon Wine Press. Basically I have total freedom to work on what I want and do what I think will be the most useful. I basically spent this whole first week coming up with some lists of contacts and now I will use this next week to start making the contacts and generating some sales and interest. It should be a learning experience fore sure since I don't have a whole lot of guidance. It's nice to have so much responsibility and ownership in a project though. :)

Running has been going pretty well. I did a 30 minute tempo run on land on Tuesday after running both Monday and Sunday before that and re-injuried myself again. Just got a little too greedy and thought I was feeling better than I actually was. So I did the workout in the pool on Thursday with the AQx shoes and was able to do an 80 minute workout yesterday with relatively little issues. I will deffinately be cross training today and tomorrow in hopes of feeling 100% for the workout on Tuesday... We get to do some work on the track then so it will be fun to finally get to that.

On Saturday we have our time trial. We are doing a 3000 meter time trail, or about 7 laps. I haven't ran a 3k since high school, in which I had my highest finish at state (4th) so it will be really interesting to see how my time will compare to when i ran it then. The steeple chase is also a 3k but that is a little different with 4 barriers to take on a lap.

The time trail is at noon and then I am heading home to work for my dad Sunday and Monday and probably driving back on Tuesday. I have to get this passed by Garry L, but it will be fun to see some of the fam and the friends in between cleaning the house next weekend.

I also got tickets for the Blazers vs. Cleavland game on the 21st!! So I am really excited to go with a couple of friends (Tyler Davis and his lady friend will be going with me!) and see as much of Lebron James as can be seen from $10.00 300-level tickets. (We are against the back wall again. ha!)

Well, that is all the excitement I have had here as of late... not so much. It's been kinda nice to just work and train and not have homework though.

Hope all is well.

New Year

Happy New Year All!

I know that it has been a very long time since I have posted. Since November and I entirely skipped over the Holidays and December and now it is January... 1st 2009! Now that is crazy. 2009.

A year ago today I was considering and searching for the right school and what I wanted to do I didn't really have a good idea about what I would be doing in a month not to mention a year. At this point I was enrolled in classes at SOU and ready to make the switch. Since then I attended a couple classes, decided it wasn't the right fit, travelled to New Mexico and decided that wasn't the right fit either and then finally came to realize that I was at Linfield because it was the best choice, the right choice, and it was something I wanted to do not something I had to do. I feel like the results that followed and the outcome from making this decision have really taught me an important lesson

It's not so much in whether you able to determine which option is the
absolute best or the right choice, it's more about making a good decison and
commiting completely and being content with your best effort.

There is no use in regretting or doubting or going half way so that you always maintain a safe emergency exit. It is simply better off just to buy in and give it everything you have. It's not so much what the decision is but in making the decision what you do with it. You will never reach you potential if you are always holding back or if you do everything while holding your fears in mind. You must trust yourself and the good intention of others and the world that everything will work out.

Always be willing to change.

I was talking to a friend at school about good advice that we had recieved and tried to carry with us. My friend had been talking to his Grandpa about his life and asked him from all the living what he had learned and his Grandpa said that we must always be willing to change. It is incredibly difficult to stay flexible in life, but it is necissary to success and happiness. Few things in life are constant and things are always changing with time to resist change is to fight time and life. We must always be able to keep perspective about the world around us, and certainly about our role within the world and in relation to others. Being honest with yourself is one of the hardest things to do. To be able to examine what you are without bias or ambitions or this feeling that we control what we do not. A simple, honest perspective is golden.

Past decisions are irrelevent.

Do not let your future be determined by your past. We learned in Managerial Accounting that one should never consider sunk costs. They are gone and can not be recovered. So you can only more forward and look at what you can gain and not what you have already lost. Allow yourself the ability to let go of where you have been and what you have done and know that you are capable of extended past all of those previous barriers and accomplishments and failures and just because you have been there before doesn't mean you automatically will be there again. Whether this means that you have instant access or unavoidable direction, niether is true. You can be who ever you want to be, and that is all you really can trust or control is yourself. I learned this during cross when I knew I should be a shoe-in for Nationals and it turned out I had to run my heart and legs out to snatch that last spot. I ran this way because of the way I trained and treated my body and the state of my mind, not because of what the coaches told me or the cheers of my teammates or my injuries or diet. This also was became apparent when I was able to come back a week later and stabalize my mentality and run the way I should have at the national meet, because I decided that was what I expected of myself.

There are a lot of things that I learned in 2009 and I don't really believe in waiting for some magical moment or time to put into motion the work and actions to get the things you want. Any time is the perfect time to start, but since the New Year is here I might as well start a long drive to a better life.

"Every morningis a fresh beginning. Every day is the world made new. Today is a new day. Today is my world made new. I have lived all my life up to this moment, to come tothis day. This moment--this day--is as good as any moment in all eternity. I shall make of this day--each moment of this day--a heaven on earth. This is my day of opportunity."

Dan Custer

May the new year bless you and yours and bring you happiness, health, and prosperity. Love you all.