While there has been “good weather” already, the looming deadlines associated with the end of a semester kept me dutifully inside ensuring that I would indeed finish the degree. Now, as the snow is melting and the deadlines are all past I’ve been able to get out and ride.

Yesterday I headed out of town for a quick bike ride out on Highway 8, Map Link. Things felt a bit worn out following the half-marathon the previous day, but overall it was good. There is some fantastic pavement on the hills I rode compared to that of Edmonton’s hills. Tucking down the big hill on 17th ave at 60kms per hour felt as safe as about 40 kms per hour on Walterdale.

This coming weekend I’ll be racing at the Spring Thaw Triathlon in Edmonton hosted by the University of Alberta Triathlon Club. It should be good, but a couple friends have high expectations for the bike ride. I agree in some sense, that I have high hopes at least, but getting out of the pool with any energy left is less of a sure bet this year than it has been either of the two previous ones for this race.

On Sunday April 27th I ran the Calgary Police Half Marathon as an “I wonder how I’ll fare” kind of race. Last week I wrote about why I ended up with an entry slot in this race that sold out within a few hours of it opening. The route starts at Mount Royal College and proceeds to do a lap of the Glenmore reservoir before heading back to the college. It’s not flat but it’s also not particularly hill either. The one big hill that you could hear plenty of people discussing on race morning was less than 90 seconds long and was strewn with people cheering so it didn’t pose such a challenge.

Having received ~16 inches of snow in Edmonton the previous weekend and having three final exams and a massive paper to write before getting back to Calgary my grand total race-week mileage was zero. So, things weren’t exactly according to plan but I felt pretty good on race morning and the weather was great. I was in tights, long sleeve tech shirt, windbreaker, beanie and running mitts. I was lucky to have Dad coming along with a vehicle to cheer at different spots along the course. I was able to loose the beanie and mitts at 7kms and the windbreaker at around 10 miles. I kept probably a perfect temperature for the whole race which is something I certainly cannot say for any other half marathon race I’ve ever run. The Moose is Loose Half Marathon in Edmonton always tends to be above 30 degrees by the time I’m done.

So the grand total time was 1:42:17, which is significantly better than the 1:50:00 I was hoping to aim for. I also set a 10k PR of 47:17, but that is mostly because I’ve never run a 10k race, the only ones being triathlon 10k-run-splits that are typically not 10 kms. (Chaparral was 9 kms and summerside is around 10.5). I was poorly seeded (no one’s fault but my own) and got jammed in with a pack that ran the first mile in 8:55, well off my final average pace of 7:48 per mile.

My observations from the race are that I’ve been riding fixed gear A TON in the past bunch of months. Leg strength was never an issue and I cruised past loads of people on all of the uphill stretches while saying to myself “take it easy on the hills”. I also managed to really ache in the hip flexors already with 3 kms to go. I suppose I’ve been tending to ride lazy and doing more pushing than pulling on pedals in recent months… Something to remember in the next weeks of preparation for SeatoSea.

The daily route for the Sea to Sea bike tour this summer has been finalized. It is available on the Ofiicial Sea to Sea Website and sets a grand total of 6246 official kilometers meaning the minimum daily average for the summer is 116. An earlier “pseudo schedule” that we got to look at had us doing a few crazier days mixed in there with some easier ones but things are actually rather smoothed out and there aren’t any very big discrepancies in any given week with over distance one day and recovery the next. Of course that’s the best to keep everyone injury free and smiling, it’s great that things worked out that way.

I’ll admit I’m looking forward to August 6-7-8 as we’ve got two rather serious days back to back with Ironman-distance (180 km) rides scheduled followed up with a century the next morning to finish off.

The soundtrack of the day as I studied is below:

It’s coming up on my sixth run through…. and at 70 minutes in length obviously it’s been a long day, but there are only 3 more days and I’ll have this degree in the bag!

Quotes from ENGG 401 Finance for Engineering, Winter Semester 2008

• Nowadays we store money on electrons, we don’t even need to waste paper.
• The answer to question one is “c”
• Sometimes I invest in things that won’t make money, my wife disapproves of this because she could buy shoes.
• The world is set up so that no-one makes much money.
• I don’t want to deal with cheaters and liars, could all of the cheaters and lairs swap their registration to the other section of this course.
• When I make a graph I always put it in color because then I can say things like “Look at this color graph” that makes people believe our calculations to six decimal places.
• The answer to one of the questions on the midterm is “groupthink”
• The answer to one of the questions on the midterm is “Democratization of Knowledge”
• I can’t let you guys use a laptop with excel during the midterm exam because I realized this would make it possible for me to catch the cheaters and liars in this class and I already told you that I don’t want to deal with cheaters and liars.
• I already told you, below the line means that it needs to be below the line.
• I was talking to someone one who was complaining about not being able to gain weight. I asked her if she had even thought of going to Kentucky Fried Chicken and buying a bucket of chicken and then just eating the skins. Well then her response was “Don that’s gross” so I told her she must not really care about gaining weight if she’s not willing to do the things it takes to gain weight. The exact same thing happens if you want to get rich, you have to sometimes eat lots of chicken skins, Warren Buffet is rich because he knows that.

Quotes from PHYS 481 Electrodynamics number four, Fall Semester 2007

• This is where mathematics can take control of you if you don’t pay attention to what’s going on.
• That is the general case which includes both plucked and hammered types.
• I am not discovering a powder, you have all seen this before.
• This is really easy, you just add it and then bend your mind.
• kx – wt is my favorite way.
• That’s kind of tricky when there is a war going on.
• Sorry, I’m feeling slightly disorganized today.
• The assignment that was due yesterday is now going to be due on Friday at 4:00pm

Quotes from PHYS 472 Quantum Mechanics II, Fall Semester 2007

• Watch out: log-log scales always tend to fool you.
• You are all eligible to make a mistake with a delta function, I have been making mistakes my whole life.
• I can’t prove Bloch’s theorem so I will tell you a story instead.
• Those guys cannot appreciate physics, therefore we’re better than them.
• It’s just an integral! well I guess it’s two integrals, in three dimensions, so I guess really it’s just six integrals, but it’s still just an integral.
• If there were no h-bar we’d just have classical mechanics
• Sines and Cosines have a greater impact on your life than Airy functions.
• The reason you’ve not heard of Airy functions is just because they’re not a button on your calculator
• I’m treating this isotropically so the mass is the same in all directions.
• All the even ones are odd
• This notation is a disaster, don’t try this at home
• So, if anyone ever asks you how to make a hermite polynomial out of sine functions remember you only need about 25 of them.
• The Zeno paradox is actually kinda cute.
• My comments last class about keeping the final exam to two hours are probably a bit false.
• Could someone please look up the word cumulative in the dictionary for him
• Bonus points for Devon
  
  < Ross’s response > Dammit
  
  Bonus points are worth zero
  
  < Ross’s re-response > Yeah! Integrate that!

Quotes from EEBE 540 Digital Image Processing, Winter Semester 2008

• Man I’m brain dead today < pause > let me show you a picture
• Can I tell you that that is true? < pause > never trust a prof!
• Some people can whip it out fairly quickly
  
  < Followed almost inevitably by the distasteful comment from the back row >
  What? their Weiner Functions?

Quotes from EE 456 Introduction to Nanoelectronics, Winter Semester 2008

• Who can tell me what we’re going to get when we take this integral?
  
  <My response:> -13.6 eV!
  
  <pause> … right
• It’s not that Physicists don’t do useful things. They just do different things.
• There is no reality behind phenomenon, merely more phenomenon
• I’m not prepared to make any statements today, geometrically I’m a bit slow.
• To implement periodic boundary conditions, boundary conditions, to implement periodic boundary conditions, the system is modified, system is modified, modified, the system is modified by adding a term of -t_o, of -t_o, -t_o to the corners, corners where they otherwise would have been zero, the corner elements would have been zero but we modified them by adding a term of -t_o. This modification makes the matrix invertible, the matrix becomes invertible and that makes the system solvable or the equations linearly independent, the system becomes solvable because the equations are now linearly independent.
• Just trust me and you’ll be alright.
• If you do what I say you’ll be fine
• Don’t freak out on me; I’m not trying to psyche you out.

It is not supposed to be -26^oC with the wind chill when I hop on my bike in the morning to go to an exam in April. Sure I didn’t complain when that was the case for December exams but it is rather unappreciated in April. I don’t think I can ever remember it being more than twenty below following my birthday, sure we’ve had some stupid snowstorms in May but this one was actually cold combined with some serious snow. (Thanks to some random webcam for the picture)

This throws a bit of a wrench into my preparation plans for that Half marathon coming up on the 27th of April. At last post I wasn’t sure if I was going to agree to take the spot. I had a good run on Monday for about an hour followed by another 10 mile jaunt on Tuesday. Wednesday was the inaugural XC community league race which was loads of fun. My friend Pat placed top 3 which was outrageous, especially since he made a wrong turn for a little bit. I suppose route-finding becomes a consideration when you’re way up at the front, I’ve never had that problem running in 50th place or so. I fit in two rev sessions with Triathlon club and two shortish rides outside last week as well. I broke 75 hours total for the year so far, that’s OK I suppose but it certainly could be better. I hope to be putting in a decent amount more than 75 per month for May and June.

I guess that just about sums up physical preparation, I’ve got two final exams remaining and a research paper to write before I can cut town. The countdown has begun!