New Year, New Post

January 5^th, 2020

Happy new year, my friends!

This past year was pretty intense for both running and graduate school. The challenges of 2019 have made me a tougher version of myself: the Meyer’s Briggs personality test still comes up with ENTP, but now I start each morning with a bowl of nails for breakfast.

For this post, I’m going to reflect on the previous year, then introduce my running and academic goals for 2020, and will finally close with my resolutions. One of those resolutions is to be more structured/organized – so, behold this aptly structured intro you are about to finish. …BUT, can I finish without rambling, or resorting to my natural “stream of consciousness” writing style? Probably not- old habits die hard! However, I will make a conscious effort this new year to make small improvements in my organization and consistency.

All right- here we go with that recap of last-year’s grad-school and running-related memories:

Grad-school:

• Our lab moved up two floors
• Graduate students in Rand lab moved offices – I’m still GRIEVING for the loss of our prior PERFECT office :,(
• Started volunteering with Ronald McDonald House Charities
  • I highly recommend donating or volunteering with for this wonderful organization!
    • link here: https://www.rmhc.org/volunteer
• Attended Society of Toxicology (SOT) Annual meeting in Baltimore, MD in March
  • Ran the 5k there – became injured shortly afterwards 😦
• Annual Toxicology Training Program retreat in May
  • I won two awards!
  • Preview: This year, I’m co-chairing the retreat this year ~
• June – August = QUAL PREP:
  • Essentially, I just worked on troubleshooting a staining protocol and writing my qualifying document all month…
    • Run, write, sleep, repeat!
• THE QUAL – woof.
  • Passed, progressed to PhD candidacy, and earned a Master’s in Toxicology. Huzzah!
  • See previous post for a meticulous* breakdown the stats on this endeavor
  • Received so many beautiful “Congrats” cards from friends and family ❤ thank you SO MUCH again!!

Me, working. Ten points to whoever can guess what I’m carrying !

• Co-authored a publication “Drosophotoxicology”
  • DOI: 10.3389/fgene.2019.00666
• I planned a super fun Pedal Tour for the tox students in September:

Running-related:

• Started training for the Boston Marathon
• Attempted many new recipes from the America’s Test Kitchen subscription
• Graduate school is a busy time; It’s too easy in graduate school to skip meals and skimp on nutrients. However, it’s to maintain the high energy levels that work in lab (and training for freakin’ marathons!) demand, it’s crucial to be properly fueled! Tim and I start and end each day with a balanced breakfast, full of food we enjoy.

• Started Physical Therapy at Clinton Crossings
  • If you ever need PT, I can’t recommend Jillian Santer enough! She is a marathoner herself; which made her experienced, understanding, and exactly what I needed.
• Flew to Boston to Race the Marathon… Unable to due to injury
  • If you want, see previous post for more details – In Boston, I saw incredible feats of human endurance, raw humanity, and grit that will remain with me for a long time.
• Made some new running buddies – Erin and Laura!
• TOTAL MILES RAN: 458
  • It may be fun to keep good record of this in 2020

Other:

• Tim and I moved in to a new apartment
  • It’s adorable and we love it.
• Enjoyed a visit from Spencer and Lyndsey in October
  • Tim’s best friend, whose wedding we attended last December.
• Jacquie graduated from Nursing school in December
  • I’M SO PROUD OF HER ❤

Taken on our first night in the new apartment. Remember what I just said about nutrition being important? Wine and chips are also important.

Tim and Spencer playing XCOM

Apple picking!

New York State’s newly minted nurse Jacquie (the real one!) and me celebrating NYE!

2019 was big year; It was tough on me as both a student and as a runner. It’s healthy to reflect on the past, and use what I learned to plan for a better year ahead. As I look towards goals such as races and papers that are already coming down the pike in 2020, I know I can handle the challenges so long as I stay patient and focused -and maybe even improve my organization skills a bit!

My goals are tiered, which is a goal-setting skill I learned in college from Coach Dan Moore. It’s helpful to break them down into at least three self-explanatory tiers:

BARE MINIMUM:

1. Finish first draft of Kon-Tiki paper
2. Race a half marathon
3. Race a marathon
4. Run in one new state
5. Blog at least once a month
6. Find a good therapist
7. Attend SOT conference in Anaheim
8. Finish planning the Tox Retreat

REASONABLE:

1. Submit first-author publication
2. Run in three new states
3. Serve on an SOT specialty section student representative
4. Receive mostly positive feedback from students after the Tox Retreat – meaning it went well.
5. Begin RNA Seq experiment with Matt and Jakob
6. Blog at least once a week
7. Plan the Graduate Student Society Annual Brew Tour
8. Graph my weekly mileage to share in detailed post about my training
9. Improve my public speaking
   1. I was recently told that we should be grateful for every opportunity to public speak, because we get better over time. I was told this in a YouTube video entitled “A Day in the Life of a Julliard Music School Student” circa 1am, while drunk… which brings us to the last “reasonable” goal:
10. Get 8 hours of sleep each night.

REACH:

1. Run under 3:30:00 in the Atlanta Marathon
2. Run under 3:20:00 in a marathon this year
3. PR in the half-marathon (current PR = 1:27:53)
4. Run each of the “4 seasons” half-marathons in Rochester.
5. Run Under 19 min in 5k
6. Finish the “Dorsopholog”
   1. Basically, it’s an atlas of images I’ve been making for my lab- another writing project to finish!
7. Finish RNA Seq experiment
8. Publish in a journal that I read.

Finally, I will cap this post off with some traditional New Year’s resolutions. As a continual project, resolutions are different than goals. My resolutions are new standards I want to hold myself to, or old habits I used to maintain but have since gotten a bit behind on.

Resolutions:

1. Maintain a consistent lab notebook organization
2. Journal my thoughts at least twice a week
3. Adhere to a consistent weekly mileage, long-run, and workout schedule

Dang- that’s a lot! But I’ve got an entire year to do it. 2020 will be the year of writing and running. Which reminds me, I definitely need to be writing that manuscript right now, rather than blogging…ah heck.

Wish me luck!

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* Indicates that I’m being sarcastic; as we all know, the best jokes require explanation*.

“Acknowledge all your small victories; they will eventually add up to something great.” – Kara Goucher, American distance runner