Seven Days of Oatmeal!

I'm a little kid when it comes to breakfast. I like my Lucky Charms and Cocoa Pebbles and, oh boy, Count Chocula. I also like oatmeal, but I'm a little kid about my oatmeal, too.

I bought a huge tub of Quaker Steel Cut Oats and decided to play around with different types of oatmeal. I don't like eating the same thing several days in a row, but I can do it if I keep switching up the flavors. So I decided I'd try a different kind of oatmeal every day for a week. And take pictures. And blog about it. Because that's what the internet's for!

These aren't extraordinarily healthy: The idea is to get in some whole grains without adding too much junk. But if a little junk is going to get me to eat my oatmeal, then so be it. Most of these are about 400-500 calories since that's a good portion size for me for breakfast. I didn't count calories when I made them and figured out the nutrition after the fact for this post, in case it's useful for you and you want to make any modifications (more protein is probably a good idea). I'm too lazy to figure it out in more detail, but that's also what the internet is for should you feel up to it.

If you feel like making any of these, you can play with the portions as much as you want. I usually just microwave my oatmeal because I work a full-time job and run 70 mile weeks and my time isn't exactly abundant in the morning, but you can prepare these however you want. You can also always replace water with milk. I usually use water because oats have a lot of iron and calcium inhibits the absorption of iron, but then so does fiber, so I doubt it really makes a significant difference.

Day 1

Peach Cobbler

Ingredients: 3/4 cup oats, 1 1/2 cups water, 1 tbs brown sugar, 1 cup frozen peaches, dash of salt, cinnamon. Top with 1/2 cup granola. 

492 calories, 88g carbs, 11g fat, 13g protein

This was actually my favorite despite it being the first one I made, probably because I spent a really long time thinking about how to pull it off. It tasted delicious and the granola added a nice little crunch. The only mistake I made was adding the peaches before microwaving it. It didn't really cook correctly and I had to stick it in for some extra time.  

Day 2

Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients: 3/4 cup oats, 1 1/2 cup water, 1/2 can pumpkin, dash of salt, cinnamon, 1 tbs brown sugar. 

345 calories, 69g carbs, 5g fat, 12g protein

I got the idea of using canned pumpkin in my oatmeal from my sister. I'm really glad I tried it. It was amazing. It added a ton of flavor (and some nice color) but still kept things pretty healthy. To be honest, I think the amount of brown sugar I used in this one was unnecessary: The pumpkin adds enough flavor that this would probably be good (although less pie-like) without any sugar, and you can definitely get away with one or two teaspoons.

Day 3

Hot Cocoa

Ingredients: 3/4 cup oats, 1 1/2 cup 2% milk, dash of salt, 2 tbs Hershey's Special Dark Syrup.

505 calories, 83g carbs, 12g fat, 20g protein

Dark chocolate syrup goes a long way. And even though I usually use water, I really had to go with milk for this. It tasted like hot cocoa and oatmeal at the same time. Amazing, especially when you've just gotten back from a run in cool, rainy Seattle.

Day 4

Caramel Apple

Ingredients: 3/4 cup oats, 1 1/2 cup water, dash of salt, 2 tbs King's Cupboard cream caramel sauce, 1 gala apple.

445 calories, 80g carbs, 12g fat, 8g protein

I had this one on a Sunday (16 mile day) so I figured it was OK to indulge a little. Every time I'd ever had oatmeal with apples, it had been cinnamon-apple oatmeal. Lame. I added the caramel and apple with 30 seconds to go on the microwave. The apple pieces got nice and soft and the flavors permeated the oatmeal, but the oatmeal still cooked correctly. This was insanely delicious.

Day 5

Maple Pear

Ingredients: 3/4 cup oatmeal, 1 1/2 cup water, dash of salt, 1/8 cup maple syrup, 1/2 cup dried bosc pears.

540 calories, 119g carbs, 4g fat, 8g protein

I got this idea from a mini-pie I'd had earlier that week. Maple and pear go pretty well together, and a small amount of maple syrup adds a surprising amount of flavor. But man, this was overkill on the dried pears. I'd add probably half as many next time.

Day 6

Peanut Butter, Honey, and Banana

Ingredients: 3/4 cup oats, 1 1/2 cup water, dash of salt, 1 tbs peanut butter, 1 tbs honey, 1 banana.

489 calories, 89g carbs, 12g fat, 13g protein

Peanut butter, honey, and banana is a post-run staple I'd had in many forms (as a sandwich, on waffles, and in shakes) so I knew I had to try it with my oatmeal too. It was as good as it always is. I'd tried to make oatmeal with peanut butter before and it hadn't worked very well because I'd used crunchy peanut butter. This time, I used creamy peanut butter. I'd definitely go with creamy. I like nuts in my oatmeal too, but crunchy peanut butter really doesn't mix as well. Honey is about as awesome as maple syrup at adding a ridiculous amount of delicious sweet flavor even in pretty small quantities. This honey in particular was made by some family friends which made it even better. Total win.

Day 7

S'mores

Ingredients: 3/4 cup oats, 1 1/2 cup water, dash of salt, 1/2 cup Kraft jet-puffed mini marshmallows, 1 mini Hershey's bar, 1 sheet of Honey Maid graham crackers.
428 calories, 79g carbs, 10g fat, 11g protein

I had to try this just once even though it involved a lot of junk. I'm kind of upset that I did, because it's so good that I think I'll be having this a little more often than I probably should. You're probably better off using chocolate syrup than melted chocolate since melted chocolate doesn't really add that much flavor in small quantities. Other than that, this was fantastic.

Running Year in Review: 2012

It's interesting to see progress over a year, and looking back always helps me identify what I did well and what I need to change to become a better runner. I don't know if anyone actually wants to read this, but I do know that I will benefit from writing this, so here it goes.

January

Summary: After running the NYC marathon in November, I'd spent most of December just kind of running with no real goal in mind. It took a while to recover mentally. While I was home I spoke to Bob Rothenberg, who was my coach at the time. We decided on two spring halves (six weeks in between): New Bedford on March 18th and Iron Girl on April 29th. My mileage was around 55 but I was limited by an ankle injury. I went to a podiatrist (specifically, one Bob recommended) who gave me custom orthotics and did a gait analysis. I tried to introduce make some form changes slowly. While home I did a little bit of quality but could not handle much because of my ankle. I also started doing long runs around 7:30 pace (part of the plan), but had to cut down the distance a little to do that.

Highlights: Getting over my post-marathon slump and coming up with a plan. 

February

Summary: I kept my mileage about the same as it had been in January. My ankle did not act up very much. I did one quality day each week in addition to my long run. I think I'd wanted to do two, but I couldn't handle it without getting hurt. Apparently, I did lots of 800s. I felt good for most of February. I took a week back toward the end.

Highlights:  Feeling strong and staying healthy for the entire month.

March

Summary: The New Bedford Half-Marathon was in March. I did some of my best running ever in early March and was feeling very confident. I did some work at half-marathon pace. I did some of my long runs stupidly fast (one of them was at 7:00 pace, so basically I ran what was then a half PR during a normal long run) which was probably not the brightest idea. I ended up running New Bedford in 1:31:07 (PR) which was a three minute improvement over my previous best (but not much faster than I'd been running some of my long runs at, whoops). The race was pretty good but I got overconfident and went out too fast. I definitely felt it at the end. Soon after New Bedford, I went to Seattle to look for places to live. I took a couple of days easy but did lots of running once I got out to Seattle. I started poking around and trying to find a club with a coach. 

Highlights: Running a big half-marathon PR, even if it was a stupid race.

April

Summary: April was focused around Iron Girl, an all-women's half-marathon. I really, really wanted to get under 90, and since it was a women's race I also thought it would be fun to see how I could place. Bob told me that I still had to run my own race. I got a couple of weeks in at 55 with two quality days and apparently managed to stay healthy. At the end of April I brought the mileage down but kept the quality up leading into Iron Girl. I ran a 1:30:55 (PR) which I was happy with, but it was not a great race. I hadn't gotten any sleep the night before because sleeping on-campus on a weekend night is really difficult. During the race itself, I got really excited at the beginning because I could actually see the lead pack for once since there were no men, and I really wanted to be a part of that pack. So, yep, I went out too fast again. I was doing pretty well until I pretty much lost it at this one giant hill and spent the rest of the race hanging on. I got 12th overall and 1st 20-24. 

Bustin' ass trying not to get passed

Highlights: Running another half-marathon PR, doing an all-women's race, racing Joan Benoit-Samuelson, and not following another woman who went off-course at Iron Girl because I actually took the time to learn the course before I ran it.

May

Summary: I took it easy after Iron Girl. A couple of weeks later I did a 5K just for fun to break up my finals week. I ran a 20:04, which was only 8 seconds slower than my PR (although based on my half I should have been able to run faster). It was decent for a race I did "just for fun," and more importantly since I won I got a free steak dinner. I was pretty low on money so free steak was seriously awesome. Shortly after, I graduated college and just kind of ran aimlessly. I had a sweet graduation party and lots of my friends came to visit. Running was really not my focus in May.

Me with Bob Rothenberg at my graduation party

Highlights: Winning a free steak dinner, graduating college, and learning that eating birthday cake before a morning run is the worst idea conceivable.

June

Summary: I went to Japan, came back to Rhode Island, and then went to Israel. So needless to say, I did not run very much. This was a planned break. I basically ran when I felt like it. That ended up being about 30 miles per week of easy running. It was definitely fun to run in new places. Sort of. Israel is really freaking hot. After pretty much every run in Israel we dove right into the Mediterranean to cool off. Sometimes we had to do this mid-run. 

Does this count?

Highlights: Running in three different countries during the same month and running with my best friend, dad, and sister. 

July

Summary: Back in Rhode Island, it was time to really think about what I wanted to do with my running when I moved out to Seattle and started the whole Real Life thing. I brought my mileage back up and did some practices with RMHP. Bob and I decided that it'd be best for me to keep focusing on the half for a while. He told me that he would keep coaching me if I wanted him to, but that if I found a good coach and club in Seattle and no longer needed him to coach me, he'd be fine with that and it'd probably be best for my running. As long as I kept in touch with him. 

When I got out to Seattle I got active in the running scene immediately. I did a group run (The Monday Night Run) at the local running store to get to know people. Everyone told me about Club Northwest, a club I'd done a single long run with the year before but that was kind of strangely secretive about their practices. When I asked about coaches everyone said Tom Cotner. Do you know any good coaches out here? Tom Cotner. I want to become a national-level runner; who will take me seriously? Tom Cotner. I had no idea who the hell this Tom Cotner guy was and nobody really gave me anything else to go off of. I emailed Lauren Matthews and Ed Haywood (both of Club Northwest) and Ed was still super secretive about the practices, but Lauren told me she'd talk to me in person. So I entered a night race jet-lagged as hell to find out what the hell was going on and Lauren said "just email Tom." So I did. I sent probably the most detailed email ever about my background and goals and what I was willing to do to get there. I got a call on my birthday and Tom said to come the next day.

Highlights: Joining the club that has pretty much changed my life since I've gotten out here. 

August

Summary: Both Tom and Bob told me not to take it too hard at first during practice. I listened to them. My mileage was 50-60 most weeks. I was healthy. I was tired and practices were pretty hard at first (even though I ran with a slower group than I wanted to), but I really enjoyed them. By the end of the month I started to feel strong again.

Highlights: Actually listening to two coaches telling me to hold myself back, something I'm notoriously bad at.

September

Summary: At some point at the end of August, Tom had said something like "there's a half this weekend, want to run it?" and I had been like "maybe" which had later turned into "why not?" So on September 3rd, 2012 I ran the Labor Day Half. My race plan was something like "as long as I'm not stupid I should be fine" which I executed as 6:45-6:55 for pretty much the entire race. It was really helpful having teammates around me and I ran with a few of the master's men for a good deal of the race. I ran an 89:31 (PR) which I was very happy with. Later in the month I decided I wanted to run XC. I was absolutely terrified because of how horribly I raced XC in college, but everyone said it was fun and I knew it was a good opportunity to work on some of my weaknesses. 

The face of pain

Highlights: Running a big PR on a whim, actually not going out too fast in a half for once, and deciding to run XC.

October

Summary: For most of the month, I ran consistent 60 mile weeks with two practices and a long run. On October 6th I ran my first real XC meet since college. It was going pretty well until I fell going downhill on a gravel trail. It took away any rhythm I had, but I got up and kept racing because what the hell are you going to do? It was excruciating but I still came in a good minute faster than I'd run in college (but not fast). I still have scars from this fall. But something was really fun about this. I drove people to the meet, got to know some of my teammates, and afterward we all went to a BBQ where we ate delicious food and drank delicious beer. A week later I ran at another XC meet. It was still hard. I was still bad at it. It was still fun. I had some knee problems after and Tom pointed out the strength exercises I should have been doing (that I was slacking off on) to prevent those problems and from then on I was on top of my strength stuff (as well as injury-free). Practices were fun. I was running better than I ever had before.

Highlights: Getting over my fear of the XC 6K and falling for a runner dude (and actually having the guts to pursue it).

November

Summary: At the beginning of November I ran in PNTF Championships. It was back on the same brutal XC course as Emerald City Open. It was really not a good race and I was pretty hard on myself afterward. I was really frustrated at the discrepancy between how I had been running in practice and how I had been racing. I decided to move on and race at regionals. This time I actually backed off a little beforehand. I drove three teammates all the way out to Spokane to run for twenty-something minutes and then drove back to Seattle in the same day. For some weird reason, it was a ton of fun. I actually ran a race I was somewhat happy with (a still-pretty-slow 24:41 (PR) that will have to stand as my best XC 6K until next year) and we all got cheesesteaks after. There were very few women running but three of us was just enough to score and win, and I got two shiny medals. When I went home for Thanksgiving I ran a 5K Turkey Trot "just for fun" and walked away with a 19:07 (PR) which was better than my old time by 49 seconds. I was very happy to see that I really was in good shape like I thought I was even though it hadn't really fallen into place during XC season. I won the women's race and got $100 cash and lots of other free stuff which was a nice bonus. I took a short break after the race.

Me with some of my old teammates after the 5K

Highlights: Running a huge 5K PR and actually being happy with my performance at an XC meet for once.

December

Summary: I got in a couple of my first 70 mile weeks with two quality days and a long run. Practices have been pretty easy so far since it's early in the season. I felt good and ran really well. I thought out my goals for next year, made a basic plan for Eugene, and signed up for some races along the way. I'm excited!

Highlights: Getting up to 70 with two practices and still feeling healthy and strong.

I feel really stereotypical for quoting Once a Runner, but this makes so much sense

"We can all be good boys and wear our letter sweaters around and get our little degrees and find some nice girl to settle, you know, down, with... Take up what a friend of ours calls the hearty challenges of lawn care... 

Or we can blaze! Become legends in our own time, strike fear in the heart of mediocre talent everywhere! We can scald dogs, put records out of reach! Make the stands gasp as we blow into an unearthly kick from three hundred yards out! We can become God's own messenger delivering the dreaded scrolls! We can race dark Satan himself till he wheezes fiery cinders down the back straightaway!

They'll speak our names in hushed tones, 'Those guys are animals' they'll say! We can lay it on the line, bust a gut, show them a pair of clean heels. We can sprint the turn on a spring breeze and feel the winter leave our feet. We can, by God, let our demons loose and just wail on!"

The Ultimate Troll

I just came back from a late dinner and I noticed a little kid coloring in the kid's menu. I noticed that most restaurants give you four crayons (red, green, blue, and yellow) and a piece of paper split into a bunch of regions (as a side-note, the restaurant I was just at only gave me three crayons :|). When I was little, I used to like to try to use different colors for all contiguous regions. I don't really know why. It just seemed like an interesting thing to do. A puzzle of some sort. How neat, then, that it was always possible.

I was telling my friend about this and it suddenly conjured up a super strong memory that I feel the need to share:

One day, when I was younger, I was sitting and waiting for piano lessons to begin. I was there with a friend, and her father was a professor (according to the internet, it looks like he does engineering and CS, so I'd guess CE). My friend and I were both bored, so he turned to us, and said "I'll give you a slice of cake if you can draw this without lifting up your pencil, and without retracing any lines, and you can only touch these points." He drew this figure:

He gave us paper and pencils. We were stumped for a bit but it didn't take us long to figure out a way:

It turns out we had just found an Eulerian path in this graph:

But we were little kids, so we had no idea what that meant. He was surprised that we had figured it out so quickly and didn't want to give us cake. So he said "OK, I'll give you a HUGE cake if you can do the same thing for this." He drew this figure:

A huge cake?!? Awesome!!! So we went at it. But nothing was working. We tried to catch technicalities in how he told us to approach the problem. We tried and tried but nothing worked. We were sad because we really wanted that huge cake.

I don't know about my friend, but I thought about this problem a lot after that day, and I kept trying to solve it. I guess that was some kind of brutal preparation for the reality of going into a proof without knowing the correct answer, because sometimes you try to show the impossible, and it doesn't quite work out. At the time, it never occurred to me to just "go home and look it up." I don't even know if Google existed then, but I don't think it would have occurred to me regardless, because I was naive enough to assume it was possible and keep trying.

He had asked us to find an Eulerian path in this graph:

Such a graph cannot have an Eulerian path since it has more than two vertices with odd degree (this is a really old and well-known result, but here is a reference anyways):

Clever. But I feel like if I'm going to troll kids with math when I get older, I'm going to do it with unsolved problems instead of unsolvable problems, since then maybe they'll be naive enough to find the answer.

I told my mom about this and she forwarded it to him. She got this response.

This is wonderful . It seems she already had a trend towards computer science (the problem is from Graph theory which belong to CS/MATH). How old was she then? I am sorry for not telling her it is unsolvable, but at this age you should not discourage kids...

I totally agree. I just wish I had been working with an open problem instead of an unsolvable one :)

conundrum

Things I want to do:

• Think about P vs. NP
• Think about NP vs. co-NP
• Write a complete compiler

Things I don't want to do:

• Study for my computation theory exam
• Study for my compilers exam

I guess my professors have successfully engaged my interest, but the more interesting the material I study becomes, the more contrived this system feels. [1][2]

There can only be one logical solution to this:

1. This is especially impressive in the case of compilers, as I am usually not very interested in things that have practical applications.

2. I am resisting the urge to parenthesize this sentence.

Bucket Something

Last updated 09/25/2012

One of my friends told me to make a bucket list because I'm going through my quarter-life crisis which is apparently a real thing. I think a bucket list emphasizes fulfilling everything and thus there are generally no two mutually exclusive items on a bucket list.

That's a bit too structured for me. I'd like to do some or all of these before I die, but I'm not quite sure which yet. Some of these are going to be mutually exclusive. I can't have like six different career paths at once. Hopefully this will help me sort everything out. In the meantime it's really bothering me that I can't think of the appropriate data structure to call this.

I'm going to include some stuff I've already done. And then maybe periodically I'll update this. This is in no particular order. [x] means that I've already done it and [  ] means I haven't.

I'll put it after a jump so it doesn't take up a lot of room here. It was fun to write what I have so far. I'm too tired to think of more, but I'm at least getting excited at all of the possibilities.

2012 Columbia Iron Girl Half-Marathon

All of my training this semester led up to an hour and a half of my life this morning. It's really weird to spend months training for something that takes so little time. It's even weirder to be past it, since a big race is like a wall in your schedule. It's opaque. Nothing in front of you is visible until you've surmounted the wall.

This morning I ran the Columbia Iron Girl Half-Marathon. My goals were as follows:

AA goal: Win the race or at least score, take home a nice cash prize. There was no way of knowing how realistic this was until I met my competition, but I figured it'd be fun to consider it anyways. So it was like a bonus goal.
A goal: Hit sub-1:30. This was entirely realistic, but required a lot of things to go right on race day.
B goal: Run a PR.
C goal: Run something consistent with my last half.

Let's rewind to the night before. It's 9:30 PM and I have to be up in seven hours. I set three alarms, take out my contact lenses, turn on white noise, turn off the lights, and go to bed. At 10:00 PM, I hear loud, pulsing bass from a party in another room. For the next hour, I try to sleep regardless. At 11:00 PM I go downstairs and alert the CA about the noise (albeit apologetically, since presumably I'm the only one trying to sleep at 11:00 PM on a Saturday). The CA contacts an RA. The RA tells them to turn it down.

It's quiet. Back to bed. Race anxiety. Oh god race anxiety. My brain is playing the events of tomorrow's race over and over and there's nothing I can do to shut it off. I try not to think, but really I'm just thinking about not thinking. It's 12:40 AM. My roommate comes back and slams the door, microwaves some food for fifteen minutes. I hear the heat turn on. It gets warmer. Then warmer. Still warmer. Sweating and afraid of dehydration, I head out to the common room and check the thermostat. 81. I turn it down to 76. Back to bed. Only I still can't sleep because now I'm thinking about whether or not I should drink more water.

Finally, I decide to sleep in a sleeping bag on my floor because I need a change of environment, and also because heat rises. Around 1:30 AM, I fall asleep.

I ran this race on three hours of sleep. I didn't want to. Luckily, I foresaw this problem and slept well the night before. I don't know how much it affected me. Not being a normal college student sucks sometimes. 仕方がない

Fast-forward to the starting line. It's in the mid-forties. I'm wearing extra clothing which I slowly strip off before the gun goes off until I'm wearing nothing but shorts and a singlet. I line up almost at the front, but let one layer of runners start in front of me (a realistic guess). There are two Ethiopian women in front of me. One woman behind me who looks fast. Joan Benoit Samuelson is nearby. Some woman with a B.A.A. shirt. Gun.

I'm off and I'm excited, I'm so excited. There are no men running this race. The pack is visible. The pack. I want to be part of the pack. Some primal, competitive urge draws me toward this pack, completely shedding my reasoning skills. A little less than a mile in, I realize I'm being stupid and back off a bit. I hit mile 1 just under 6:40. Not ideal, but I don't make anything of it. I just keep running.

I hear steps behind me. They are speedy and have a characteristic light thump as they strike the ground. Joan Benoit Samuelson. I know what her steps sound like just from watching videos of her run. She passes me. I feel silly for going out in front of an olympic gold medalist. It's a fleeting feeling. The novelty of the situation sinks in. I try to keep her in view. I am following an olympic gold medalist.

The entire course is constantly up and down. She slowly pulls away until I can no longer see her around mile six or so. Another woman passes me, but we hang close. Very close. I stay on her right shoulder. She says "nice job." I say "you too."

I look in front of me and I see the steepest hill of the race. I am afraid for a second, but then I think "there is no such thing as a hill, what's a hill?" It doesn't work today. It takes everything out of me. I am hyperventilating and I am only halfway through the race. I try to relax the downhills, but I can feel the lactic acid building up in my quadriceps. Up, down, up, down, I try to stay close behind this woman. She opens up the gap between us but never clears my vision.

Miles eight to eleven are a blur of rolling hills. People ring cowbells and the sound makes me want to vomit. I am still running a decent pace, but I have definitely slowed down. I lose the ability to add and subtract. I can no longer figure out my pace.

The finish is downhill, which is a relief. I have no speed left and my legs are mashed potatoes. Woman-who-looks-fast passes me (photos by Chris Farmer):

Mid-distance. She must be a mid-distance runner. She has the explosive, raw speed that 800 runners have. 

We round a turn into the final stretch. I run as fast as I can. It's not very fast. I finish in 1:30:55, a PR over New Bedford, which I think is good given my sleeping situation and the difficulty of the course.

I got 1st 20-24 and I think 12th overall. I got some neat swag:

The bracelet all runners got, with an additional silver charm only for prize winners.

"Champion" sounds cooler than "first place."

Finisher medals don't mean much to be, but this one is really pretty.

I also spoke a lot to woman-who-looks-fast. I have a weird habit of nicknaming people I run against in my head. I know her real name now, but it's more fun to keep use her race nickname here. She is a mid-distance runner which makes sense. I told her she was kickass at the end. We spoke for a while.

On the way out we went to talk to Joan Benoit Samuelson. She called me out on going out too fast. Woman-who-looks-fast took a picture for me:

終わり