Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Trial #1

This year I decided to substitute one of my "normal" courses (the lecture-lab-midterm-final type) with my own research project. I contacted the professor I wanted to work with last year (Dr. Lawrence Spriet...aka the Gatorade Dr.) since I knew I wanted to focus on exercise physiology. First semester was spent researching my topic, reading as much as I could of already published literature, figuring out what I wanted to test and how I was going to do it. Finally this semester I've been able to start testing!

Yesterday I completed my first trial and I was pretty nervous.  I've been the athlete being tested before, but this time I was the one doing the testing! 1 trial down, only 31 more to go...

The "final" for this course is a 10 minute presentation I have to give to my supervisor and his graduate students along with a written paper of my work. I'm definitely enjoying seeing what it is like to do my own research, although I may not be saying the same thing once I am trying to finish all the data analysis.

Today is the last of a few days of regeneration here at the RTC and I think it worked as I'm looking forward to the next block.  AND my flights to Florida are booked!! Hurry up reading week...

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Singing Lessons

This week we welcomed the newest member of the RTC, Jeff Scull. I feel bad for anyone who comes into our group without prior knowledge of Alexander and Ian (aka DJ ASH and IDrizzy), but Jeff seems to be holding his own. Those two are quite the pair, and they certainly make early morning swims much more entertaining!

Both Alexander and Ian are trying to learn guitar this semester and apparently make a go at a singing career...




In other news, I tested out Ian's hypothesis today on 11AM swims. A few of us had a conflict with the early swim this morning due to a breakfast with the Director of Athletics and a room filled with Academic All Canadians. I KNEW there was a reason to get good grades: free quiche! Anyways, 11am swim it was and I think the jury is still out about the benefits on swim performance at 7 vs 11 am. Perhaps more testing is needed.

School is picking up this week with labs and assignments beginning to pile up. Ah well...Florida in 1 month (yes, I am already counting down the days!).






Monday, January 10, 2011

Syllabuses

New semester. New blog. We at Guelph had the luxury of 3 full weeks off during the Christmas break but we are back at classes today. Time to read over those syllabuses. My classes today seemed like they will be interesting, I just hope they announce the midterm dates soon so I can book tickets for our reading week training camp!

I'm happy to be back in Guelph. Training at home is always a nice change of pace and of course meals cooked by someone else taste much better (thanks mom and dad!), but being back in the pool this morning with Coach CT and the rest of the RTC was great. CT reminded us today that we have 5 more weeks until our 1500 TT's. That also means 5 weeks until Angela and I compete at OUA's. Eeek!!

Happy training!