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| From the other (sunny) side of the Bridge |
Hello one and all. I'm writing to you now from the comfort of my very own (well, shared with 3 other people from Brunel) home in San Francisco! Less than a mile from campus and with its own extortionately priced grocery store conveniently on our street, Parkmerced, a residential area owned and leased by a single company, is our new place of residence for the next two 'semesters' at SFSU! We have settled into the house very quickly and made it our home, I can't quite believe how much more homely (read- messy, and generally well-lived-in) it is in here now compared to how empty and lifeless it was to start. The only problem I have with the place is that there is no carpet whatsoever so it gets very echoey in here; we (mainly me) thought that it was haunted for the first week until we worked out what the source of the mysterious bumping and knocking was...
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| Lifeless husk |
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| By the end of day one- Fully fledged student-home! |
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| Our shared garden/yard |
Parkmerced seems to have gotten a pretty bad slating on Yelp (a user generated review site, essential for finding great food and other businesses in SF) but I haven't had any complaints so far, there are some great places to eat just across the street 'on site' and the amenities are very acceptable.
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| CAD inducing-ly good- $8 just across the street @ Hall of Flame |
Classes
Classes have been very good so far, the first week was absolute madness with people trying to 'add' classes to gain credit, in a lot of cases they needed this to graduate this year! It is very bizarre seeing a whole extra classes' worth of students sitting on the floor when entering your first lecture and I am very glad that we were given priority registration as J1-visa students, I really don't fancy the idea of begging to be taken on to a class that is already at maximum capacity. The school system out here is definitely a long way off what we have in the UK, it feels temperamental and flimsy in the sense of how the students are looked after by the school. It has given me a completely new perspective on how lucky I am to be secure in my classes each year at Brunel (providing I get the grades) and that it doesn't come down to a roll of the dice.
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| It's not all fun & games here |
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| There was a queue for the campus bookstore for the first 2 weeks |
As far as the teaching goes, it has been, again, different to that at Brunel but not necessarily bad- it feels a lot less formal (though the lecturers still insist on being called "Dr, or Professor) but they are very easily distracted in some cases; we had a whole lecture devoted to Q&A from the previous lecture that was devoted to Q&A with some students asking absolutely moronic things about how much SPAM it's acceptable to eat and if they should go on a juice-only diet. I was thinking that they might be attempting to wind the Prof. up and string the class out and if that had happened in Brunel or anywhere in the UK for that matter I would be certain that is what they were doing, but in this case I genuinely believe that they were just thicko's.
On the other hand, my Kinesiology 250 : Introduction to Kinesiology, lecturer personally knows triathlon legend/general psychopath Dave Scott and grew up with him in Davis where he began training! The workload has been very manageable so far and I think I am coping quite well after a summer of heavy brain-inactivity, with about 3 assignments having been handed in and averaging around 90-95% I feel confident, so far...
Training
Training has been going well in some respects, disastrous in others. If you remember on my last blog I think I spoke about getting some big run-mileage in and feeling strong, well about 2 weeks ago (who am I kidding, it was 15 days and 12 hours ago) I was out for a run, I had done about 64 miles in the last 7 days with 4 10+ mile-days in a row when on the 65th mile *BOOM* my right leg just goes completely causing searing pain on the outside of my calf. I had to limp back 2 miles in the cold and have only today started being able to walk without giving the impression that I have a prosthetic leg.
I've also been riding up the local mountain, oh yeah- mountain! It takes about 22 minutes to climb and gains around 1200'ft so nothing Alpe-esque but it is pretty relentless and makes for a good threshold/strength session, it's also another good way to gauge my progress over the year since I lack my power-meter out here; I have quite enjoyed not having to stare at the numbers during training and being able to push harder if I feel good or hang back if not, it feels that there is less pressure on me during training without every second of effort being recorded but the fact that this pressure is self-imposed to begin with makes me want to scrutinise my mental approach a bit more. We are learning a lot about coping strategies and anxiety in Psychology class at the moment and I feel that there is already a lot that I can apply to myself during training.Swimming is going nicely, I thought that I'd become a swimming god after first using the Uni pool (free access 12-8pm mon-fri!!) as I saw my Phelps-like times on the pace clock. Then I realised the pool was 25 yards not 25 meters and my ego evaporated instantaneously. Seriously though, it is going quite well in the pool and I'm working my way through the excellent 16 week plan in my training book. I'd like to try and break 60's for the 100yards by the end of the year seeing as I have the right distance pool it would be rude not to, I managed a 28s 50 at the end of a hard session yesterday so it may not be as impossible as I first thought..
Thank you for reading this far or even any of it, I included pictures of food down here so if you made it to the end you'd have a reward :)
Until the next time, take care.
James xx
