Job search update: I accepted a job at the York Daily Record in York, Pa. I'll be working as a business lifestyle reporter, which basically means reporting on the way people spend, save and earn. It sounds like a really cool position and I'm excited about it.

My mom is freaking out about the salary. She's told me she has had about three panic attacks about my not being able to pay off things like student loans and rent and car insurance and cell phone bills and everything. And the fact that I'm not going to be making that much money has led to many a tense moment between us as of late.

I mean yes the money will most certainly be tight and I'm definitely worried about it too, but I don't know maybe I'm just in denial for now because I'm glad to have a job and I get to enjoy the last bit of my last semester.

Now I get the fun task of looking at apartments and trying to find someone to live in my CP apartment.

I've also checked out the running clubs in the York area. I figure it's a good way to meet people and learn where it is and isn't safe to run in the area.

I'm kind of all out of sorts about everything because it seems like it happened so fast. But it's exciting and fun.

And now I'm off to tidy up the apartment because potential subleasers are coming to visit tomorrow.

A really really really mean person broke my camera at our tailgate this weekend, and refuses to chip in any amount of money towards a new one...so needless to say I'm really sad and will be without a camera for a bit.

But here at last are those pictures I promised. Maryland Madness, my 5K, tailgating and Halloween.

Before pictures nothing to update on workout wise. Octapulluza kind of died with midterms and the job search and all. I haven't run or been to the gym in I think a week. I think things are going to start to calm back down a bit soon. At least I'm hoping so.

Anyway here are those pictures:

Again apologies for how much I have sucked at keeping up with blogs this week. I kind of feel like my life is spiraling out of control with work and midterms and Octapolluza.

I think the last Octapolluza update I had was Thursday where I was considering whether or not dancing was going to count as my workout. Well, I'm counting it, and I'm counting it for Friday night too. Saturday was another rest day though and strength training didn't happen last week because of everything else that was going on. The days I normally do it, I was either interviewing for jobs and studying for midterms.

I also broke the no-sweets rule over the weekend because I was celebrating getting a job offer. (And I'm pretty sure that's worth an ice cream sundae and a piece of my friends delicious homemade chocolate peanut butter pie!) Whoooo job offer! (I haven't accepted yet, I still have other interviews that I'm going to. Making sure I can explore my options and see everything that's out there.) But yea it's pretty exciting none the less.

I'm back on track with the sweets though starting this morning. I mean there's only like 1o more days in October and I'm going to finish out the month strong even though I've had some deviations in the past few days.

Last night I got my workout via some intramural flag football. At midnight. My friend really needed a girl to play on his co-ed team and I needed a serious study break, soooo I thought what the heck, I'm going to play some football. But that means I didn't get back to my apartment until 1 in the morning and then I wanted to look over my notes some more because I'm not really going to have much time to do that today. Needless to say, I didn't go to bed until really late.

As far as a quick weekend update:
Terps football blew the homecoming game in the last few minutes. Final score 18-17. Terrible play calling and an unfortunate safety led to the outcome.

Terps soccer. Whooo boy. Tied 1-1 after double overtime. Last 10 seconds of the game punctuated by a bench-clearing brawl. Check out the article here. Not a fan of the way the article paints the picture that it was our teams fault. Cal State Northridge played dirty the entire game. They were tackling our guys with their spikes up. We lost one of our best players for who knows how long. He was on crutches on the sidelines before half time and then for the rest of the game. Perhaps their most classy act was spitting on fans calling them D-bags and Mother Fer's. Their coach and two of their players got red cards. It tells you something when the coach gets a red....that he has no control over his team and teaches them not to play like classy soccer players, but like a bunch of thugs.

The brawl broke out with a few seconds left. We were setting up for a corner and one of our guys was in the box jockeying for a position with their defender....who was allll over him like elbowing him in the head/neck etc etc. Now remember this is after 110 minutes of them being all over the team....next thing you know our guy has their guy in a headlock, the benches are clearly and their guys are going nuts all over our guys. Eventually the teams are pulled away from each other. Next thing you know the cops are strolling across the field. Unbelievable. This is soccer people.

I'll try to get some pictures up from the weekend soonish, and I'll try to catch up on blogs, but it's going to be another crazy week and I can't promise much.

Apologies for the delay since my last post. I'm in the thick of midterm season as well as doing job interviews, and it's just been a crazy week.

Octapolluza is going well so far this week. Monday I did two yoga classes and this new class we have called FitTrek. It's a form of nordiac walking. It was kind of cool.

Tuesday I got in a nice run. It started off not so great. My calves were tight and everything felt really labored. I started to feel things loosen up around mile 1 though. I had only planned on doing two miles because things felt so bad in the beginning, but I ended up extending it to three when things felt better.

Wednesday I took my rest day for the week because I was in York, Pa., interviewing for a job. It was an all day affair with the commute and I got back and I was just dead tired.

Today I am on the verge of breaking Octapolluza for the first time. I am just completely and totally worn down and exhausted from this week. I've been burning the candle at both ends a little too much. I didn't realize just how tired I was until I came home in between two of my classes, sat down on my bed and next thing I knew I was waking up just in time to leave for my last class of the day. I was lucky I didn't sleep through it because we had part two of our midterm.

So needless to say I haven't worked out today. I'm spending the evening relaxing. I might go out dancing at one of the bars around here with some friends tonight though, and if I do, I might count that as my work out because I definitely get a decent workout in when we go out. We'll see what happens though. I may end up just staying home and passing out. I am looking forward to tomorrow though because I can finally sleep in, something I definitely need.

Thank goodness it's the weekend!

So remember how a few posts ago, I mentioned that I registered for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. Right well I didn't really remember either. I mean I knew the date was on the calendar, but I didn't specifically train for the race or anything like that.

My one and only goal for the race was to qualify for the National Half Marathon, which is in D.C. in March. In order to do that, I would have needed to complete the 5k in under 31 minutes. Frequent readers, you know I'm not the fastest and that I usually average between 11 or 12 minute miles.

Well guess what people? By some miracle/grace of God/stroke of luck I finished in something like 30:50 or 55ish. I forgot to stop my watch right away because I bumped into a friend in the finishers shoots, so my watch time read 30:57. (I'll update when the official race results are up.) Anyway, yea I totally qualified! I am pumped! So pumped that I wanted to call lots of people and tell them right away, but it was 8:30 in the morning and no college kid in their right mind is up that early. My mom was though, so I gave her a ring.

Overall, the race atmosphere rocked. There were 32,500 people either running or walking. How insane is that! They did a nice ceremony in the beginning to honor the breast cancer survivors and they had a fitness instructor from a local gym lead a warm up and stretch to get us ready and then we were off.

The first mile I started off too fast, but it was hard not too as it was downhill for a bit. Then it kicked back up hill and flattened for a little. I hit mile marker 1 at 10:11. That made me a little nervous. I didn't want to be going so fast that I bonked at the end. I tried to slow it up a little bit. I hit mile marker 2 at either 20:10 or 20:20. I can't quite remember. I was pretty pumped about that and knew that if I could keep that pace I'd be okay to finish in under 31.

But then mile three happened and it was hilly and it was mean and it seemed like it was never going to end. I kept looking frantically at my watch trying to scope out the finish line, but I wasn't seeing it anywhere. When my watch read 29 minutes, and I still couldn't see it, I was thinking qualifying wasn't going to happen.

Then I heard this mom say to her son, "The finish line's just ahead do you want to sprint?" I was like if you say so lady and I took off. My legs felt like bricks, but I was going to finish in under 31 minutes. When I finally saw the official race clock it said 30:44, and I was still a bit of a ways out. So I sprinted harder and managed to cross at something between 30:50 and 30:55.

So I'm elated that I qualified for National and I'm stoked because that's definitely a PR.

Quick Octapolluza update:
Worked out every day this week (optional rest day on Tuesday)
Strength trained once.
Continued not eating sweets.
Two weeks down. Two to go!

Well I'm half way through week two and things have been going well. This no sweets thing is strangely easier than I thought. Although my friends laugh at me...they're like you won't eat sweets because a bunch of people you never met in your life are doing some thing for October. (I'll ponder this point in more detail in second.)

I took my rest day for the week on Tuesday because I had day jammed full of class, followed by a meeting for ODK (it's an honors, leadership fraternity) to vote in new members, followed by a soccer game, which we won 2-1.

Yesterday I had plans to run in the morning before the career fair, but that got thrown at the window because I wanted to spend the few hours in the morning organizing my cover letter, resume and writing samples. In the end, I think it paid off.

So instead of running in the morning, I taught a yoga class at night to a group of sorority girls. It was at 9:30 p.m. though...so far past my bedtime. Well not really, but not really the time of day I'm all about working out. But either way I got the workout in.

Today the weather is finally not in the 80's or 90's in fact we're hanging out in the low 70's! Yiiipppieee! I've got one more class today, and then I'm planning on heading out for a nice, slow run. I want to take it nice and slow to see how the calves hold up and all that jazz.

Now back to the previous statement about my friends laughing at me for sticking to something because of a whole group of people I've never met. It's weird because I when I talk about all of you to my friends here, I still refer to you all as my friends. Like when I was talking about Jess and the Chicago Marathon, I was saying, "Yea...I have a friend running in that." My people here think it's weird, but I don't know, what the heck else am I supposed to call you all? "The people whose blogs I read?" That sounds so unattached. I don't know...just my random musing of the day.

I'm beginning to wonder if the serious tightness in my calves is a result of walking all around campus in my flip flops. I've been noticing some tightness from time to time as I'm walking to and from classes when I wear them. I mean they're flip flops, they obviously don't have a ton of support, but it's just been so freaking hot every day that the thought of jamming my feet into socks and sneakers has absolutely no appeal.

Yesterday was a fairly busy day, spent studying for my first mid-term in the wave of mid-terms that are about to happen and then hitting the gym and then going to Kinkos where I spent $36 making 201 copies of some of my writing samples to send out with my resume so I can get a job. (I must have killed hundreds of trees and that made me sad a little bit!)

Yesterday's gym session included an hour step class, a half hour abs class, and an hour Muscle Works class. (I wouldn't have done the abs class, but it was stuck in between the step and Muscle Works class, so I figured if I was going to be there, I may as well do it.)

That successfully takes care of my strength training for the week (although I'm going to try to work another day in if my schedule allows for it.)

In Muscle Works, I specifically didn't do the calf raises because of the problems I've been having. It doesn't seem like the best idea to tighten them up even more than they already are.

On the slate for today is teaching kickboxing class and then yoga. I'm going to try to throw in a lot of lower body stretching in yoga today, in hopes that it will help loosen up my legs.

Midterm Numero Uno is tomorrow....oh goody!

So much to say about this weekend. I promise I'll try to keep it brief.

First thing's first. Here's the workout/Octapolluza summary for week 1:
Met requirements for working out every day (except Friday when I took the optional rest day.)
Met strength training requirement.
Have been sweets free all week!

Saturday's run wasn't the greatest. My calves have been getting really tight as of late, and I'm not sure why. I've been trying to make sure I stretch plenty, but things still seem to be tight. I know some of you have mentioned some foam roller thing that supposedly helps out? What is it? Does it work? I'm thinking maybe something like that will help me out.

But even so, I was able to get in a solid 25 minute run Saturday before continuing the weekend's sporting festivities.

Which leads me to ponder the question: What is it about beer that can draw college students out of bed at 6 a.m. for kegs and eggs before a noon football game?

Personally, the idea of kegs and eggs repulses me. So while a few of my friends were tailgating in the pitch black, I got in a solid run and a shower and headed over for tailgating at 9 a.m. (but beer is still gross not matter what time of day it is....I know blasphemy...so needless to say, I was sober.)

I think the tailgate is best summed up by pictures/video:














(It was 90 degree outside, I had to leave early in the 3rd quarter because I was so sunburned. Who thinks they'll need sunscreen in October? I finished watching on TV...Maryland over Georgia Tech 28-26)

In other rocking Terps news, the soccer team beat Clemson Friday night 3-2 in overtime! It's our first win in ACC play, leaving us with an overall record of 4-4-2. It was an excellent game. Sorry I don't have pictures. It was a little too intense to be whipping out my camera, but if you click the link you can check out the photo gallery from the game too!

I promised to keep it short, so that's it for now.

Hope everyone enjoyed their weekends!

Oh man today has definitely been a busy day...and it's not over yet. I have to teach another yoga class at 8:30 tonight. I've already taught Muscle Works and one Yoga class already today. And 8:30 is just late. I'm going to fall asleep by the end of it lol.

But I did get in my strength training for the week, which was awesome.

And I faced my first no sweets for the month of October challenge. On Wed. nights the Catholic Student Center on campus has free delicious dinners and also free delicious desserts and my friends and I always go...because hey...free food. And go me...I didn't have any of the many brownies or cookies that my friends did! Whooo hooo!!!!

Tomorrow is going to be the first reallllly challenging time to get in my workout. I have class all day again and then a journalism conference at night. So my plan is to do it in the morning, and I just talked to my roommate so we could work out the shower thing so that I can run and we can still both cram in showers so neither of us are late to class...it'll be challenging, but I think we can make it work (at least I'm hopeful)

Friday I know I'm going to have to take my optional rest day for the week because I'm in the journalism conference from like 7 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon, then have to Metro home real fast and get ready for the soccer doubleheader....crazzzziness.

I'm so looking forward to this weekend so I can get a break from life haha!

Well, I'm happy to report, I've made it successfully through the first two days of Octapolluza.

Yesterday was pretty simple. I taught yoga and kickboxing, which definitely fill my workout requirement.

Today...well it was a different beast. My original plan was to run this morning before class, but when my alarm went off, it was still pitch black outside. I figured I could wait about 30 more minutes and see if it got any lighter before I was going to have to change my plans because I would be late for class.

Needless to say, it didn't get any lighter. Tuesdays and Thursdays are fairly jam packed days for me. I have class straight through from 9:30 til 2. Then I have a quick lunch break and then class until 4:45. Normally that wouldn't be much of a problem. I'd just run after class.

Butttt we have a soccer game tonight....and you all know my love of Terps soccer. So somehow I managed to jam in a quick 25 minute run right after class. It was only so so. The new shoes felt great but the calves were really tight, probably because they didn't get stretched enough after kickboxing last night. Sorry I can't update further...must jump in the shower and then run over to the soccer pitch (haha or field if you prefer).