Dream

So I had a dream last night, I was at a very very small short track rink with no pads, where there were long trackers from around the world skating. As I was watching I noticed my stuffed animals were around me and I found a live baby fox with them!!! It was the CUTEST THING IN THE WORLD.
It was a red fox, but it was as cute as this one:


Just thought id share the cuteness with everyone :) (Does anyone interpret dreams?? This was a weird one.)

Shoutout

Remember Shannon, my roomie from freshman year? Well I have something to say to her mom, Mrs. Bee. I MISS YOUR COOKIES AND MUFFINS!! They were sooo delicious. I was just talking to Shannon and we were talking about the good ol days when you'd send her cookies and id sit there and eat them all. Hahaha!! Just thought Id share that with you.

Ps. If you ever feel like sending me your top secret muffin recipe, thatd be cool. :)

Trials

Didnt do so hot yesterday in the 9 lap time trial. I got 18th putting me outside the top 16 so that means im done skating for the week. Now im stuck in Marquette watching the top 16 skate. Which is ok I guess, I get to watch and learn. But Im disappointed in myself because I know I could have skated better. My time was 1:39 and if Id skated around the time I did at the Desert Classic a few weeks ago, 1:37.4, I would have made it. I know ive only been skating 4 years, this is my first trials and I should just enjoy being here. And I would enjoy it, if I knew I skated my best. Even if after skating my best I still didnt make top 16, but I cant help but feel like I didnt skate to my potential. Maybe I was too nervous, maybe I didnt prepare well enough or eat the right things before the race, I dont know. But I guess ill just have to work on it and wait for my next chance, heres to the next 4 years!

Ps: id like to add how much it means to me that so many of you (family, distant family, people I wish were family, haha) have sent me emails and cards wishing me luck, its awesome to have that kind of support. Some of my family even sent me checks to help with travel expenses while im here at trials! Just wanted to thank you for being behind me, and I wont let you all down in 4 years you can be sure of that! :)

Dinner

I made one of my favorite korean foods the other night, Bibimbap!! It was no joke...the best ive ever had...even better than at the korean restaurants around here. All 2 of them. Haha. for those of you who dont know what it is: Heres the Wiki on bibimbap.



~~~5 days till I leave for Trials!!!~~~

Ramen eating contest

Fun story, thursday night I had a ramen eating contest with Simon Cho. Everyone thought I was crazy for taking on an asian in a ramen eating contest, and I lost...but only by a few mouthfuls! I put up a good fight. Together we ate about 13 packs of ramen, and it wasnt the tiny top ramen packages, it was these monster packs of korean ramen. I was full for the entirety of the next day. Ill tell you, after that I NEVER wanted to see smell or hear about ramen again. Think maybe the ramen had something to do with how fast I skated saturday? haha.



All 15 packs of ramen we made...


Note how Jonnys making weird faces in every picture hes in...




This is my lead on the first bowl!


Heres us about to blow chunks simultaneously, haha


Never wana see food again...

Happiest moment of my LIFE

I QUALIFIED FOR OLYMPIC TRIALS TODAAAAAY!!!!!! I skated a 1:37.4 in the 1000m at the Desert Classic here in SLC, and to qualify I needed a 1:38.0! My previous best time was a 1:39.1, so Im thinking I did pretty well. Ive never worked so hard for something in my life, I almost died skating that 9 lap time trial but it was soooo worth it. Ive never cried out of happiness before, but this was for sure one of the happiest moments of my life. After I finished I heard some teammates yelling way to go liz! and I looked at the time and FREAKED OUT. People probably thought I was crazy when I got off the ice, I ran up to Jun and gave him a big hug, hes the best coach ever.

Side note, we all stress Jun out a lot and frustrate him regularly. He puts so much time into us and maintaining our blades, last weekend he even turned down his weekend vacation with Jimmy to Vegas that he already paid for because he thought we needed him at saturday practice. 2 days ago, he even spent the night at the Oval in his office sharpening and bending blades. So we all got together and bought him a gift certificate to get a hot stone massage!!

Anyway, this means Ill be going to marquette MI in about 2 weeks to compete in the 9 lap TT. If I make top 16, then Ill get to compete in the races, but to make it out of the TT ill have to try like ive never tried before and be super lucky that day. But Im Irish so I should have no problem. :)

This is a card I wrote all my long term goals on, and until today, ive never been able to cross one out. It felt good.

This past week

This weekend wasnt very exciting, especially compared to last weekend. But heres what went on:

- We did jumps on thursday that made my shins so sore Jun made me get off the ice friday morning because I could hardly skate

- That night I went in for a nice relaxing massage and got trigger point instead, and im sure people down the street could hear me scream. The whole time im thinking "Ive never done a workout that hurt this bad, WHY SHOULD THE MASSAGE HURT WORSE THAN THE WORKOUTS!!?"

- Sat morning we had to be on the ice even earlier at 650am to do 9 lap and 4 lap time trials that went horribly for me, im thinking partly because of the shins and also from being exhausted and weak from the past week, even though it was only a 6 week (note its on a 4-9.9 scale). Andrea somehow decided she was gonna go ahead and get a 2 second PB in a practice TT...no idea where that energy came from but thats cool.

- Sat I decided I needed a sundae so I went to Coldstone and got a chocolate sundae with peanut butter, hot fudge, and MMs. Then I went out and ran it all off, no harm done :) Highlight of the week.

- Next week is a 4.0 week YAY

- Ive been eating pasta and pbj everyday (except for the day when Anthony cooks) because I dont know how/am usually too tired/lazy to cook. So if anyone has FAST and EASY and CHEAP recipe ideas lemme know!

- I noticed I now have over 10,000 views. Who are you people?! I dont have THAT many relatives and friends! But im flattered. Really. Its nice to know my life is so entertaining to so many ive never met, lol!

My own recipe...

Try Lizs exploding flaming crumbly cake today!!
Heres the story.
I went to play paintball with some skaters, horrible idea. It was very painful! But Anthonys buying me a sundae for playing more than one game, haha. I got some nice welts on my head, butt, arm and leg. Here are some of my battle wounds:





Then, I went to make this amazing chocolate butter cake ive been planning ALL WEEK. The batter is perfect. It smells amazing. Then, I open the oven door to check on it, it had exploded all over the oven, then caught fire! Im like wow for real?? This is really gonna happen right now?? So im thinking. How do I put out a fire in the oven? I blow on it, swat it with the oven mit, didnt work. im like well, I know water in an oven might be a not so great idea but here goes. I sprinkled some water in there and POOF there goes my visibility. I got the cakes the hell outta there and spent a good half hour scraping the mess off the sides and top of the cake pan and in the oven, but there is good news! the cakes are still edible and DELICIOUS. So im like oh I can just put these here on the cooling rack. Then it tipped over and stuck to the pan while other parts of it proceeded to stay on the cooling rack...theres goes my cake. But even though I can no longer stack and frost it, it still tastes amazing. So im gonna put it in a plastic bag in chunks and call it chocolate crumble. mmm. Meanwhile, Anthony is calling Nick and Terri to "get back to the house, NOW." because he didnt trust I had the situation under control. So now I guess im on kitchen probation according to Anthony, and he will explain that when he gets home. Oops...

PS I just finished scooping the remnants of the cake into a plastic bag...the thing is, its probably some of the best chocolate cake ive ever tasted :)







Heres some chocolate banana bread I successfully made yesterday

new place

So I finally have internet on my own computer! That means more regular posts. I moved in with some other people on my team in a house in north salt lake, Anthony, Nick, and Terri (who sometimes records our practices and takes really cool pictures of other things) and next month Brittany will move in too! Love my room, its bigger than my last one and its downstairs where its nice n cool when its 100 out. like every day. Practice is the same, 8 hour days at the oval, mon-sat. Besides the occasional usually once a month field study I have no life outside skating. I pretty much just come home eat and sleep, haha. BUT! this weekend I plan on making an amazing cake. I was warming up today by making cookies, but I forgot I was at a higher altitude so I burned the bottoms. This is good though, ill know for the cake. Just so you all know Im not actually eating all this, the cookies I actually had to make for nick and terri cuz I lost a bet, lol. Ive lost 4 lbs since I started that diet, Jun wants me to lose 4 more. Also, the reason I had time to make cookies today was because I didnt go to practice this morning. I was just so incredibly beat up and exhausted from so many hard weeks in a row. I woke up, got dressed, and sat there for like 10 minutes fighting with myself debating wether I should actually go or not. I ultimately decided I would just suck in practice if I went like I have the past week and went back to bed. I think it was a wise decision, I might not have made it through the 2nd workout today if I hadnt skipped the first one. I guess I did pretty well, Jun gave me a pat on the back instead of a whack, haha!

Heres some pics from last sundays weather balloon launch.
(Thats me with the balloon!)





The sounding (data) from the balloon. Red is temp, blue is dew point, where they meet is a cloud.

MAKI!

I GOT A NEW BIKE!!!! Its a Trek triple 1.5, super nice. LIME GREEN. And I even got them to customize the handle tape to match :) I walked into the bike shop, and it was the first bike I saw, love at first sight. Before I went to the bike shop, I was struggling to come up with a name for my future bike, but once I saw it Maki popped into my head and it fit perfectly. I dont know why, theres no good reason to call it Maki, maybe I was hungry. But it looks like a Maki right?







So I havent been posting partly because I still dont have internet, partly because of my practice schedule, and partly because im not conscious in my free time. Heres what my day is like now: wake up 545am, eat, skate, dryland, eat, sleep, ice, dryland, eat, go to bed at 830. Yup. Exciting life. Most of the time I dont even choose to take a nap, ill get back from morning practice and suddenly ill wake up and itll be time to go to practice again! On one day last week I was at the Oval for a total 8 hours. I think it was a 9.9 week. Jun rates the volume of each training week, supposedly its on a scale from 1-10 but so far weve seen 6.5-9.9. Mostly 9.9. Why not 10 you ask? I have no idea. My theory is that in korean training philosophy you cant have a 10 week because you can NEVER train hard enough. Cant wait to go back to Rochester for some r&r.

Theres a dietitian at the Oval, Ted. Hes given us all tailored diet plans. According to Jimmy and Jun Im fat and need to stop eating. (lol) Jun put it this way: "you need to find a boyfriend, fall in love, have him break up with you so youll be so upset youll stop eating!" Apparently thats what happens when girls get dumped in korea. So we all had body fat tests done, and to everyones surprise I had the lowest body fat at 14%. You should have seen the looks on Jun and Jimmys faces, haha! It was great. Heres the good part, this is Jimmy accepting the fact that im not fat: "You look fat...but youre not...huh.." HAHA.

Anyway, my diet is set up so I can lose 5 lbs of fat, so when I take the body fat test again the goal is to go down by about 2%. Before I was eating 3000-3500 calories a day, and now im eating 3050-3300, so no big deal. I have to eat low calorie bread, no cheese, no stuffed pasta, lasagna, sugar, more veggies and fruit etc. The good thing is I can drink as much chocolate milk as I want!! O a cool thing I found out from the nutrition analysis is exactly how much milk I drink. I consumed 2957mg of calcium in one day, 7.7 cups, when the recommended amount for me was 3.5c or 1000mg, lol.

Heres some korean food Jimmy made, mmm.


PS I quit my mascot Job, I couldnt take it anymore. lol.

Meteorology Field Study

Im doing a lake breeze field study this summer, and we got thru the first day easy! We set up some weather stations and launched a weather balloon, my first balloon launch ever! Ps I got a job as the mascot for Red Robin...haha...


This is the sounding (data) we got from the launch, the blue line is temp and the red is dew point, they are decreasing with altitude. The wind speed/direction is marked by barbs on the side, wasnt windy at all.










The Kestrel, tells dew point, temp, wind speed, pressure, altitude, and relative humidity!





Hang gliders