Extremes

This past weekend was a strange mixture of craziness, hard work, and incredible laziness. It started off with the annual HSS (hospital where my lab is) holiday party, which is held at the Grand Hyatt, one of the fancier hotels in Midtown NYC. I have been hearing that a lot of companies are canceling or at least cutting down on expenses associated with holiday parties in this time of financial crisis, but not HSS! The party still had a huge variety of yummy dishes from sushi through pasta and steak to mussels and all kinds of things I didn't even recognize. There was of course a bar, or may I say many little bars and a DJ who played cheesy but perfect dance-like-crazy-to-music for 4 hours.



A good 15-20 people from my floor in the hospital came too, making it even more fun being with all the coworkers I really like. It's also fun to see people you work with really let go and have fun. Needless to say, we had a little more fun than necessary. In the process, we might have "borrowed" what was part of the party decoration, but it was just screaming out "Adopt me!" from across the room all night.



All in all, it was a fantastic night spent with a lot of people I really like and it included some craziness that I feel has been missing from my life recently. The next morning was less enjoyable though, after waking up from an alcohol-induced coma at dawn, taking some Advil, and trying to sleep it off, all I managed to do all day was going to buy food and then crawling back to bed with it. This was the first time since the summer that I was seriously hungover, and while it's a good and conscious decision on my part, it does mean that my tolerance has gotten lower and the hangover was probably worse than what it used to be like. It wasn't even the headache or feeling ill, but the bad mood and extreme laziness that comes with it that really pissed me off. I was literally unable to get off the couch all day. At first I was getting annoyed at myself for this - I had originally planned to go swimming in the afternoon - I realized as the day went by that this was my first totally lazy day in a very long time. In fact, I cannot even remember the last time I completely took a day off, with no work, no thinking about work, no places to be, things to do. It must have been sometime in the summer when things were less busy in school and lab and a lot of my friends were on vacation. Ever since that, I have been so busy I never even stopped to think about it. While I still felt unproductive and fat at the end of the day, it was something I needed badly.

Showing how tired I really was, I slept about 13 hours straight the next night and woke up being pretty tired still. I knew I had to get out for my long run no matter what. The obnoxious rain from all last week finally stopped and it was relatively warm (above freezing) so after some 2 hours of getting ready (after sleeping for too long, I always have trouble with this) I finally made it to the park and miraculously finished my planned 10 mile (16 km - I like saying it in km's, it sounds like it's so much more) run with barely any pain - no more than I would have had on any day of a long run without any injury, it's just that I am more sensitive to any kind of soreness or pain after having had an injury - and felt great at the end. It took me about 97 minutes to do this distance, which I was very pleased with. I had only run a 10M race once, back on Mother's day when I was near my fastest, but a week after a half-marathon, and then I finished in exactly 90 minutes. Considering the couple of months I had to take off, this is not bad. Definitely progress I am very happy about.

I was already thinking about how contrasting the days during this weekend were. Then today, it was a high of 67F (almost 20C) outside after the near freezing temperatures of Saturday as well as the forecast for tomorrow - the weather around here has been totally crazy, with some spring-like days, torrential rain, and freezing days with snow. To add to the list of extremes, I was reading an interview online with the winner of the Budapest marathon a couple of months ago, and when asked about his training schedule, he said that he ran on average 160-180 km/week (100-110 miles). Now I know we are talking about a professional runner and this is his job basically, but I still think it's insane that someone runs several half-marathons and possibly a marathon every week, with some speed-workouts scattered in there too. This wasn't enough yet either. During a seminar today, the speaker was introduced as someone who had published 7 first-author and 15 contributing author articles just while he was in graduate school! It was also mentioned that we, as graduate students, should all strive for similar achievements. Are they kidding? I would be extremely satisfied with 1 first-author paper at this point!


What the marathon runner who trains 160 km/week and the professor who published 7 papers while in grad school have in common, is extreme hard work in one area of their lives. What I wonder about is whether they really enjoy this and whether there is room for anything else in their lives. For all I know, the amazing scientist is happily married with 6 children (although he had no wedding ring, which of course, means nothing) and the marathon runner has plenty of time to enjoy life when not on the road, but what I suspect is that they spend most of their waking hours in the lab or on the road and that there is very little balance in their lives. I keep coming back to this question of balance. It's so hard to find it in this crazy busy world where everyone is trying to prove something and trying to be a little better and a little faster and little more published and where everything is about competition. Is there any way to be good at something without it taking over your entire life?