High Speeds

Was shooting for low 16 this race, but we came down with a stomach bug earlier this week and that ruined my plans. I still managed to run 16:52, a PR, and I'm hapy about that. My splits were pretty even -- 8:24 out and 8:28 coming back. I just did not have it today. The race was really competitive, even more than Draper days -- I was 17th with 16:52.

 I warmed up about 1.3, and cooled down 4, so 8.4 total. I know I haven't written much over the last month or so. Ever since I started classes at BYU, my schedule has been pretty hectic, escpecially because I'm studying Linear Algebra on top of all my regular classes and homework. This is actually the first time in my life when I have had homework that is graded. In fact, this is the first time in my life when I attended a class that gave out grades! Anyway, I think I'm settling into a regular schedule, getting more organized about stuff. I'll try to start writing more in the next couple weeks.

Easy pace today.

Ten miles total with three hard down the canyon. Time was 15:41.

Ran nine easy.

A.M. Nine easy.

P.M. Went to my Eagle board of review. I passed. Really, once you get to your board of review, the hard part is over. What I mean is, there is very strict 'quality control' at the stake level. The real test is getting your Eagle project approved and actually doing it. It has been a lot of work to get my Eagle, and I'm happy to have reached this point. Technically I'm not an Eagle untill the National advancement Board approves me, but for practical purposes I can consider my work done. One interesting thing I learned at my Board of Review was that the President of the United States is actually the honary president of the BSA. (chuckle . . .considering our current President ).  

  Another comment one of the Board members made was that a century ago, a deal was sealed by a handshake, Today, we have seventeen pages of paperwork. Back then, your word was your bond. Sadly,  that is not the case today.

Nine easy today. 

   In my Math 334 class, we were discussing a particularly difficult homework problem that had taken me something like 2 hours to solve with some help from my Dad and was stumping the rest of the class. Then Doctor Smith walked in and one student asked if we could go over the homework problem in class. I said something about the problem, and Doctor Smith, seeing that I had solved it, asked me to present my solution in front of class on the whiteboard. I did so, and the problem took about 10 minutes to write out. At first, I was reading off my homework paper, then caught what I thought was a fatal mistake in my solution. It turned out that the mistake was not fatal. I still got the correct answer on my paper. The mistake was just a misplacement of parentheses.

  In any case, when I saw the mistake I stopped reading off my paper and started solving the problem real-time, fearing that my approach to a solution was wrong and that I would be embarassed in front of class. My fears were not realized. My solution worked out and was approved by Doctor Smith. This is the first time I've written anything on the board in Math 334. At the start of the semester, it seemed like Doctor Smith was trying to scare people away. Now that the class has dwindled to 8 from 25, he seems more lax, more nice. At the start of the semester, I go tthe feeling that he was out to make people drop his class. Now, he lets people make up lost points on the midterm if they can come to his office and solve the problems they missed, lets a hard homework problem be actually solved in class and still gives credit for copycat solutions, and allows homework to be turned in whenever as long as it is before the end of the semeser.