Adventures Update

Wow.  I am totally lame.   I haven’t update this blog since January!  I have totally no excuse other than I have not make this as a priority and that’s kinda lame.   The most important part of my training is to have accountability.  I need to publicly announced my next race, blog my training progress (or complaint), record my success (or delayed success — I don’t like to word failure) and hopefully inspire others along the way and I failed miserably on that part.

However, better late than never, so here goes an update.

I’m going to run another marathon.  Yes.  I broke my ‘I can only do one marathon a year’ rule.   On June 2nd, I will be at San Diego Rock & Roll with my Team in Training people and will give my best so I can yet cross another finish for 26.2 miles of crazy.   Wait, that’s not all — on June 22nd, I will be standing at the start line and will run/walk/crawl my way to the finish like for Seattle Rock & Roll Half Marathon.   That’s right, marathon and half (again), but this time at least, they are separated by three weeks!

But Yanni, why in the world you do these (crazy) runs, you might ask.

Well, I could come with lists of reasons but there’s one that always stand out for me.   BECAUSE I CAN.

See, I know so many people that are not fortunate enough to be able to run, let alone do any marathon.   Not because they don’t want to train or put an effort, but because they are physically cannot do that or being constraint with cancer and its awful fallout from it.    I am SO lucky and fortunate that even with my own physical limitation, and believe me, I have many of those — I am still able to do this.   I am able to put hundreds of miles of training run and give my best and more to complete the challenge of marathon/half-marathon.   Every time I cross the finish line, I am being reminded of how lucky I am to be able to do this.   It really humble me and THAT make me want to do the race over and over again.    The fact that I am part of Team in Training and help Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to raise money to end blood cancer and give the blood cancer survivor a hope, that just make the whole thing even worthwhile.   It hit so close to home, their missions and what they do and I will do many, many races with them in the future

I lost my father last Wednesday (4/24) to a sudden heart attack.   I have somewhat complicated relationship with him and it really hit me hard.   It really make me realize more than I already believe that life is SO short and you just never know when it’s your time to go.      Make the time to chase your dream.   Always hug your loved ones, and tell them you love them and smile often.   Set a goal that seems so far away and work your way, chunk by chunk towards it.    This goes for everything, not just running a marathon/half.   The sense of accomplishment you experience when you reach that goal is far greater and so worth it than any struggle you have during it.   Trust me on this, I’ve been there, done that!

Training Update

I will try to do weekly update starting next week, including my training plan.   For now, I’m just going to summarize what I’ve done so far.

I started my training for these events on Feb 8.   Summer season for TNT kicked off at Feb 1 which was a week after my Tinker Bell Half Marathon (yes, I did that one too AFTER Goofy Challenge.    Sorry for lack of update).   I attended the kick off party, but chose to skip the run and give myself a break.

Fast forward for today, I did 18.02 miles earlier (220 minutes — yes, that’s 3 hours 40 mins).   TNT training plan is using time based, not mileage based.  This season is the first time that I actually am being a stickler on following it and I love it!   It’s about the time on your feet and you have less pressure to do certain miles when you are not feeling your best.

Weather was nice breezy 50 degrees all morning with absolutely no rain.   It was awesome.   I had such a great run!   My pace was steady (and slow) and I was doing great until around mile 13.   I hit the wall.  YES.  The WALL.   I struggled with it, and tried to asses if I actually feel physical pain that raised a red flag, but I knew it’s all mental.   I mentioned that to one of my coach who ran alongside me, and about a few minutes later, I heard my daughters screamed my name and held a sign that said ‘Happy Birthday, Go Mama Go” and my heart just melted!   That was exactly what I need!!   That gave me enough boost for another 5 miles and finished my run today!   As a bonus, my husband and my daughters saw me again at mile 16 and my daughters ran the last 2 miles with me!   Now, if only I can have that during the race….  (not going to happen, I know)

In overall, even with ‘hit the wall’ feeling, I had great run and very pleased with it.   In fact, when I looked at my running app that tracked all my runs, this is the ‘fastest’ 18-miles I ever did (compare the previous 18-miler I did).  Not too shabby!

Tomorrow, I’ll have to do 40 minutes recovery run.    Will try to do that earlier in the day as supposed to the later.

Fundraising Update

I am so blessed that I know so many generous people!  To date, I have raised $5,160.00!!   In fact, I raised over $700 in the last hour (I asked so many people that in lieu for birthday gift, to donate to my fundraising and boy, did that work wonderfully).   Thank you SO very much!!   For you who want to be part for this awesome fight against blood cancer, you can join me by donating online at http://pledge.yannirobel.com.   I will do all the running and you’ll just skip a latte or two.

Special Message

I will end this post with so much gratitude.   I feel so blessed.   What a wonderful birthday and here’s to many, many years of health, strength, perseverance (okay, stubbornness), success, joy and lots of love.   Thank you for being part of making my day awesome!

SQL Cruise – The good, the best and the awesome

In about a month, I’ll be joining a handful of data professionals to attend a wonderful event called SQL Cruise.   Yes, as you guessed from the name, this event is happening on board a cruise ship and not only we are going to enjoy the wonderful view of Alaska’s mountains, but we are also going to have excellent speakers with fabulous content, as well as fantastic networking opportunities between the attendees.

So what’s so special about this event that keeps me coming back every year?

Let start with the speakers AND the content.   Check out this list.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait.

Pretty awesome, huh?   Not only you will have top notch content from these speakers, you have their full attention in-between sessions for any issues/challenges you are currently have in your environment.  It is a ship, we are at sea, they can’t really get away from you It could be that performance issue you’ve been dealing with in the last few months, or some architecture challenge you are about to embark on, or even just a career advise.   There’s no rushing between one session to another.   The speakers are available to you in between sessions and that is so valuable.  Even if they duck out to the coffee shop, it is still on the ship.  Don’t tell them, but they are really trapped and you get to exploit that, in a good way!

Next are the attendees.  Check out the list for this upcoming cruise.   Pretty impressive list, yes?   I know, I am on that list but think about the variety of backgrounds these attendees come from and how awesome it is to be exchange experience, or discuss some challenge from someone that has been there and done that.   Real world problems, with real world answers.   I have to say, this my favorite part.   I made friends on a personal level from this event more than just a professional peer (Karen, Erin - I’m looking at both of you).   Now we run races together, discuss baseline performance collection or integrity of the data or just simply be there for each other.  You can come away from this cruise with new professional contacts and personal peers to bounce ideas off of.  It is phenomenal, and a networking opportunity that you really can find in no other venue compressed in a short cycle of time!

Last but not least.  The cruise itself.   All you can eat buffet, phenomenal views of the Alaskan coast and mountains, never-ending entertainment (beyond your SQL peeps) and excursions while you are not soaking the knowledge or picking up some smarts from these speakers.   Do I need to say more?  Win win and win again.  Really, if you add it all up, the value of this cruise and what you can bring back from it are without comparison.

There is still room if you are interested.   It is very affordable considering the value that you are getting.   If you have a +1, start talking to your partner/spouse and pitch it to them, then pitch it to your boss.   If you solo, just run it up the flagpole with the boss.  If you need help of how to pitch it to your manager, Tim Ford has brochure/fliers and all the former attendee are a tweet away and I’m pretty sure you can gather many input from them.   If you are not in twitter — you have no idea what you are missing!

Managers – these section is for you.

I know you probably think – there’s NO WAY that I am sending my people to training in a cruise.  They won’t learn anything.  They will be out partying.   I’m not spending my training budget for THAT.   I know what you mean.   See – I’m in a management myself.   I have to be wise with my training budget on where I want it to go and how I think my team can benefit the most and what kind of value the company is going to get in return.   I’m accountable for that return on investment as I have to stand in front of my own  boss and set the expectation of what kind of value that we as a company will get by going to variety of these training/event and I choose very wisely.   There are many fantastic training opportunities throughout the year and this event absolutely high on my list.

My husband, John, wrote a post that went more detail about this two years ago.   He was an IT Managers for years and responsible of DBA team and training budget as well and if you still have doubt this event, go ahead and read it here.

If that still doesn’t convince you, and you still have doubts, please free to contact me directly and I am more than happy to share my experience to you.  Not just as a data processional, but from the management point of view.    No, I am not being paid by SQL Cruise to say and do this.   They still invoice me for the training and I have to pay the cruise just like anybody else.   If anything, I am doing it from my own benefit because the more people attend, the more *I* get to interact with them and exchange experience.

Lastly, this event is made possible for you  by some awesome sponsors.  They are the reason why it’s so affordable.   SQL Sentry, Brent Ozar PLF, Quest, Idera and Redgate – thank YOU for your continuous support to make this event possible for the community.   You. Are. Awesome.

The countdown has begun.   All aboard!

TinkerBell Half-Marathon: Race Recap

I had an incredible weekend.

No, I didn’t break my half-marathon PR and I wasn’t the first (or probably last again) on my age group, but I finished another half-marathon yesterday.  Remember when I post here about my next crazy adventure?   Well, by completing that race I finished the challenge!  I did Disney Coast-To-Coast challenge and January is not even over!

Inspiration Dinner – Team in Training

Thank you VERY, VERY much for everyone who donated and support my cause.   There were total 369 runners from Team in Training for this race and collectively, we raised ONE MILLIONS DOLLAR!   ZOMG.  That’s a lot of dolla.   I was very impressed and touched.   This money can do so much for further research and patient support and I can testify and attest to that from the personal experience!  I have a stack of thank you card that I need to send out for all my generous donor who supported and helped me during my 2011 fundraising season for THREE different event.   Everybody was so generous and they were continuously support me on various event!   Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

The pasta dinner was great.   It was a wee bit crowded and there’s a bit of mishap about seating arrangement, but it got fix right away.  Food were good and I had wonderful company.    They put all the ‘In Honor’ and ‘In Memoriam’ pictures on the slide and it feels really weird to see my own picture up there!

We wrapped up the dinner by 8pm and I went back to the room and get my things ready for the race.

Race Day

My husband woke me up at 3am (YES, THREE AM) to get ready.  I was not a happy camper.   After I whined about 10 minutes, I finally got up and got myself ready.   I ate my usual pre-race breakfast, english muffin + peanut butter + honey + banana and head downstairs to meet the rest of Team in Training runner.    We hung out for a bit, took pictures and started to walk to our corral at 4:30am.

Unlike WDW Marathon, my husband able to walk me all the way to my corral and stood there with me while I was waiting for our corral turn to start.    It was a good 40 degrees morning, calm and a bit chilly.   I felt surprising calm and not anxious.

First wave of runner and the wheelchair went out promptly at 5:45am and my corral started at 6:05am.    There were so many people with running skirt and wings!  It was very, very cool!

The first couple miles, I can’t barely pass anybody as there were so many people and I took my time and tried to make my way to the side so I can get a good pace going.   We made our way towards Disneyland park from the employee entrance where you can see the train, parade car, and other behind the scenes stuff.   It was a lot of fun!    That path took us to the side of Main Street USA inside Disneyland Park and we ran towards the Sleeping Beauty castle.   It was absolutely stunning.  The sun just rise and it made the castle sparkle!   I didn’t take a lot of pictures this time around as there were a long lines on each of Disney Character for runner who wanted to take pictures.   Pretty much all the princesses and their prince were out, I saw Jack Sparow, Mickey and friends, Toy Story character.   It was so much fun!    I had to made a potty break inside the park and unfortunately, every bathroom had a very, very long lines.   I stood there and went anyway but that took about 5 minutes out of my time.

From Disneyland park, we ran towards the center of city of Anaheim.   There were so many volunteer and entertainment around!  I saw my husband, who wore a tutu (yes, in spirit of TinkerBell) and carry a cow-bell and a sign.   It was sooo good to see him!   Then I saw Karen Lopez (t) and Rob Farley (t) at mile 5 who also had a sign with my name on it.

Karen and Rob F. took an extra day from their busy days to stay at Anaheim so they can cheer me.    These two awesome people were on their way home to Toronto, CA and Adelaide, AU from spending a week in Seattle for training/meeting but they bought extra ticket to LAX and spend extra day for me.    They are my #SQLFamily.   I met both of them via SQL Community and I mentioned this on previous post about how awesome this community is.   I’m very blessed and honor to be able to call them a friend.

We ran through the city and I saw Karen and Rob. F again between Mile 8 and 9.   I had a cheek-to-cheek smile and I felt great!    Shortly before we entered California Adventure Park, I felt a sharp pain on my ankle.   I had one of those uh-oh moment again as the pain was significant.  For those who don’t know, I sprained my ankle 10 days before my full marathon, then ran the full, then I spent two weeks walked around the park at Disneyworld.  So this ankle took a lot of beating lately!

I stopped running, stretched and massage the tendon a bit.   I knew I had about 5k to go and I wasn’t going to quit it.   I stopped at the medical tent, took some Tylenol and slowly jog my way towards California Adventure Park.    I enjoyed my time running through the park and tried to forgot the pain in my ankle.   The cheer-tweets from my #SQLFamily were constant throughout the whole 13.1 miles.   I felt SO much love!!

We ran through the park and out and I knew that the finish line was around the corner.  I barely could hear my music as the tweets came constantly over my iPhone.   I started to run faster and I saw my husband WITH HIS TUTU on top of the bleacher.   I waved to him with a big smile.   I saw Karen and Rob F. again by the finish line and I lifted my hand up, had the most cheesy smile and cross the finish line.

I did it.   I finished.

I got my space blanket, my medal, and went to Coast-To-Coast tent and got ANOTHER MEDAL for completing the challenge.   We then proceed to post-race refreshment where I drank entire powerade in one shot, ate banana and took my official post race picture.

I saw my husband from the distance and leap into his arm.   I did it!!   He gave me a very proud look!!

A few minutes later, I saw Karen and Rob. F.  We hugged and Rob F. told me that they had a surprise for me.   He pulled out his phone and play this video here.  Go ahead and click that link or paste this to your browser:  http://youtu.be/iUuEcdQWjZc

I was about to die of excitement.   That’s JEFF GALLOWAY!  He is the running guru, the Olympian, the mastermind behind the run/walk method, the official Disney Coach and he was TALKING TO ME!

You think that would be the highlight of my day, right?  I finished, got my medal, got another medal, and saw the awesome video.   Well, I thought so too, until I walked into the Platinum VIP area where my husband, Karen and Rob F. was when they cheered me on and I saw Jeff Galloway there.   I shook his hand, gave him a hugged and we chatted for a while.   I mumbled almost the entire time because I was just a way too excited!!

I had incredible weekend.

Not only because I finished the race, met with my running guru but because I was surrounded with family.   I had an incredible and awesome support from my husband and my SQL Family,  in person (Thank you so much Karen and Rob F.) as well as virtually (Thank you Erin Stellato, Jes Borland, Rob Drysdale, Sarah Strate, Tamera Clark, Tom LaRock, Richie Rump, Andy Leonard, Grant Fritchey, Robert Davis, Tom Roush, Steve Jones, Jeremiah Peschka, Merrill Aldrich, Dave Levy, Shahryar Hashemi, Allen Kinsey, Diane McNurlan, Tracy McKibben.  I’m sure I probably forgot someone here, my apologies)

I am very blessed.   This professional community that I belong to become a second family to me.  They are there not only when I wasn’t sure what causing the ruckus on my server, but when I need a support for my challenges and adventure.

From the bottom of my heart.   Thank you.

Until the next adventure

Week 12 and 13: Rest and High Mileage

Week 12:  Rest

I’m combining week 12 and 13  recap as I don’t have much to recap on week 12.   It was a week after Portland Half Marathon and I was attending 2011 SQL PASS Summit. I was too busy to squeeze in the time to do my run.  Um.  Yeah.  Who am I kidding.  Let me rephrase that.  I did not make the continuous training as a priority.   There I said it.

I did, however, managed to run 5 miles on Sunday with Jimmy May (t) who is currently training for Las Vegas Rock & Roll Half-Marathon at Bridle Trail.  We had an awesome run together!  It was cold and misty, lot of hills but I felt great!

Week 13: High Mileage

Monday:

I did my strength training at home.  Not as much as I should be or as intense as I would’ve done it if I were at the gym, but I did what I could in while doing the house chores and get my girls ready to go to bed.    I did hip strengthening exercise, squat, lunges and some core exercise.

Tuesday:

It was gorgeous day out and I decided to run during lunch time.   I walked towards the waterfront and ran 4 miles at Seattle Waterfront.   It was perfect fall weather.  Sunny, but crisp cold.   Overall, it was a great run

Wednesday:

Cross Training or Walk Day.   I opted for the walk instead and did 30 minutes walk around my office.   It was misty but I really enjoyed the walk and glad I took the time to do so

Thursday:

I did 3 miles loop at Centennial Fields Park.   It was another gorgeous fall day and I love that little park.   It was a loop around the community park that have a path towards outside it.   My girls played at the playground nearby while I ran.   I felt a bit sluggish during this run as I came down with a cold the night before.

Friday:

Rest day

Saturday:

Big day for me as my schedule called for 15 miles.  Yes, that’s FIFTEEN miles.  I was a bit overwhelmed the night before since I had a hard time wrapping my brain around the number fifteen.  It seems so… well.. a LOT of miles!   I know, I know – it’s only 2 more miles than the half-marathon and I did that one already.   I can do the math too, but that doesn’t change the fact that I was a bit overwhelmed with the number.

I was up early but really had a hard time to move.   I really, really didn’t want to go but I had promise Jimmy that I would meet him at the trail head so we can run together.  So I dragged my bum out of the bed, laced up my shoes and head out.   We went to Snoqualmie Valley Trail — my favorite trail which was so pretty with different shades of color on the trees.   It was cold and misty with very little of sunshine.    I did my usual 3-1 Galloway technique (3 minutes running, 1 minutes walking) and it was amazingly awesome.   I felt great the entire run and not even once I had to talk myself to keep running.   Jimmy ran for 11 miles and he stopped, but I continued running.   I hit 13.1 miles and realized that my time was 6 minutes faster than my half-marathon time!  I was sooo excited!  I broke my personal record!!    3 hours and 2 minutes later – I finished my 15 miles with a huge grin in my face.   That was the farthest I ever run and I felt awesome!

 

Sunday:

Rest

Fundraising:

New beginning on the fundraising front.  I have a new goal.  I plan to send out my fundraising letter this coming week and other than announcing my crazy adventures in my blog, I haven’t done much.   However, if you are reading my blog all the way to this point, please visit my fundraising page at :  http://tinyurl.com/RobelMarathon.   You can read on why I am running and while you are at it, pull your credit card from your wallet and skip a latte this week and join me in this adventures instead  <smile>.   Any amount is greatly appreciated!

 

I’m a Big (SQL) Sister!

I have recently joined the Orientation Committee for SQL PASS Summit 2011 and become a ‘big sister’ f0r eight first-timer attendees.    This is one of many ways of mine to give back to this awesome community that we have.   I have many big brother/sister in the community that help me tremendously even with their busy schedule and I am excited about the opportunity to give back.

This program launched last year and I heard a lot of great stories about it.  I wasn’t able to participate last year since I wasn’t attending the conference myself, even though I attended ‘after-session’ events and was able to be around most of my ‘SQL friends’ and put face to their twitter-handles.    When I saw the invitation to join the OC, I immediately sent them an email and expressed my interest.

This year would be my 4th year of attending SQL PASS and I wanted to help all the first-timer attendees out there to get more than just the sessions during PASS.    I work only a couple blocks away from the convention center in downtown Seattle and know my way around and been living here since 2002.    On top of that, I’m in twitter quite often and know (virtually) and personally a lot of cool kids awesome SQL peeps and in most cases, know where the after-sessions events are going to be.

If you are a first-timer, I strongly recommend you to join this program.   Send an email to newcomer@sqlpass.org and they will assign you to one of the ‘big brother/sister’ to show you around or give you the insight on what’s going on.    Never underestimate the value of the networking with other SQL Professional and after-sessions events are the best way to do that.

If you are attending the summit this year, and this is not your first time – please consider to join the Orientation Committee and send an email to OC_DL@sqlpass.org.   You might think it’s not going to make a difference, but it is.   Arnie Rowland (b | t) has a great post about it and uses an awesome analogy for it.

What’s Next

Well, I have sent my first email to my group and got a reply from almost all of them.  I get to learn who they are, where are they coming from and what they do for living.    I will send another email in a week or two, and share some information, events as I know them as well as giving them tips for places to see/go (even though in most cases – I always start with sharing Kendra Little (b | t) awesome post about Seattle 101 – thank you, Kendra!), what to bring, and answering any other questions they have.   In a way – I’m their personal concierge for this SQL PASS Summit.

It’s an awesome program and I’m excited to be in it!

Another Awesome Tools in my Toolbox

No, this is not your everyday tools and your normal toolbox.   These awesome tools came from a week long training with SQL Skills on their Performance Tuning week.   I learned new shiny techniques to troubleshoot performance issues, different ways to look at problems and new approaches on how to prevent problems before they even become one.    These tools are extremely important to have in my toolbox and an awesome addition to the ones I have.   Soon, I might need a bigger toolbox!

I’m not going to go over each day on what we covered in this post.   Erin Stellato (b | t) and Klaus Aschenbrenner (b | t) did a wonderful job to recap day-to-day summaries on their blogs, however, I want to summarize my experience and hopefully encourage others to attend this event whenever you can (and no, I’m not getting any cut for writing this) and to give my perspective to other managers out there if you are not sure which training you need to send your direct reports and what kind of ROI you can expect from an investment like this.

The Instructors

Let me start by talking about the instructors.   Paul Randal (b | t), Kimberly Tripp (b | t) and Jonathan Kehayias (b | t) are very knowledgeable and each have a different areas of expertise.   When you attend SQL Skills training (I have attended two of them so far. You can read my experience from last year here), you are not just getting the valuable material, but you are getting that from three different experts.   They often talked about the same subject, but from different perspectives and used different analogies which I think it’s very unique and extremely valuable for the attendee.  It is like hearing a story from three different people, each tells it slightly different based on their perspective, audience, and experience.  Combined, you learn more than if you had only received the story from a single source.  They are all very interactive and passionate about the subjects that they were talking about and it somewhat contagious!

The Material

We were learning a lot of in-depth topics and each of the modules has clear objectives on what the student is going to get.   Unlike an hour or two presentations at some technical conferences, you are getting 8 hours of training material every day for 5 days.  You are learning about the ins and outs of certain subjects and you get various demo scripts that written by the instructor team, and can be use to against your environment (another set of awesome tools for your toolbox.)   You will get a clear understanding about how the internals of SQL Server works and how to utilize all the bells and whistles that come with it, and I’m not talking about some pretty wizard.   I’m talking about some undocumented function and command that you can use to see or identify certain things.   How awesome is that!  It is like having a personal SQL concierge take you one a personal back stage tour of what is under the hood in your database server.

The Attendees

Here’s what most of the manager didn’t see.   In the last two rounds of the training from SQL Skills that I experienced, we had 30 plus attendees from all over the world that have all kinds of background.   During the training, you developed a relationship with the other attendees, some more than others and exchange stories about the challenges, environments and even solutions.   Certain challenges that you are experiencing today, might be yesterday’s problem for others and they have found the solutions and sharing the stories during break or lunch (or happy hour) might give you the solutions you need for your challenges today.   In summary, being in the same room with over 30 intellectual people who want to learn about the same thing and work in the same area, is another valuable aspect of this training.

The Perks

Yes, there’s perks.  Last week, we had Robert Davis (b | t) and Connor Cunningham (b) stopped by and gave a little talk.   Robert Davis is a Program Manager for SQL MCM program and Connor Cunningham is the Architect for the Query Processor team at SQL Server Division.   We get to learn more about MCM Program and ask questions about that program and we get to hear some inside story from one of the people who wrote the code behind SQL Server Query Processor.   These two gentlemen are wicked smart and to be in the same room with them and hear their story always an a great experience on its own.

So, for the managers out there – here’s my message to you.   If you are sending your people to SQL Skills training, I can almost guarantee that your staff will have a great tools that they can use right away when they come back.   It’s not some tool that you have to sharpen or make it shiny first, but the knowledge they gain can be immediately used. You should expect your attendees to return able to either identify the pain-point of your challenges or preventing future challenges.  They will have a great understanding on how the internals of SQL Server work and variety of techniques and resources available to gather the information and creating baselines for performance improvement of your system or recognizing potential problems.    Not only that, your staff will have direct access to the instructors to ask questions for your specific problem during class and even have them look at it for you!   I think that alone is already worth the investment!

As for me, I have pages of notes that I need to go through, and when I get the demo scripts next week, I already have plans on things I want to look at based on those scripts that I know will help me identify our current challenges.   On top of that, I have a whole lab of virtual machines that they distributed during the class for further learning.   I’m excited.   I am always hungry for a new knowledge and I love to learn and I think I will always learning something new even on a subject that I think I already know.