Week 4: Portland Half – Stubborness

Plan this week:

Mon: Run 3.75 miles

Tues: Cross Training

Wed: Tempo Run

Thu: Strength Training

Fri: Rest

Sat: 5 Miles

Sun: Rest

Wow.  What a week.   I was feeling the side of my newly dosage of medicine more than last week.   Fatigue hit me fast and hard and the bone pain just made me want to incorporate my pain meds as my diet component.   I am struggling.  Not just physically due to this limitation, but mostly emotionally.   A big shout out to my fellow runner, Jes, Karen, Rob, Erin and Brent which also a really great friend of mine.   They are constantly lifting my spirit up by short emails, tweets and even late night phone call.   I love you guys.   Who would’ve thought that I can have great friendship from this awesome SQL Community?   I’m not just talking about some friendship that we hung out during SQL PASS or SQLSaturday.  I’m talking the kinda friendship that go above and beyond that!

I took a few days break this week because I just wasn’t able to move.   However, I still did one of my short run (4 miles), and cross training and I end this week with an awesome accomplishment on my part of my first 10k race!  I did (surprisingly) good (all things considered), run the entire time and my pace was faster than my normal training pace (yes Karen – you warn me about this).   Despite the fatigue and the pain, I managed to cross the finish line upright and smiling!   Stubbornness can give you an extra fuel when you really need them.   Trust me on that.

How it went down:

Monday:

I was feeling very crummy on this day, but I was not about to give up my running.   After work, I laced up my shoes and John and I headed out to the trail.   I ran very slow to combat the fatigue and after a couple miles, my knee and shin started to hurt really, really bad.   On top of that, I have this bone pain from hip to the knee and the pain was coming from within, radiating out, left me with throbbing feeling.   That’s the side effect of my medicine – have nothing to do with the run, however, it just add the difficulty level on everything.   I ended up run for 4 miles, and it took me 52 minutes to finish it.

Tuesday:

Woke up with a throbbing knee and I knew that I have to give my leg a rest.  This one was from the running.  My coach, Andy, told me the same thing and even change Wed to be a rest day on my training plan.   I iced my leg a lot and really take it easy

Wednesday:

My modified training plan said rest, but I was resting yesterday and I felt somewhat decent.  I decided to do a cross training by walking on the elliptical machine for 2.5 miles.  I felt great afterward

Thursday:

My fatigue hit record high for a week.  I have absolutely no energy and again, this was a side effect of my medicine.   I stared at the dumb bell in front of me while I’m sitting in the couch.  It only took me a few steps from where I was sitting and did some basic core & back routines at home, but I just couldn’t move.

Friday:

Another schedule rest day.  I was preparing for Saturday long run, so hydrate, hydrate and more hydrate

Saturday:

I have registered myself to Railroad Days 10k.   I was a bit nervous since the last time I tried to do a long run, I didn’t go anywhere.  We were at the race location at 8:15am.  There’s about 700 runner on the event.   Both of my girls participated in Kids 1k race.  It was so cute to watch a bunch of kiddos with their running Bib.  My girls did awesome!  They both ran and got their medal!

My start time was at 9am.  I was almost at the very back of the all the runner when we start.  I started with my slow and steady pace.   I put my audio books on, turn on my tracking app and went on my way.    I hit the first mile before I even realize it and I was surprise to hear my pace.  I was about a minute faster than my normal pace.   I worried that I started to fast, so I slow down a bit.   Before I knew it – I was on mile marker 5 miles, and I kept on going.   I felt strong, and didn’t feel pain anywhere.   I just focused on6, one foot in front of another and didn’t even care about other runner or time.  After the mile six, I started to see the finish line.   I almost sprint on the last quarter mile and I finished with a huge grin in my face.  I did it!   Despite of feeling crummy, have all kind of discomfort, I managed to finish my first race with not-so-embarassing time of 1:14:14.  See my official result here

Sunday:

Another rest day to recover from the long run

Fundraising:

I did a couple tweet and a few people decided to donate.  I am grateful for those ones!  For those who want to help me and support my run, please visit my fundraising page at http://tinyurl.com/HelpYanni

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!

Week 3: Portland Half – Learning my limit

Plan this week:

Mon: Run 3.5 miles

Tue: Strength Training

Wed: Interval Tempo Run 3.75 miles

Thu: Run3.5 miles

Fri: Rest

Sat: Run 8 miles (gasp!)

Sun: Rest

What a week.   I started this week feeling pretty strong and even with an all day training, I still able to sneak in the run in the evening.   However, mid this week, I was not feeling all to well.

Monday:

I was in all day training and felt so tired when I was done.   I had so many excuses in my head but I can’t justify any of them, so when I got home, I put my running shoes on and head out.   I had a great run and ended up run for 4 miles.   It was cool out and I absolutely love the trail.

Tuesday:

The plan was to go to the gym early in the morning before my class start.  My alarm went off at 5am and I could not move my body.  I was so tired!  I felt back to sleep and woke up at 7am which was a bit too late for me to go to the gym and be on time for my class, so I skipped the strength training.   After class – I had dinner plan with a few friends and didn’t get home until 10pm, which was unrealistic for me to even do anything.   No gym for today.

Wednesday:

I went to the same trail with my husband and my two daughters.   The plan was for me to run, and for the girls to ride their bike with my husband around the trails.   I was supposed to run normally for a mile, then run really hard for 5 minutes, slow for 1 minute and repeat it three times, and run the last mile normally (total 3.5 miles).   I started with my normal run and went okay but then those gallon of water that I drank prior run just didn’t want to stay in, so I had to run back to the beginning of the trail for a bathroom break.  That kinda ruined my style a bit (lesson learn – always go before you start!).   I start all over and run another mile and start my tempo run, which about kill me the second rep.   So I ended up only did 2 reps of 5 minutes of fast run, and 1 minute of walk and run normally the rest of the way.   Total run:  5.01 miles

Thursday:

I went back to the same trail after my class.  It was absolutely gorgeous evening.  The sun was set on the other side of the lake and full moon on the opposite side.   My husband dropped me at the 4 mile marker and I ran back with my brother to the beginning of the trail since we didn’t have his bike with us.   My knee felt a bit tight and it usually took 5-10 minutes of run to loosen up, but it was tight the entire time.   It didn’t bother me all that much during the run though.   I did total 4 miles with 12:20 average pace.

Friday:

Rest.  Love it.

Saturday:

Long run day.  My girlfriend, Marisa, decided to run with me.  I was excited to have someone to run with, even though I am not really a chatter when I run.  I like to put my headset and just be.  No chit-chatting or try to be in the same pace but still enjoy the fact that I have someone to run with.   We had a bit of late start and didn’t get out to the trail until 10:30am.   It was a bit cool but the sun was out and absolutely fabulous day.   I wasn’t feeling all that hot and had experience some discomfort unrelated to the run as a side effect for my current medicine that its dosage currently increased but I decided to go out and run anyway.

I started strong, and run in my normal pace until about 2 miles and the pain and discomfort that I had hit me harder.  I could barely move and had to stop and walk for a bit.   I walked for a bit and try to focus on something else and hoping that the pain would go away or lessen up a bit but it wasn’t happening.   I was mad.  I was frustrated and my stubbornness took over.   I started to run again and went for another mile until I felt dizzy from the pain and had to walk again.   I walked for another 5 minutes and started to run again for another mile until I felt like I was about to faint and had to walk again.   I was getting madder and frustrated, but I knew that my body has been trying to tell me to stop and I refused to listen.   I had a conversation about my stubborn-self and had this debate in my head about should I stop or go on and finally decided to call it a day.   My husband, who rode his bike alongside of me, went back to the car and came back to pick me up so i didn’t have to walk all the way to the beginning of the trail.   I gave it my best, and my body was not cooperating.  Again.  This is going to be an interesting couple months ahead.    I ended up run/walk for total 4.8 miles.

Sunday:

My stubborn head want to do another long run to make up for yesterday but I decided to give myself a break and rest today as scheduled

Fundraising:

I’m still not doing anything yet for fundraising since this week is a crazy busy week.  However, I plan to send out my first email for my fundraising next week.   If you happen to read this post, let me just start with you.   I’m training for Portland Half-Marathon with Team in Training to raise money for Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

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.

Week 2: Portland Half – I Can Do This

Plan this week:

Mon: Strength Training (back, core, lower body, hips)

Tues: Run 3.5 miles

Wed: Cross Training – Cycling

Thu: Tempo/Internal 3 miles

Fri: Rest

Sat: Run 7 Miles

Sun: Rest

This week, I learned more and more about this ‘running’ thing.   I learned about proper hydration, stretching technique and even how mentally handle myself during the long run.   Again, it’s not the same with hiking at all.   The concept is the same, but there’s major different on the detail.    I love the fact that when I look back to last week, I know that I am better this week.    Yes, I know – it’s only week two, and I might hate this by the end of week 6, we shall see.   For now, I’m really starting to believe that I can actually do this running thing.   I don’t hate it.   I actually start to enjoy it.   In some way, it just like hiking to me.   I’m alone with my thought and there’s tremendous peace during it.   The sound of my shoes, my breathing and my heart beat become a perfect harmony that strangely enough, sounds pretty soothing in my ear.   Yes, I know.  I’m wierd.    In a good way, I hope.

How it went down:

Monday:

It took a lot of will-power on my part to get me moving to the gym.   I was tired and all I want to do just sit on the couch and do absolutely nothing.   My girls went to their dad, and it was so tempted to just veg out, but I mosey myself out of the house and went to the gym.   I did 10 mins warm up on the bicycle and start by doing 3 back routines, follow 2 leg routines, 2 hip routines and 2 core routines.  I did 15 reps, 2 set on each.   It seems fairly easy work out to me which made me wonder if I should do more or put more weight or do more reps, but I decided to be okay with it and went home.

Tuesday:

I was so tired and really didn’t feel like running.   I came home from work and sat on the couch and started to create excuse and justifications on why I should not go out and run but thanks to my mean awesome friends, Karen Lopez and Rob Drysdale that bullied encouraged me to just drag my behind off the couch and just do it (just like Nike), I managed to complete my run today.    John and I went to Snoqualmie Valley Trail and did our run/bike there.   He rode the bike alongside of me, while I ran.   I like that trail run a lot!   It’s pretty flat and wide and there’s interesting bridge that give us pretty awesome view.  I struggled a bit on the first half miles, but then I found my rhythm and finished strong.  I ran total 4.03 miles with about 12:30 pace and felt great afterwards.

Wednesday:

Today’s menu is cross-training, or any other cardio work out that is NOT running.   The suggestions are cycling, spinning, swimming or any aerobic class for 30 minutes.   I choose to do some cycling instead.   I set my machine to do a hill program, with level 10 (highest level is 20) and start pedaling.   It was fairly easy, even on the hard hill part and almost made me wonder if I actually need to bump it up a notch or not.  I sweat pretty good too.   I did 30 minutes on it and decided to call it a day.

Thursday:

Interval training – Tempo Run.   I need to run for 3 miles total.   The first miles is run for 12 minutes (5.0 speed) and I did just fine, and bump the speed up to 7.0 and ran really fast for 4 minutes, lower the speed down to 3.0 and jog for 2 minutes.   Repeat that twice with total a mile, and run for 12 minutes in the last miles.   On the second rep of the tempo run, and I actually had to reduce the speed a bit to get my breathing under control but in overall – I think I did okay.  I finished the whole routines withing 37.39.

Friday:

Rest. Day.  Yay.

Saturday:

Long run day.  I was a bit overwhelm with the task in hand.  Seriously, 7 miles is a LOT of miles and I never run that far without stopping.   The original plan is to go to Green Lake Trail and run a loop there while John ride his bike with my girls.  The girls would love it, and there’s playground and beach around to keep them occupied, but my youngest girl woke up feeling pretty crummy and even had a puke-fest in the morning so that plan is out.   I almost ditch the whole thing out and kept telling myself that my daughter needs me and I can run some other day.   Around 2pm, after almost 5 hours nap, she woke up with a huge grin on her face and back to her old-self.   So we packed the girls and dropped them at Grandma (thank God for Grandma!) and went to Lake Sammamish trail instead.     I put on my audiobook on (thank you Karen Lopez for this tips!) and start my run while John rode his bike alongside me.  To combat the overwhelm feeling I had, I broke the total miles into smaller chunks and focus on that.   I know I can run 3 miles just fine so I focus on that.   Before long, my iPhone told me that I reach 3 miles and I was feeling strong, so I kept on going another half-mile and turn around.   I kept running, and running and again, before long, my iPhone told me that I ran for 6 Miles!   Then it dawn on me that I only have a mile to go!   I finished the whole 7 miles withing 1:29 minutes with cheek-to-cheek grin to John.   My average pace is 12:29.   Not bad for the first timer!!   I felt great afterwards, nothing really hurt or sore.

Sunday:

Rest day.  Love it.

Fundraising:

I haven’t done any fundraising effort at all, other than mouth-to-mouth so there’s not much movement.   I plan to send my first email out this coming week, so we’ll see how it goes.   For all of you that happen to read this blog, maybe I’ll start with you.   Please help me fund my future medicine.   Yes, you read right.   The funds I raise will be used for research and development for future medicine, as well as patient support program by Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.   MY medicine.   Please visit my fundraising page here.