Everyday when I wake up the first thing I do is I pickup my laptop and login to my online UBC account and check my application status. I usually do a few things, like make breakfast, do some readings, go for a walk and run, make lunch, then around 5pm I check my application status again in the off chance that it has been updated that day. It's been a few weeks, but there's been no change in my application status. It just says something like "We are waiting for a final official transcript from TRU OL in order to evaluate your application.". Even though I got confirmation from TRU that the transcript had successfully been delivered to UBC on March 6th. I did read that it can take 2-4 weeks for documents to be processed, so really it's only been a week. I REALLY hope it doesn't take 4 weeks. I guess this is a good way to prepare myself for my med application. Although I am hoping I get into medicine in my first cycle.
I said I usually go for a walk and run, but for about a week I couldn't run or even walk because my side was really hurting. I went to the hospital (yay! so fun) and at first the doctor said there was fluid outside of my left lung, but then after some tests and some waiting, she changed her mind and just said it was some sort of "mystery muscle soreness". I really don't think it was just muscle soreness though, because the pain was very different from anything I had felt before. I've had sore muscles, and this was definitely not that. Fluid buildup did feel correct to me, because it felt like something was pushing on my lung. The main reason she didn't think it was fluid buildup anymore was because I did not have any sickness symptoms like a fever. Anyways in the past few days it has almost completely gone away, so I guess I don't have to worry about it anymore. But it was just very frustrating that I couldn't exercise. I was literally in my first week of exercise when that happened to me (because of the few weeks I had to take off exercise after my surgery).
Luckily though, I don't think I've lost any mental momentum for my physical training. I'm going to start lifting weights in the next few days, as I wanted to start out slow as to ensure I don't injure anything. This week, I'm going to up my exercising from 1.5 hours per day to 3 hours per day. I'll be going for an hour long walk, 1 hour of lifting weights, and then 1 hour of some combination of running and playing basketball. I'm thinking either 40 minutes of basketball and 20 minutes of running, or 40 minutes of running and 20 minutes of basketball. I haven't totally decided yet, as I'll probably try out both. For basketball, I'll be shooting on a hoop by myself, but for anyone that has never taken shots from various distances for about 20 minutes straight, I can tell you even when I was in excellent shape, it is VERY tiring. I got the idea from Steve Nash. He has a 20 minute workout video on Youtube showing him taking shots. The first time I watched that video was in about 2006. Crazy to think it has been almost a decade since then.
Also every Sunday I am going to time myself running the 400 meter race at the track. My time is going to start out being atrocious, but I'm hoping after a few months I can start to shave down the seconds each week. It's my goal to be running the 400m in 55 seconds by August 1st. Although, depending on how everything goes, it could change substantially - by either doing worst than expected and the time going up a few seconds to 58-59, or by doing better than expected and doing closer to 52-53 seconds. Sometimes things don't go the way you want, but I really feel in control of my training and have already lost some weight by pretty much only walking, so I think once I get back down to an athletic weight, then I will be in a good position to make the UBC Track team this fall. Although first I do have to get back in to UBC. Just shows that despite all of my goals, it's academics before athletics.
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