Almost There

We're hitting the home stretch of our EMT class. We were actually supposed to finish this past Monday. However, the weather really messed up our schedule. In order to meet the minimum number of ours, we're meeting a few more times next week. The big damper from this hiccup is that it will be several more weeks before I am able to take the State Exam to become a certified EMT-Basic. For me, that's not too problematic; while I'm eager to volunteer or work part-time, I'm not actively pursuing any leads. However, several other students in our class are applying to jobs in Durham, and those prospects could be in jeopardy if they aren't able to become certified in time. For myself, I'll do my best to get into the earliest test date that I can get, barring any work conflicts.

Unlike most of the other students, I will probably try to take the National Registry Exam. As you probably assume, it's the national certification that is used/accepted in essentially every state (minus North Carolina and three others). Why take the national exam? There aren't many practical reasons: I would feel 99% sure that I'll be staying in NC, and so the national certification isn't necessary. But I think it is easy additional skill set. If there is a slight chance I leave NC, I already have the widely accepted certification. And I think on any resume, a national-level certification could potentially out-shine a state certification. The continuing education requirements are higher (same number of hours, but in only 2 years vs 4), which encourages me to maintain a higher level of professional development.

I am also almost down to one month until the Umstead 100. I'm feeling good about my training. Shamefully, I have abandoned most of my speed sessions. I never liked speed work to begin with. And as I've said before, since Mountain Masochist, I've been consistently several seconds per mile faster. I think further trying to "drop the hammer" could be more harmful than good. Seriously, I've had to do more to force myself to SLOW DOWN every so often, rather than speed up.

Just of few more weeks of serious training. Well, I mean, this is one weekend long run, a recovery week, and then a last build/ON week. Then I start to taper. I may modify my taper a bit at the two week-out point. In the past I've had a 4 hour Sat/3 hour Sun. Except last year at Umstead when I was extremely sick and didn't run AT ALL. I don't think that was ideal, but I don't think it hurt. And given how solid my training has been thus far, it might be worth it lower the training volume even more to be particularly well-rested.

I want to try to find some way to include cool articles or blogs I find. I discontinued my Tumblr account, but I think it could be usual for this (the old, but unused list should still be on the right side of this blog.).

Soundtrack:
"Girls of Summer" - The Ataris (cover)
"All of the Memories" - The Classic Crime