I have been thinking a lot about the rhythm of life recently. I am an extreme creature of habit. I like to do the same exact thing at the same exact time every day, every week, every month. However, this can cause me to get lost in my routine and forget to make any time for anything new. This week I tried my best to get myself out of that cycle.
Tuesday and Wednesday in the PT clinic went roughly the same as the last few weeks have. Tuesday was more older patients getting mostly massage work, while Wednesday had more athletes with exercise routines. We saw the same runner coming back from her stress injury as last week on Tuesday, and she had a slightly longer run than last time. On Wednesday, Kurt had a meeting with his boss for an hour during the middle of the day, so I shadowed Brittney, one of the other PTs, for that hour. It is always interesting to me to see how the different therapists use their time with each patient. Kurt and Bridget, the third PT, tend to focus more heavily on soft tissue work and less on exercise work, while Brittney spends about half the time on massage work and the other half on exercises. The exercise patients are much more interesting to me because that allows me to demonstrate, supervise, and clean up after rather than just watching.
Going back to rhythm, I have tried to enjoy my time outside of work more this week. Rather than retreating to my room to read or watch TV in the afternoons or evenings when I am home, I have tried to talk with my roommates. We have been watching the Tour de France while having breakfast most mornings, which has been very interesting to me. I also had my first day off in around a month on Saturday. I normally want to work as many hours as possible to make lots of money, but there was a professional mile race in the area that several of my friends were doing so I decided to sign up for it. In addition to work, I ran 100 miles this week, leaving me exhausted pretty much all the time. However, I was still able to run 4:08 for the mile and somewhat enjoy myself. It was a great night of good old type 2 fun! I was able to chat with some of my friends from last summer who I had not seen in a year since I am not living in Boulder. I also placed 4th overall, meaning that if I could accept prize money, I would walk away with $200. Unfortunately, the experience and time will have to do.
The end of the summer is quickly approaching, and I am here for it. I cannot wait to have my routine at school back, people to run with again, and not be training at altitude anymore. However, as I get back into that routine, I will try my best to do something outside of my comfort zone every once in a while to keep things fresh and not get caught up in my usual rhythm.