With Discovery Comes Fitness

A week gone by and I am gaining confidence in my surroundings here in Seattle. This past week I had several meetings at UW concerning the program and corresponding internships. Riding my bike to and from campus has really given me a good idea of the layout. It's only about a 15-20 min. ride from the house on the way to school, and on the way home I deal with several more ascents, slowing my time (and making me sweat a little more profusely).
For those of you that I have not explained the program to, this paragraph is for you. I have from June 19 - August 13 of an extremely intensive classroom schedule. In this time period we (a 25-person class) will cover one class per week, and will attend class 40 hours in that week. Our class schedule ranges through education, leadership, finance, law, sports management, marketing, so on and do forth. As soon as the class schedule comes to an end we are starting internships wherever the program (or we) can set them up. Some people have already set things up around the country, and most will wait until after orientation.
In my meetings this week I found out that there could be some good opportunities here in Seattle, as well as the ones I knew about previously. I am currently looking into an internship at The University of California - Berkeley (where I took a summer class in 1999 when Megan and I lived there). In the process of investigating that opportunity, I also realized that UW has a lot to offer as well. I'm sure I will be making more of a decision over the next several weeks. My goal to to gain as much experience in the different categories of sports administration as possible, and whichever internship gives me that will probably get the nod.
This past week I found myself back in the running groove and put in nearly 40 miles. Any quality coach, which I would love to consider myself, would strongly frown upon such a practice. However, I felt healthy and was motivated to see as much as I could of my surrounding area. Over the years I've found no better way to discover a region than running it. So this week I ran Discovery Park on the Northwest side of downtown, Cougar Mountain on the East side of Lake Washington, and Tiger Mountain (very close to Cougar Mtn.). Not to mention Green Lake area, Burke-Gilman Trail, and variations thereof.
Tiger Mountain is a 3.5 mile trail and is predominantly uphill. The grade is quite steep and you gain 2,500ft over the 3.5 miles. The trails leads through deep rainforest-esque woods. The ferns are very tall, the trees are extremely tall. Moss grows everywhere and the slugs are gigantic!

I take Linus on most runs with me and he really loves he trails, even if random Asian guys tell me to put him on a leash! For the record, I always have Linus on a leash if we are near groups of people. If we are miles out on a deserted trail with no one in site, except for other people with dogs off leash, I'm going to let him off.


After 40 minutes of running I reached the summit of Tiger Mountain. From what I understand there are many hang-gliders that launch from the top, but all I saw were some families having high-altitude picnics! Linus and I hung out and snapped these photos and then headed back down. The weather in Seattle has really taken a great turn lately. When I first arrived it was still rainy and cold, but now it's in the low-mid 70's every day and sunny as can be!





Until next time.....