Hello again!
In the midst of my reading and studies that built up this week because of my lack of study done last weekend, I was busy procrastinating on the internet, as usual. I had been thinking back to my first couple years of high school, when our principle at the time started off every day with a quote. I used to love listening to them, and I'd write down my favorite ones. Well as I was reminiscing, I remembered parts a particular quote that had stuck with me. I ended up searching for it online, and this is what I found:
“Start by doing what's necessary, then what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” - St. Francis of Assisi
Don't you just love it? It's like this guy read my mind. This past week I've been struggling with ways to jump into my resolution. I know it's not going to be easy, but I have to start somewhere, and I have to get over the fear. Kind of like jumping into a pool you know is freezing cold, or going into the ocean at any time of the year in England (where I grew up)! Well, the two opportunities I had, I involuntarily missed because of meetings I had to attend (one was ironically about a study abroad to Ireland I'm trying to plan). However, after reading this quote again, I think I have a new approach.
1. Figure out what's necessary. What is necessary? Well, I need to jump in. I need to pick my painfully cold water and take a dive. If I don't do this, I can't ever improve.
That being said, I've picked my poison. The "shamrock'n'run" 5k this coming Saturday. If you're a runner, you might be thinking, oh that's not that bad! Well good for you! I, however, am not a runner. I can sprint, I can do 400-600 m but past that I start to wilt. Luckily I coerced a good friend of mine into running it with me to make sure I stick to my guns and go through with it. So even though it will be very painful, it's necessary, and once i conquer this obstacle, there is a whole new spectrum of things that are possible. It'll take time, but I'll get there. I'll do what's necessary, then what's possible, then all of a sudden I'll get through 2 1/2 slip jigs and 3 treble jigs without wanting to kill myself! (Can anyone guess my draw for the O this year?!)
Ironically enough, I actually trained for a 5k back in November before last years Oireachtas, and I was supposed to run the race the weekend after Oireachtas, but the race was cancelled, and when they rescheduled it, it was exactly the same time as my Physics exam. Needless to say, final exams won that one.
Alright, speaking of exams, I have midterms (already!) in a week or so, which is my cue to get back to studying Chemistry. I'll be back later on in the week to update on how my short notice 5k training is going!
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Feis Weekend!
Well, It's very late Saturday night (or early Sunday morning, however you like to look at it) and I've been awake since 7 am Saturday morning. Ah, the joys of feising. We can never be too sure how long a feis is going to run so we booked the latest flight back at 10 pm- typically we were done dancing before lunch. Before I go into details, let me give you a little background on my dancing experience.
I started dancing quite old (15) as a junior in high school and I joined an adult beginners class at my school. I danced with the adults for a year and then decided that I wanted to go the competitive route so I joined a kids class. I did my first feis when I was 17 (October 2010) where I won my first novice dance (hornpipe) and qualified for my solo dress. I competed somewhat sporadically for about 6 months, and then starting with the summer began to compete regularly. I realize now that this has a lot to do with the fact that there are very little Southern region feiseanna to compete in in the spring. Anyways as the summer came around I competed in June, traveled around England and Ireland for a month and a bit where I got my solo dress designed, made, and custom fitted by the lovely ladies of Avoca Celtic Designs in Manchester, and then competed again in August, 2 in September and 2 in October. By the end of October I only had one dance preventing me from qualifying to dance solos at Oireachtas in December, but my teacher was wonderful enough to let me dance on a 4-hand anyways!
Well, that was far more than you ever needed to know about my competitive history, but my point is that today, I finally won my light jig and am done with it forever...and I won my last dance- slip jig!! Slip jig has been my nemesis for a while, so it is unbelievably nice to see my work pay off and know for sure that I'm able to dance solos at New Orleans in December!
While all of this is very exciting, I didn't place in any of my other dances, which are all prizewinner, and I wasn't expecting to- but it makes the need for me to stick to my resolution much, much more real. Every level is a step up from the last, and I now need to get my dancing to the level where I can start placing in prizewinner (I'm definitely open for tips and suggestions here!!) but talking to my friend who was in the same position last June, we agreed that stamina is definitely up there on the list. After all, how am I supposed to make my hornpipe on time and turned out if I can barely make it to the end?!
All of that being said, this feis was my last excuse for why I haven't started whipping myself into shape, so NO MORE EXCUSES. I will sleep very well tonight, catch up on the exorbitant amount of homework my professors enjoy giving me and start my work Monday. I'm thinking maybe of exploring the group classes our student recreation center offers- there's one called ballet sculpt where they use ballet exercises to tone and strengthen the legs...sounds perfect for Irish dance. Baby steps, but I'll be sure to let you know how it goes!
If you actually read this far, I'm impressed, and thank you! If you skipped to the end, I don't blame you, but thanks for stopping by anyways :-)
I started dancing quite old (15) as a junior in high school and I joined an adult beginners class at my school. I danced with the adults for a year and then decided that I wanted to go the competitive route so I joined a kids class. I did my first feis when I was 17 (October 2010) where I won my first novice dance (hornpipe) and qualified for my solo dress. I competed somewhat sporadically for about 6 months, and then starting with the summer began to compete regularly. I realize now that this has a lot to do with the fact that there are very little Southern region feiseanna to compete in in the spring. Anyways as the summer came around I competed in June, traveled around England and Ireland for a month and a bit where I got my solo dress designed, made, and custom fitted by the lovely ladies of Avoca Celtic Designs in Manchester, and then competed again in August, 2 in September and 2 in October. By the end of October I only had one dance preventing me from qualifying to dance solos at Oireachtas in December, but my teacher was wonderful enough to let me dance on a 4-hand anyways!
Well, that was far more than you ever needed to know about my competitive history, but my point is that today, I finally won my light jig and am done with it forever...and I won my last dance- slip jig!! Slip jig has been my nemesis for a while, so it is unbelievably nice to see my work pay off and know for sure that I'm able to dance solos at New Orleans in December!
While all of this is very exciting, I didn't place in any of my other dances, which are all prizewinner, and I wasn't expecting to- but it makes the need for me to stick to my resolution much, much more real. Every level is a step up from the last, and I now need to get my dancing to the level where I can start placing in prizewinner (I'm definitely open for tips and suggestions here!!) but talking to my friend who was in the same position last June, we agreed that stamina is definitely up there on the list. After all, how am I supposed to make my hornpipe on time and turned out if I can barely make it to the end?!
All of that being said, this feis was my last excuse for why I haven't started whipping myself into shape, so NO MORE EXCUSES. I will sleep very well tonight, catch up on the exorbitant amount of homework my professors enjoy giving me and start my work Monday. I'm thinking maybe of exploring the group classes our student recreation center offers- there's one called ballet sculpt where they use ballet exercises to tone and strengthen the legs...sounds perfect for Irish dance. Baby steps, but I'll be sure to let you know how it goes!
If you actually read this far, I'm impressed, and thank you! If you skipped to the end, I don't blame you, but thanks for stopping by anyways :-)
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Just another day.
Hey!
I'm not great at this blogging thing, but welcome! I'm a college student living...somewhere in southern USA and I'm an Irish dancer. It consumes my life and I really wouldn't have it any other way. I have a feis (Irish dancing competition) next weekend that I have been frantically preparing for by drilling my steps and wearing out my legs, and while I will continue in this manner for the rest of the week, I decided today that I need to do more. I know I am not alone when I say I am a dancer who is frustrated constantly by my lack of flexibility and stamina. That being said, I resolved to do something about it. I didn't exactly make any new year's resolutions, so this will work, even if it's 15 days late :)
The purpose of this blog is really for me to hold myself accountable to the things I resolve to do (I'm awfully lazy) and to track my progress along the way, and who knows, maybe it'll help someone else out there with the same problems as me!
Anyways, I figured it was probably wise not to start any stamina or flexibility workouts until after my next feis, because let's be real, wearing yourself out working on stamina days before a competition really isn't a smart idea. That being said, there are things I got started on straight away. I've been scouring the dance.net threads and other online resources for ways that I can become a better dancer, and something that stuck out was my diet.
I'm a college student, so all cards on the table, I definitely don't have a balanced diet and I don't always have the resources to accomplish one. That being said, I'm going to do my best to start eating a balanced diet according to general nutritional standards like those food pyramids we were shown in health class and never really paid any attention to. My first step towards this goal is tracking what I eat/my caloric intake. This sounds like a huge pain in the a** but it really isn't. At school we had to track our diet for a week and we used the MyPlate feature on livestrong.com which is FANTASTIC for this kind of thing. It has a search feature with every kind of food imaginable, it allows you to choose what you ate, how much and when you ate it, then it charts it for you and shows you how many calories it had and other nutritional goals. It allows you to set a caloric intake goal for each day based on height and weight/desired weight and also lets you track exercise by logging what and how much exercise you do- it also estimates calories burned for the exercises it has in the system- and yes, it has Irish dancing! That was a really long sentence, but you get the point- I'm actually pretty excited about how awesome this site is.
Well, speaking of food just reminded me how hungry I am, and the dining hall just opened for dinner so I think I'm going to head off for some food.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you come back to see how badly my plan is backfiring on me! (I don't have high expectations for this particular endeavor, but maybe if people read, I'll actually stick to it!)
Happy dancing!
I'm not great at this blogging thing, but welcome! I'm a college student living...somewhere in southern USA and I'm an Irish dancer. It consumes my life and I really wouldn't have it any other way. I have a feis (Irish dancing competition) next weekend that I have been frantically preparing for by drilling my steps and wearing out my legs, and while I will continue in this manner for the rest of the week, I decided today that I need to do more. I know I am not alone when I say I am a dancer who is frustrated constantly by my lack of flexibility and stamina. That being said, I resolved to do something about it. I didn't exactly make any new year's resolutions, so this will work, even if it's 15 days late :)
The purpose of this blog is really for me to hold myself accountable to the things I resolve to do (I'm awfully lazy) and to track my progress along the way, and who knows, maybe it'll help someone else out there with the same problems as me!
Anyways, I figured it was probably wise not to start any stamina or flexibility workouts until after my next feis, because let's be real, wearing yourself out working on stamina days before a competition really isn't a smart idea. That being said, there are things I got started on straight away. I've been scouring the dance.net threads and other online resources for ways that I can become a better dancer, and something that stuck out was my diet.
I'm a college student, so all cards on the table, I definitely don't have a balanced diet and I don't always have the resources to accomplish one. That being said, I'm going to do my best to start eating a balanced diet according to general nutritional standards like those food pyramids we were shown in health class and never really paid any attention to. My first step towards this goal is tracking what I eat/my caloric intake. This sounds like a huge pain in the a** but it really isn't. At school we had to track our diet for a week and we used the MyPlate feature on livestrong.com which is FANTASTIC for this kind of thing. It has a search feature with every kind of food imaginable, it allows you to choose what you ate, how much and when you ate it, then it charts it for you and shows you how many calories it had and other nutritional goals. It allows you to set a caloric intake goal for each day based on height and weight/desired weight and also lets you track exercise by logging what and how much exercise you do- it also estimates calories burned for the exercises it has in the system- and yes, it has Irish dancing! That was a really long sentence, but you get the point- I'm actually pretty excited about how awesome this site is.
Well, speaking of food just reminded me how hungry I am, and the dining hall just opened for dinner so I think I'm going to head off for some food.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you come back to see how badly my plan is backfiring on me! (I don't have high expectations for this particular endeavor, but maybe if people read, I'll actually stick to it!)
Happy dancing!
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