Thursday January 21, 2010
First of all I can't beleive its 2010 already, time is really going by fast isn't it? I am working on my application to medical school tonight. I should be finished up with almost everything soon and after I take the MCAT in April I will be all ready to start at Harvard in the fall!
Today before school I went by the gym and swam for 500 warm up, 250X4 fast, 50x15 fast, and 25 X 4 as hard as I can, 500 cool down.
Next I changed clothes and went upstairs to the cardio room and ran for 80 minutes on the treadmill. I did 10 minutes warm up at 6.5 mph, then 4 X 10 minutes at 9.0mph with 5 minute breaks at 7.0 in between, and a cool down on the spin bike.
I feel great running, actually better than I can remember! March 6 is the test of my manhood and I hope I can be ready for it.
Saturday is a workout I am really looking forward too... 6:15 with 4X8 minutes in there of crazy fast kick ass pedal mashing. I know it doesn't mean anything to 99% of people, but my power goal for the intervals is 300 and average goal for the entire ride will be 210-220. After I get off the bike around noon I will have to run for another hour. Ideally I would also swim for a half hour beforehand, but there is nowhere to swim near the start of my ride.
I have lost about 6 pounds total in the last 15 weeks since I started running and now that I am swimming more I am really feeling good about everything.
School is hard again, I am taking Physics, Microbiology, labs, and Caribbean history. I don't really need to take any of them but physics is fun, micro is interesting, and I have always wanted to know more about the Caribbean ever since last semesters class on African History and all the time we spent on the Atlantic Slave Trade... Did you know that the USA and capitalism as we know it was founded entirely on the plantation system set up by the early settlers to the Caribbean? ... Here is your history lesson everyone...
In 1493 on Columbus' second voyage to the new world he brought with him cattle, horses, pigs, chickens, women and children, and most importantly---Sugarcane... Sugar was to be the great crop that would make the European powers all their money to build their nations with and evolve from middle/dark age states, to the great colonial powers that they have become. Sugar was the crop that required alot of labor to grow... The natives of America worked at first, but they died off from overworking, bad nutrition, and disease mainly... so after the Europeans wiped out the millions of natives, they decided to enslave millions and millions of Africans! A man named Las Casas was a Friar that helped the natives gain favor in the Euro's eyes. He believed that they were not savages after all and that they simply hadn't had the chance to accept Christ! So he convinced the powers that be not to further annihilate the natives (who were pretty much wiped off the earth completely) and use real savages--- Africans! After all, Africans had at one time been strongly christian from about 200 AD to about 850 AD when Islam swept through Africa converting many (except Ethiopia)... So he and the Euro powers agreed that African would be the new worker!...(slaves).. Hence the Atlantic slave trade changed from shipping Indians to Europe, to shipping Africans to America!
In order for the sugar plantations to run smoothly they used slave labor, and basically worked the slaves to death...literally. The fact that the Caribbean is still populated by African descendants is testament in itself that they beat the colonial powers. I am fascinated by stories of slave rebellions in Haiti and on other islands (Maroons). Brothers who had been stolen from their families and homes in the motherland, uniting and fighting the euro's who had stronger powerful weapons, money, etc.
Anyways I will stop here as I have probably lost the majority of readers after the first sentence of this blog.
D