Week 9: Embracing the Highlights: A Week of Growth and Celebration
“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” – Buddha
By: Hong Bing Tang March 23, 2025
03/17/2025 to 03/23/2025
Introduction:
What’s up everyone! I hope you all had a relaxing week and got to enjoy the nice weather we had for two days. This week was quite an eventful week with getting back to school and a celebration of activities. Let’s dive into the things that I did this week!
Running:
After having a little bit of a down week last week due to being sick, it was back to getting back to normal mileage. This last month has been full of inconsistencies due to sickness and hopefully I am over the hump of sickness and can finally get back into being healthy. Other than having a bad cough, congestion, and feeling slightly lethargic, I was feeling strong running wise. This week was a pretty big week, and I ran 70 miles which is the highest mileage that I have ever hit! Also, we had big workouts this week, and I ran strong 200s and a tough k’s workout. Overall, I am happy with this week since it shows I am still very fit even with all these bumps in the road.
Happy Birthday Jessie!
On Tuesday it was Jessie’s 21st birthday! For her birthday I decided to make her a gift basket filled with her favorite snacks, skin care products, and a picture frame with a little message and photo of us together. Since we were pretty busy, we decided to do something later in the week. However later that night, Jessie, her roommates, Emily, and Nat, and I did a little craft night and painted some ceramic animals. I decided to paint a little dinosaur, and she painted a bird—pretty fitting since she is taking a bird class right now. Through this experience, I learned that painting is way harder than I thought it was going to be due to the patience and precision needed to paint the fine details needed for ceramic animals. Both things I lack while painting. Luckily, I chose an easy one, and it turned out not half bad. Overall, it was pretty fun and relaxing day!
Pt 2:
On Thursday, Jessie and I decided to do something for her birthday. So after my classed ended at 7pm, we decided to have dinner together. The athletic department decided to start providing dinner on Monday-Thursday for athletes in season during the spring—unfortunately for us XC men we don’t have a track team so we can’t take advantage of this—and Jessie got two meals during this time so she got Pasta for herself and got me a taco brisket bowl. We ate at the UC and the food was surprisingly good considering that I was expecting café low quality food. After dinner we headed to Dairy Queen to get some ice cream. Conveniently it was free cone day due to the first day of spring so we got our ice cream free! However it was really busy at DQ and I felt quite bad for the workers there since it was really backed up inside the store and they also had the drive through. After that tasty treat we decided to watch a movie together and decided to finish up Zootopia. The move was really good and I could see why it is one of Steve’s favorite Disney movies. After this it was getting quite late, so we decided to head to bed.
Honor Charity Ball:
On Friday my honors friend group decided to go the annual honors charity ball. I, of course, took Jessie as my date. Unfortunately, Jessie and I were not able to attend dinner with the group since practice ended at 5:30, something that I am not super happy about since I was at the IAC for 4.5 hours but were able to show up roughly on time. While there, I was able to catch up with Eli and Anna, Helena, meet Logan who is Katies boyfriend and see some people that I hadn’t seen in a while such as Zoey who I had class with on Beaver Island and also Jacob and Tiffiny who were people that I had met my freshman year. I was glad to see all those people! Bu the main event of course was the dance. It felt really strange since there were not many people on the dance floor, normally around 20-30 people. The music was not half bad with a lot of pop songs being played, which was nice since I knew the majority of the songs on the playlist. However, the one drawback was that, while we were there, the DJ only played 1 slow song which I kind of expected a little bit more. However, it was still a very good experience, and I was happy that I went; I had not gone in the last 2 years.
Into the Woods:
On Saturday night most of the guys on our team decided to attend the play, “Into the Woods” hosted by the CMU theater. Even better was that Colin was Flynn Rider. I have only been to a play once at CMU and did not understand what was going on much. However, this play was a musical which made it more engaging along with the play was based on many classic fairytale stories like jack and the beanstalk, Cinderella, little red riding hood, and Rapunzel. The plan was funny, and Colin did well, and although it felt long, I was engaged the whole time, and the story ended well. Overall, I was happy that I was able to go and enjoy something that I normally do not go see and of course support my boy, Colin. Unfortunately, I could not take any pictures since we were not allowed to.
Conclusion:
This week reminded me how important it is to be present and appreciate the experiences that come my way. Whether it was pushing my limits in training, celebrating with friends, or stepping into something new, each moment added something meaningful to my journey.
Goals Update!
Journaling: No journaling this week, but I restarted doing some of the key habits I have this week.
Nail biting: I have been doing a good job not biting the nails that I say I am not gonna bite however some of my nails like my pointer finger I bit quite a bit
Reading: I am 2/3 of the way done with the David and goliath book.
Phone usage: An average of 1 hour and 50 minutes. I spent a decent amount of time scrolling through snapchat and am hoping to use the app less this week.
Future: Put money in my Roth IRA for my 2024 contribution.
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