Halloweekend

Pumpkin Spice EVERYTHING!

Halloweekend is apparently a legitimate phrase around here. People are far too excited about it, but I guess they don't have Bonfire Night, so something has to compensate. Some of the houses really do look amazing, with fake cobweb and massive decorations on the lawn, and millions of pumpkins all over the place. Everyone in college seems to be making plans for parties and trick-or-treating and it's bizarre, because I can't remember the last time I went out to canvas sweets on Halloween, but apparently that's a normal thing for 20year olds to do here.

Someone in this building has a sick and twisted sense of humour. These great
big, fat plastic spiders are all over the place. It's really not cool. Every time I see one I think it's real. My nerves will not survive Halloween season.

 

This one is my latest piece of drawing. Charcoal; not my favourite thing to be using. It gets everywhere! I'm sure there was charcoal dust in my eyes, making me itch. And it took so, so long. He had us draw from a very out-of-focus image which gradually sharpened up, but that only works if you draw reductively-  put in lots of dark bits and then rub out, and I can't get my head around it, so I started again when I got home. But still. SO LONG. He had better give me a decent grade. 

This one came off my phone, so it's a little photo in a big screenshot, but it's still really funny. When we were at the beach last week the boys were doing muscle poses, and I joined in because I definitely lift... The impact my definitely impressive and not at all spaghetti arms would have had on this picture is somewhat mitigated by my jacket, unfortunately. 

 

And the squad! We had to take a death stare photo for some reason pertaining to Liz's ex boyfriend, which was surprisingly difficult to do without laughing. This one has been a pretty heavy training week; our last week before Conference! That's come around so quickly. We've been doing more fast, shorter things, rather than 1600s and tempo runs all the time. This week it was 800s on Tuesday and 1000s on Thursday. Thursday was actually really hard work, but we managed. Today we went on a bit of an adventure, to a very hilly park for our long run, to get in a bit of hill practice before next weekend, when the course is supposed to be quite tough. Anyone who knows me will know I dislike running uphill, so I've been trying to get in more climbing whenever we've had a run for a few weeks now. Hopefully it'll pay off. 

I am a model American...

 

The Midtown Atlanta skyline, as photographed by me on the way to explore a thrift shop. I went to the thrift shop! Very exciting. It wasn't quite as much fun as in that lad's video when he's got the fur coat and the friend with the pink suit that dad thinks is a good idea, but an interesting adventure. 

 

And I saw this on the way..."Shoot Happens", a gun shop. Only in America. It's bizarre how normal owning a gun seems to be- everyone's dad seems to have on, and to use it. Hunting is much less of a posh person's thing, nearly everyone seems to have gone at some point and to have enjoyed it. 

 

Which maybe is why you can buy something like this for the house. What even is it? Besides tasteless tat, obviously...

I found this funny little park the other day. It must be something to do with the Olympics they had here way back when, but it's such a strange thing. A triumphal arch and a pond in the middle of a housing area for no apparent reason. There were some people taking family photographs at one end, who frowned a bit when I tried to get this picture, but it's a free country; I'll photograph the park if I so wish. 

This little fish is called Larry, and he is part of my most recent drawing project. 

We had to draw this corridor (boring) and then put in some things that didn't belong there, so I put in four angel fish. I am definitely a model student-artist-athlete. Last week, after winning the race in NC I was national runner of the week! This was pretty exciting, because no one from SCAD has ever done that before. Since the drawing teacher gave me a proper mark for the fish drawing and I got full marks in our mid term test, I've now got As in all my classes, which is a nice thing. 

 

This weekend we went up to South Carolina for another race, but the afternoon beforehand we went to the beach! We very nearly didn't get to go, because the hurricane had caused all sorts of damage, making parking difficult, but we got a few minutes on the sand anyway. The water was so warm! Who knew the Atlantic could ever be warm? 

The beach was actually a bit dull. It was so, so flat, and there were no shells to be found, but we had a good game of frisbee, and I got thrown in the water twice (angry face). Getting there, we basically drove from Atlanta to Savannah and then up a bit to get into SC, and it took SO LONG! There is just too much space in America. We stopped in a place called Dublin on the way as well- the real one, I am assured. None of this British fakery. 

This was just in one of the service stations we stopped at for petrol on the way home. We stopped twice for fuel going each way, which can probably tell you something of the distance we drove. Google says 280 miles, and we only just left Georgia. Craziness. 

This was our first race up against the hated Milligan College, and I am sorry to say they beat us. But only by one point, and as a team we were not having a great day. I've been ill, and ran 17.54 feeling like a dying person, Olivia sprained her ankle pretty badly and dropped places falling over. At conference, in two weeks' time when we're up against them next we apparently have quite a tough course, so their lead girl, Hannah, who is a phenomenal 800m runner will not be able to just open her stride and run away from everyone like she did yesterday. Even our team average time was faster than theirs, and if you removed all the runners from the race who aren't a part of our conference, we beat them by two points. Basically, I think we're going to beat them in a few weeks and ruin their 13-years-long conference champion streak. And I'm going to kick Hannah Segrave's backside off the course :)

Serious season

 

It's us, last race! I promise you I am more tanned than I have ever been before, but I still look ghostly pale, damn it. 

We have been practicing hurricane survival recently. We're too far inland to be bothered by that kind of thing, but Savannah got hit, so we've had several thousand kids from that campus sleeping in our classrooms, eating our food and so on. It's like a refugee camp in school. Last weekend we drove up to North Carolina, which took a very long time, and we had hurricane rain all the way. Thankfully when we actually got to the race it was only moderately soggy. 

 

 

 

Damp, see. NC is a strange place, full of churches built like warehouses, and at least one warehouse that was an old church, and giant red glowing crosses all over the place. Charlotte, the city we were going up to, was another strange mix of massive MASSIVE beautiful houses and some really slummy-looking places, all piled in together. It was also full of people who had run away from Florida. Why would you live in Florida? The houses must get trashed so often.

This was our first serious race. It would have been Nationals Preview, but Nationals has moved, so it was just a big race instead. Nationals Preview is the kind of abomination only the Americans could dream up- it's a race supposed to be run on the same course, with all the people who think they might qualify for Nationals running it, but none of the championship glory. Because this was no longer Preview, and because of the lovely hurricane, quite a lot of the really good teams just didn't show up, including our big rivals, Milligan. Apparently we've scared them to death. Somehow they're still quite a bit ahead of us in the national rankings- how I don't know, because we're much faster, but they seem to be avoiding us, probably to preserve that ranking.

 

It was quite a pretty course. Some bits were very long and straight, some quite twisty and turny, but it was very flat, and nearly all gravel paths. The start was quite scary; the ground was a bit treacherous on the 600m or so of starting field as nearly 400 girls hurtled to the front. Coach had told me beforehand to try and stay with the leading pack but not lead it, so it was both surprising and concerning to find myself leading a race where I thought there were going to be at least three girls quite a bit faster than me. Turns out, they weren't there. Basically I ran the whole thing in a state of shock, wondering what was going on. I won it in the last 300m and was very, very surprised about it. 

Everyone was amazed with me, but I only did 17.32. Which is fast, I know, but I can't help but be a little disappointed with it. I really want to be under 17, and with about 400m to go Coach was yelling at me that I could do it. Or I think he was. I could very easily have misheard, because I was working very hard at that point. But yes; four wins from four. Not a course record this time, and still not a glorious champion t-shirt (cries). 

We've finally got a tent! We needed it, it got pretty wet as the day went on!

 

And look at these imposters! St Andrews, my bottom. 

 

Back in Atlanta the weather has calmed down. It rained over the weekend (damn hurricane), but now we're down to a very, very nice British summer's day. There's a bit of a breeze, it's no where near as humid, and the heat is no longer like a blanket trying to suffocate you. The British press are reporting about how shocked everyone is about Donald Trump and his terrible misogyny, but over here nobody seems to be talking about it. They don't seem to talk politics much at all generally. It's kind of like that feeling before the Milliband/Cameron election, where nobody liked either of them, only here they don't have the Liberal Democrats as a third option. 

We've not been doing much, just training. We went to Gay Pride at the weekend, which was kind of how you would imagine it to be. Glitter, feathers, people not wearing enough and lots of prancing. The guys were trying to prevail upon me to try American festival delicacies. Funnel Cake? What is a Funnel Cake? It looks like one huge, gigantic churro that takes up a whole plate in it's layers of squiggly fried cholesterol. It's just like festival food at home really, but bigger and greasier. I declined. There's a bug going around the team, which I am desperately hoping to avoid. I feel a bit off, but I really, really hope it'll just pass and not become a serious problem.

Three races, three records

 

What's Olivia doing? I really couldn't say...

Yesterday was out home invitational! So obviously we had to win it, and we did. First, second, third, fourth and eighth. When they were doing the prizes Coach announced it as my third consecutive win, and third consecutive course record, which was very embarrassing.  

These are a few pictures of the boys' race at the start line. Our start was a little further back, up by the tree line so we had a lovely gentle downhill start. It was a much tougher course than anything we've run so far, but still more of a multi terrain race than actual XC. Most of it was on the weird, thick-bladed grass they have here, or on sandy trail. The most challenging bit really is the footing, which can be really uneven in places but isn't soft at all. It rained in the city, but this course is about 50 miles outside Atlanta, and they've had no rain in at least a month, so bits of the ground were rock solid. It's brutal on the spikes- I've lost half of mine! 

And we had hills this time! How exciting is that? Not really enormous ones, but enough that the Americans had a whinge. I have Max on record saying that noticeable hills in a race are 'unfair on the runners'. Don't know what planet he hails from, but the last time I checked XC wasn't about running a sub-17 5K each time. I was a bit slower than last race- 18.05, but given that it was much more work this time that's not too bad. 

And then we got pizza as a reward! I have come to the conclusion that there are two things I really like about America. One, the food. The place we went last night was like Subway for pizza, so you walked in and just picked all your toppings from a salad-bar kind of setup, and then they cooked it for you super quickly and it was mega. I've eaten too many waffles at weekend brunch, and I've completely gone off them, but there's still always nice things to be had. The chocolate here is ruinously priced or disgusting though (cries). I am glad that I'm vegetarian, because there is a lot of greasy junk food available, but all of it meat. It would be a lot easier to do myself damage if burgers and what not were an option. As it is, an awful lot of my calories come either from beans or chickpeas and raw fruit and veg, and past, which seems to be working well for me. 

The second thing is that they like people who are good at sport. I'm not fantastic or anything, but people recognise me from previous races and say hi, or ask what my name is or where I'm from. I know in the running community at home people do the same, and it may just be the inherent extrovertishness in the Americans, but random people at races do seem genuinely interested, which is quite nice. 

In other news, the cycling team dragged Greta and I out to a nightclub last night on false pretenses. They told us it was a dance hall. What a lie. To everyone who's ever told me off for not 'going out', because I knew I wouldn't like it- I was right! But at least at the grand old age of nearly 21 I can at least substantiate that with experience. 

 

And this is my drawing finished! It doesn't photograph that well, but it looks pretty good. I was NOT happy about this. The teacher went and gave me a C because it was 'shaded'. It was not shaded. It was definitely not shaded. It took me all weekend because I cross-hatched the entire thing, as per instruction, rather than shading it. But I blended it, because cross-hatching looks terrible unless it's representing a textured object. So for improving my drawing, for spending about twice as long as specified on the damn thing and for using technique that is beyond the class, he took nearly twenty marks off me. And then the stupid man have me 5 'technique marks' extra to the markscheme because it was NOT A C! He said it broke his heart...as if I should be grateful. He could have just given me a proper grade. If you look at it up close you can even see all the millions of tiny cross-hatch lines. What a ridiculous situation. It seems to run completely contrary to the point of further education- taking marks off someone for doing extra work. And then he went and messed up my perspective lines on the class work. But whatever, rant over.