Leeds MBA Life

I’m not usually one to dress up for Halloween.  Come to think of it, I don’t recall the last time I did dress up for Halloween.  In any case, this year was going to be different.  I had heard about the MBA/Law School party and I was determined to be there in costume.  As it turns out, life happens and my costume hunt was put off.  I could blame finals, or my weekend in Moab, or the steady stream of group projects, or my internship, but when it really comes down to it, I’m really just a procrastinator.  I started shopping late Monday evening figuring that I could always expedite the shipping if I had to.  I visited several online outlets and found something suitable.  Satisfied that I had found a good deal, I moved into the checkout section to see about delivery times.  The company offered three types of shipping which if I remember correctly were something like basic, standard and fast.  The basic shipping would work if you needed it for next year or had placed the order right after the fourth of July.  The standard shipping was more like priority without the guarantee, and the fast was something like overnight, but once again without a guarantee.  I was a bit puzzled by the complexity of the shipping chart.  It’s a good thing I’m a grad student with a statistics background, because you had to do a probability analysis to figure out the likelihood that your costume would be in stock, your order would be filled, the shipper would show up, and that it would all come together in time for the Friday evening festivities.  In the end, I took my chances and hit “submit”.  I figured there was about an 85% chance that my costumes would arrive in time and given that I was too lazy to pursue other options, that was good enough for me.

I sat patiently each day.  Tuesday morning I received confirmation that the order had been picked and was ready for shipment.  Tuesday afternoon I received a tracking number that indicated my estimated delivery date was Friday.  Friday morning came and I checked the tracking number again just to be sure.  To my surprise, my delivery had been rescheduled for Monday.  I still wasn’t too concerned at this point as I figured that I could do a pick up at one of the UPS distribution centers if it made it to town on Friday afternoon.  Unfortunately, my hopes of having a costume for Friday were shattered when I spoke to the UPS representative.  In her nicest customer service voice, she informed me that my costume would not arrive in Denver until Friday evening at best.

At this point, I knew I had to act, and apparently I was not the only one in Boulder that needed a costume for the weekend.  I went to both costume stores in town only to find long lines and picked over goods.  My girlfriend was even less amused as I drug her around town at 6:00 on Friday evening in search of the perfect outfit.  OK, I’ll be honest, at this point I was hoping for any outfit, and perfect was not a requirement.  We found some costumes at our second stop that would work…a rasta outfit for me and a devil suit for her.  She wasn’t overly excited about her costume, but time was running out and it would have to do.  With the costume crisis behind us, we headed home to get dressed before the big night out.  The party turned out to be more fun than I could have imagined.  Everyone was in costume and we had an entire section of the bar reserved for our group.  There was a costume contest, people danced, and the bar specials ran all night.  I’ll definitely be attending again next year, and since my costumes showed up on Monday, I’m ready to go!

I recall the moment all too clearly.  Melisse, my girlfriend, and I were sitting by the fire, glasses of red wine in hand, looking out the window at the huge piles of snow that filled the street.  For those of you who were in Colorado last winter, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  For those of you who weren’t, you missed the fun, excitement, inconvenience and mess associated with the several feet of snow that blanketed the front-range last winter.  So there we sat, sipping our wine, enjoying the warmth of the fire, discussing 2006, and making plans for 2007.  2007 promised to be different for both of us.  I had just been accepted into the MBA program, and the start-up she was working for was going under in a hurry.  “Let’s make New Year’s Resolutions!” exclaimed Melisse.  I tried to feign my excitement, but she saw right through it.  “Come on, It will be fun!” was here response to my half-hearted interest.  I reluctantly humored her asking, “What did you have in mind?”.  She replied, “Now that you won’t be traveling so much, you’ll have more time to run and we can do all those races we’ve been talking about.”  She followed up with, “Why don’t we shoot for 3 half marathons this year?”  Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the pretty girl with the excited expression that was asking, or maybe it was just her sales pitch about warm locations and weekends away as I peeked out the window at the 6 foot piles of snow lining my driveway.  Whatever the reason, I agreed to the goal and we booked a trip to Arizona immediately. 

Our first race was going to be the Rock ‘n Roll half in Phoenix.  It’s a fun race in a warm location and it was just what I needed given the current conditions in Colorado.  Since the race was only a few weeks away, we started our training the next day.  We put on our cold weather gear and hit the roads.  The main streets had actually been plowed, but we chose to run through some neighborhoods to avoid the traffic, slush, and occasional snow plow still working to clean up the mess.  Trekking through the neighborhoods had its own set of challenges.  We pretty much had to run in the tire tracks left by the few 4 wheel drives that were able to navigate the roads.  We stopped to help push a few folks out of their driveways, and had several near falls at icy intersections.  In the end we comforted ourselves with the belief that Phoenix was at lower altitude and the weather would be perfect.  Those visions were quickly shattered upon landing at Sky Harbor airport a few weeks later.  We realized that the weather in Phoenix was not much better.  Highs were projected in the 40’s and it actually snowed there for the first time in 20 or so years.  We froze through our first race and promised to pick better locations for the next 2. 

The second race we chose was the Wine Country Half in the hills above Santa Barbara, CA.  We once again justified our intermittent training schedule with the fact that it was a sea level event in good weather.  The weather wasn’t bad, the course was beautiful, and we found some great restaurants in the little tourist town of Solvang.  The weekend as a whole was fun, but the race was painful.  We were both hurting at the end and we vowed that our final race would be different.  We’d plan in advance, train, pick a location with good weather, etc.

Sometime in the middle of July we decided on the Other Half Marathon in Moab, UT.  The race was actually perfect for a number of reasons.  It was within driving distance, the date in October fell on the weekend of mid-semester break, and since it was July and the race was in October, we’d have plenty of time to train.  As one might have predicted, school kept me busy and my training suffered.  The weeks passed much quicker than I thought they would and I traded miles on the road for homework assignments, study groups and take home finals.  We drove to Moab on Friday afternoon and spent Saturday exploring the beautiful trails and local pubs for my own version of carb loading. 

Sunday morning, we got up, grabbed some coffee, and made our way onto the bus.  The bus ride was a long winding ride up the canyon carved by the Colorado River.  At 7AM, rain was falling, the wind was blowing, and it was probably in the neighborhood of 30 degrees F.  The bus dropped us at the starting line about an hour before the race.  Groups of people huddled around the fires that had been built to keep the runners warm on the chilly morning.  After what seemed like eternity, we were ushered to the starting line behind a truck full of drummers that were playing some sort of ceremonial tribal beat. 

The race started without incident and the 1500 or so of us that made it out of our warm beds that morning made our way down a beautiful course that followed the river towards town.  The sun came out, the rain that was predicted never came, and the wind was non-existent.  I’d say that I enjoyed every step of the race, but I’d be lying.  As expected, my lack of training caused my legs to burn through the last 5 miles of the race, but the finish line beers were well worth it.  Melisse finished a few minutes behind me and we shared the joy of knowing that we had set a goal almost 11 months earlier and achieved it.  We made our way back to the hotel for a quick shower before our relaxing drive back to Boulder.  We took a little detour into Glenwood Springs where we sat in the natural hot springs and soaked our tired and sore bodies before returning home for the 2^nd half of the first Semester.   

Since I took some time to complain about one of the downsides to being a student, I should take equal time to praise a few of the things I’ve come to enjoy most.  As a student, there were certain things I expected…intramural sports, Friday night social gatherings, tailgate parties, football games and weekend bike rides/runs with classmates.  In the past eight weeks, I’ve discovered a few others things that were not mentioned during orientation, didn’t make it into the brochure, and are nowhere to be found on the Leeds website.