March 2013 Update

Hello Crew,

March is sure a busy time of year, isn't it?

Only 5 weeks of school left. I'm done all exams except finals, only one more lab, 3 more assignments, and one term paper left. I'm starting to feel the crunch of the semester coming to a close. If I get a good head start on things now, I should be okay. Motivation, come to me - please!

The last couple weeks have been mostly dominated by my independent study. Which I realize I never really explained to you in any detail. The official purpose of the study is determine baseline physical activity rates in full-time employed women over the age of 55. This demographic is of particular interest to us because not only do they have the lowest physical activity rates of any other but they also happen to be the most rapidly expanding demographic in the labour force. Coincidence? Who knows. It is quite possible that retaining employment past the traditional retirement age may contribute to keeping people active. Although retirement is commonly thought of as a time when people will be more active, enjoy their leisure time, and so on, it is often not the case. So anyway, how it works is that my professor spearheads a big research project and creates little mini projects within the big project for students to do as independent studies. My study is what I described above. In her study, my study is just a tiny piece. She's looking at functional fitness levels, job satisfaction, how much physical activity and sedentary time these women are engaging in, general health, field of employment, and functional balance. Myself and another student doing an independent study do all the testing for everything and just select what we need for our studies. Basically we've become lab rats. We're testing about 8 women twice a week for hour long appointments each. We send them away with accelerometers which record all their physical activity (like hypersensitive pedometers), have them do questionnaires, record some anthropometric measurements, and test them on the dynanometer and the neurocom machines.

The dynanometer is a functional strength test. They do leg extensions using the knee as the rotational axis on this machine and it controls how many degrees of flexion or extension that they can move through per second. It is a fixed rate so the harder they push against the machine, the harder it pushes back on them to maintain the speed. Here is a picture:

Fun times in the Physiology lab.

We get to buckle and strap them all in so that they are only producing the motion from their knee and not their hip, back, abs, etc. It often really intimidates the women before they know what to expect which can be slightly entertaining for us.

Another funny point that is entertaining is that the lab next door does sprint-interval training for metabolism research on self-propelled treadmills. These things are the noisiest lab equipment you've ever heard. If our participants hear trials going on in the other lab they often get concerned and nervously ask if they will be put through the same high-intensity testing :)

Here's a picture of our lab:

This is only half of our space. There's actually another room off to the left but it wouldn't fit in the picture.

Because I have keys and 24-hour access to the lab, I end up spending a lot of time in there. It is quiet, private, has a bathroom, sinks, tons of counter space, and only my prof and the other independent study student have access. Not going to lie, I feel pretty VIP whenever I'm in there.

Anyway, other than school work I've been trying to do lots of reading lately. Been working on classic authors that I've never had any exposure to but feel I need to be familiar with. In particular, I read "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac and "Old man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway.

Also, I ran the 10 km Moonlight Run on March 9th. The weather was much worse than last year and I saw that reflected in my time. I ran 2 minutes and 15 minutes slower than the previous year for a time of 54 minutes exact. I'm still happy with that time though. Running with 2500 people in pitch black through mud and ice isn't exactly the time to be trying for a personal best. The fun thing was that both my independent study prof and the other independent study student in my lab were running it too. The three of us had fun joking that it would count towards are grade at the end of the semester :)

Well, hopefully you were able to understand a bit more about my study and what I've been up to.

Cheers and take care,

Jacqueline

PS: Check out the beautiful flowers a friend of mine sent me. The timing was impeccable - I was really needing a pick-me-up and less than 24 hours later, these showed up on my doorstep despite the fact that I hadn't said anything. I am SO grateful for the people in my life :)

When I first got them...

...a day or two later when they opened up :)