MRI-ing and 5 off season goals!

Yesterday morning I had my first MRI. I made sure to shave my legs. It was really noisy, so they gave me earplugs and noise cancelling headphones that played a local radio station. There was an Abba song...Dancing Queen. But I wasn't allowed to move at all or the image would get all blurry.

They gave me a CD with all the images, but I'm not a radiologist so even with my O&P background I don't know exactly what or where I'm really looking for. I should get the official report sometime next week... But it IS rather cool seeing the insides of your bones and muscles!

I think I have a really great looking femur, don't you???

I was getting pretty bummed about my knee injury but Coach Beck told me to stay positive and focus on the things that I *can* do while my knee continues to get better. So here are 5 things I will do before I step on the starting line of my next Ironman. You heard it here first!

1. Work on my two Halloween costumes...yes, the deadline is actually in just 2 weeks, and yes of course I have to have more than one outfit. I always make my own outfits, just like last year. There's Friday parties and Saturday parties...well and probably Sunday too. offfff season!!!!!!


2. Focus on my nutrition plan. Keeping eating well and get leaner. It is actually easier to focus on this when you are training less, because you don't have to eat as much!


3. Get out of credit card debt. I didn't open any credit card accounts until I went off to graduate school...and it only got worse during my 4 years on teamTBB, while "living the dream." (The true secret to losing weight at training camps? Not having enough money to buy groceries. I'm serious.)


4. Keep growing the Wongstar brand. This means more blogging, and printing out fan club stickers I promised long long ago. You would buy a sticker, wouldn't you?


5. FIVE PULL-UPS. Yes! Be able to do 5 unassisted pull-ups before my next Ironman!!! I've never been able to do any, and my swim coach friend Kiet once told me that all real swimmer girls can do them. Obviously I will swim way faster and have a six-pack if I can do pull-ups!

Yup, all 5 things that I can be excited about accomplishing. You probably noticed I didn't put down "work on my swimming" because that's a given...I'm ALWAYS working on my swimming! And if there is one race performance I can be really proud of this year, time-wise, it is the 1:02 swim I did in IM Korea before the sh!t totally hit the fan. If I can do it once, I can and WILL do it again.

Love you all! happy training or even more exciting, happy off-seasoning like me :)

Being a working girl again

Last weekend I gave myself an advance on my first paycheck, because I had to get ready to be a working girl again. This involved getting a new haircut, blacking out the pink in my hair, and of course getting new work clothes. When I moved to Wilmington last year, I hadn't actually anticipated going back to work this soon, so I only had one pair of slacks (which I wore for my interview) and a couple of dress shirts. Shopping was obviously necessary! :D

I snapped a photo of my new hair while I was at the dressing room at Target post-haircut because it was looking good!

My eyes still look tired from jetlag!

Clearly my "advance" was still frugalicious as I went to Supercuts for a $16 cut, dyed the hair myself for under $4, and bought some sweet slacks at Target for $24.99 a pair (big spender, I paid full price on those pants!). It's a little weird to have all black hair again; I keep looking in the mirror and thinking "WHOA my hair is black!" Then I realized why it was extra strange--my hair has never really been jet black before, it is usually various shades of brown with the top/front even lighter from all the sun and chlorine I'm exposed to.

(For the record, nobody at work told me I had to dye the pink out of hair, it was my own decision. When you are working with older patients, sometimes they won't listen to you because you are their grandson's age, even with normal-colored hair. So having hot pink hair doesn't help patients take you seriously!)

I'm going home at the end of the month and will go through my stash there for more dress clothes...although I've also realized that I haven't had to dress up for work in over 4 years, when I was a resident at UT Southwestern in Dallas. At Gary's office, we usually wore scrubs and running shoes to work--every office is different. And 4 years ago I was more of a fattie...so...those pants aren't gonna fit. I guess this means I need not feel guilty about new clothes shopping. heehee!

It is kind of fun actually to dress up for work again. I feel like a superhero with an alter ego. I am "Jocelyn Wong, MSPO, CPO," a mild-mannered prosthetist-orthotist by day...well 4 days a week, and 3 days a week I am THE WONGSTAR, international triathlon superstar. Or maybe it's the Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana complex. LOL