Melinda Woodley, M.A.

Oh good lord, it's been two months since I updated? That's ridiculous.

I have excuses, though, I assure you. Like for one thing, I have an M.A. from UC Berkeley now. Isn't that crazy? I just took my exam this past Friday - a two hour long oral exam that consisted of me standing at a chalkboard being asked questions by three professors - and despite the fact that I felt like an idiot, apparently I did pretty well! So maybe I do know something about linguistics after all, although I'm not sure the three days straight of studying really paid off...

Here I am with my honey and my hood!

And here I am with my M.A. graduating class. I love these guys!

I also churned out a 20 page paper that needs to be revised and beefed up for next week, so that they'll actually give me my master's, but I don't want to think about that just yet.

Let me tell you about the Oakland Half Marathon, even though it was almost two months ago now. It was great! I decided I really like Oakland. It's definitely the red-headed stepchild of San Francisco. Not to be a hipster or anything, but it's a very... real city. The race was weird because it started downtown, which was great, but I can't think of how to describe downtown Oakland. There are a few tall buildings, but none of them are that tall, and they're all pretty concentrated in one little area. Parts of downtown look kind of old, but in a quaint, turn-of-the-20th-century way. Like you can imagine Jack London sitting in a cafe and people driving by in Model-T's or something, but maybe that's just me. Anyway, it was weird because we did a loop downtown, then circled around by Jack London square, but didn't actually go through Jack London square, and then we did this loop through West Oakland that might have been a little scary if there weren't several thousand other people and police escorts around. West Oakland is totally bizarre. There are lots of rappers from there, if that tells you anything, but it's in the beginning-ish stages of urban renewal and gentrification. So there are lots of old black people who have probably lived there forever, and then lots of hipster barrista 35 year olds who finally settled down and have toddlers with mohawks. That sort of thing. So we did this long, very industrial loop, and then we eventually hit the yuppier part of Oakland, just north of Lake Merritt. Lake Merritt is gorgeous but also totally weird, because it's this huge lake that sort of comes out of nowhere just north of downtown. But it's beautiful - it's a very nice part of town, lots of cute little bars and restaurants and lots of folks out riding bikes and walking around, and it was a very sunny day, so the water was sparkling and the sky was bright blue. Very nice. But I was hurting pretty bad by the time we got there. The last part of the course was a loop around the lake, so you're thinking, okay, just one loop around the lake and I'm done. But the lake is pretty big - the start of the lake part of the course was around mile 10, and it's easy to think you're almost done when you hit mile 10 in a half marathon. But I guess it's kind of like mile 20 in a full marathon; that's really where the race starts, in a way, because that's when you're fighting your body to keep going. It was also kind of mean that the half marathon course was very flat except for the very end.

Now, usually when I do a race, I have a realistic goal and a secret goal. The realistic goal is one that I can probably make, and the one that I tell people about if they ask. But the secret goal is one that I don't like to say out loud, because I don't want to commit to it. My realistic goal for this race was to come in under 1:50. I ran my first half ever in Mahomet in 2005, and I finished in 2:08. I ran my second one in Valparaiso in 2007 in 1:48, and I was totally stoked to come in well under 2 hours. I haven't been doing any speed work or timing myself at all since we moved out here, so I really have no idea how fast I usually run. I figured if I could come in around 1:50, that would be great, because that would put me at the same level of fitness as the last time, when I had been doing speed work. But my secret goal was to be faster than 1:48, and my secret secret goal was to come in under 1:45.

Well, I didn't wear a watch for this race, but I periodically asked people what time it was along the course, and I knew I was going to come in under 2:00. When we hit the lake, though, I realized it was a possibility that I could meet my secret secret goal if I really pushed it. It hurt, it really hurt, and I felt like I was going so slowly no matter what I did. But you know what? I rounded the last corner as we turned off from the lake and went back downtown, and I saw the clock, and I was so close to 1:45. I sprinted the last straightaway, and I was so close to coming in under 1:45. So close. So for a minute I was a little disappointed that I was so close but didn't quite make it. And then I remembered that I was going by clock time, not chip time, which means that I did make it. I made it! My time was 1:44 something, and I did the math and found that I averaged a 7:59.99 minute mile. So WHOO-HOO!! No wonder it hurt!

If I could run an 8 minute mile for 26 miles (which I won't be doing any time soon), that would be a 3:30 marathon, and that would rock and qualify me for Boston. So naturally when I got home, I started figuring out what marathon I should do this year. I think I really must be a masochist; that's the only explanation. Painpainpainpainpainpain where can I sign up to do that again? Anyway, I decided to put my name in for the San Francisco Nike Women's marathon in the fall, and I got picked! It's a lottery system because it's such a popular race, but I will be running my next full marathon on October 17th. Cripes, I need to get together a training plan.

There are lots of other things I need to do this summer, too. I'm taking Spanish, which starts in about a month. Before then, I have to finish that paper I mentioned, and I'm volunteering for this workshop at Berkeley called Breath of Life, where Native Americans from all over California come to learn about their native languages and the resources we have at Berkeley for learning about them and keeping them alive. The language I'm working on is Cahuilla, which is still spoken by some people in Southern California, and we have three speakers coming up to learn about the Cahuilla resources we have. So I need to learn lots more about Cahuilla between now and the first week of June.

For now, though, I really want a shower. So I'm going to leave you with some good pictures my mom took when she was here over the past week. The first one is the Golden Gate on a typically foggy day, and the second is me on the beach at Monterey. We drove down to see the aquarium, and it was a gorgeous sunny day, and the aquarium was pretty awesome.