#doctorsthatdo

Our social media manager, resident physician Ashley Cheek, DO, responds to the @wearfigs ad controversy.

Not sure if this happens to anyone else, but save for a handful of races I tend to get to the finish line of the mile/1500 and wish I had maybe 50 more meters because my legs have finally turned over and I feel like I could have gotten that one more person. Graduating medical school feels a little bit like that - hey wait, where did all the time/track go?!

So here we are. Guess I should start by filling a few things in since my post about retiring/match day coming up/attempting to train for the half. 1. I matched in emergency medicine at SIU! 2. As for the no track thing, I will have to find a track at some point (and maybe a buddy) before 2018 is over because I need to run one more mile…. I have an irrational need to say I broke 5 minutes in the mile at least once a year for 10 straight years. 3. and more importantly however, I did run the Indy Mini Marathon (!) and then graduated from medical school the next day. Without falling while walking across the stage in heels no less! I definitely don’t necessarily recommend racing a half and graduating in the same weekend. I may or may not have put my family through the ringer getting them all up at 5am (which to them was 4am) with me to get downtown for the race and then basically having us all going non-stop the rest of the weekend with graduation activities.

Welcome to how my life has run the last 4 years, its fun isn’t it?

Anyway, I’ll start with the Mini. Training was about as rocky as expected, my mileage wasn’t as consistent as I hoped it would be (shocker at this point I know), but I did spend a month up over 50 miles at least. The week of the match was a pretty big setback unfortunately after an awesome and confidence inspiring 10-mile race. I barely hit my mileage and I got zero workouts in because I spent most of the week slightly paralyzed by the anticipation of finding out where I would be a resident. In retrospect this is really silly considering I knew Monday that I would be going somewhere, which is really the scarier email. The one someone brilliantly decided to title “Did you Match?” I don’t know ACGME did I?! Seriously thought, who decided that would be a good header… Anyway, got back into the groove mostly in April, but it was a little tougher being in the ICU from 7a-5p everyday instead of the shifts of the peds ED so things got moved around a lot. Somehow it is infinitely more exhausting to be sitting around reading all day than running around the ED sometimes I swear. I got to do my last big workout with Anna though as our big races were the same weekend and despite (per usual) having my ass handed to me it was an awesome workout that had me excited to race.

On race day I was pretty calm, maybe too calm, but the biggest hurdle for me was less the distance at this point and more the fact that Indiana decided that we skipped spring and would go right to early summer with the morning temperature already somewhere in the upper 60s/low 70s. For reference the 6-miler and 10-miler I did in preparation were a lovely 34 and 30 degrees respectively (thanks Indiana) and I think I may have only had 3 total workouts that touched actual its warm ‘break out the sports bra’ weather. Oh well. Overall though, race day was awesome. Less a mile in there was a guy in a kilt playing the ND fight song on the bagpipes and I just took that as a sign that no matter what it was going to be a great day.

           - Clearly early in the race when I was still smiley and not dying -

I went in thinking if I can make it just a little further than the 8 mile mark where things starting getting tough in the 10 miler that I was in for a banner day, so I was a little disheartened when at mile 4 I was already feeling the ‘oh crap 6-minute pace is going to suck’ feeling. Following Anna’s wisdom however I told myself to relax rather than my natural response to get mad, push down and get frustrated and found that I was still running 6:05-6:08 and got myself mostly back into a groove that I thought maybe I could recover from. Then we hit the racetrack. Awesome sure, but it is reeaaaallly different to run around it than it is to watch an Indy car go around it at 180mph… needless to say it becomes the worlds longest feeling 2.5 miles ever no matter how cool it is to be running where the race cars drive and over the historic finishing bricks. I was hurting at mile 10 after coming out of the track. (Thanks Nick for reminding me at this point I have JUST a 5k to go. That is not what a miler likes to hear for encouragement.) There were a couple sad sacking 6:18ish miles at this point before I convinced myself push down and finish it up, I think my last mile was back down around 6:08. Unfortunately not quite fast enough as I barely missed breaking 80 minutes finishing 7th in 1:20:54. But hey Meb was the one who helped me up from the wobbly leg walk after the finish line so really how upset could you get at that point anyway?

So my big reach goal was break 75 if the best day ever happened, my real A goal was break 78 (average just under 6min pace), B goal was break 80, and my C goal was finish, don’t stop, don’t cry, avoid pooping pants. So I at least hit C. Maybe some of it was the delirium of I can’t believe I managed to keep myself going, but I honestly had so much fun despite not really hitting my goals save for finish. I had come so far (like 7+min PR if you want to get technical) from my lets jump in a half for funzies in November that had me absolutely dying just trying to run more than 10 miles for a long run again. (My previous last real 10+ mile long run before that was maybe May or June so I had no business jumping to 13 from like 7 or 8 on a whim.) Regardless, the best part is I finished and I definitely want to keep working to do another one! Kind of want to work on that 5k too just to feel like I’m really moving fast again ;)

   - See Mom, I didn’t deliriously make it up! I was with Meb at the finish line! -

Moving on to the medicine side I should back up to Match Day. Back in March I opened up a big envelope with “Rebecca Tracy has matched Emergency Medicine at SIU School of Medicine in Springfield, IL” inside and I was over the moon. My closest Classmates and I all matched within our top ranked programs: Family Medicine at Virginia, OBGYN at Good Samaritan in Cincinnati, Internal Medicine at Henry Ford in Detroit, Derm at Largo Medical Center outside Tampa and myself in EM at SIU. We’re going to be doctors! (Cue flood of intoxicated 20 and 30 something’s on downtown Indy.) My family came down for the weekend to have dinner and celebrate with me and everyone was excited that I would be moving just a little bit closer to home. And after 9 years in Indiana finally coming home to Illinois.  

Fast-forward a month and a half and its graduation weekend. I think I speak for most of my class when I say graduation was fun, you got to turn to your right and left, shake hands and very officially exchange ‘Doctor’, ‘Doctor’ with your classmates with ridiculous grins of disbelief that we finally made it, but it was mostly surreal and hit us all later at different times and for different reasons. It hit me finally not the first time I saw ‘Rebecca Tracy DO’ on something but when I was listening to a podcast about medical history any they were discussing the evolution of medical education. When discussing the current system they started all the way back with the classes you take in undergrad, taking the MCAT, preparing for Step 1, and that’s when it hit me. Oh my god I actually did all of these things! I am on the other side. I am a doctor.

And so begins the process of adjusting to the reality of being a resident physician and the transition into actually responsible for decisions that affect people’s lives and health. Not just learning how to do it and suggesting things, but actually the responsibility of doing it. So my mantra for the next little while when faced with problems or scary situations is, ‘They picked me for this program because they believe that I will be good at this, so I will take a deep breath and go because I’ve got this”. (Sorry if this is not confidence inspiring to anyone needing to visit an emergency room in July. We all have to deal with our imposter syndrome at some point; I promise we are well overseen by confident and more importantly highly competent people!)

  -Thanks Dr. Walsh for putting up with me & being my hooder at graduation-

So here I am at the beginning of June, already tired of vacation and ready to have things to do other than unpack boxes (going to be regretting these words in a month and a half I’m sure). I took a phenomenal graduation trip out to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks to start my off on my life goal of hiking in all the national parks. Watched my cousin get married to the most wonderful guy and welcome him to the family true Tracys awkward dancing to Mama Mia style. Sucked it up through some food poisoning to celebrate one of my classmate/best friend’s wedding to her also amazing husband and now working on moving myself into life in Springfield!

Just enjoying the cool down before the next exciting race begins.