CAS - Connor Kissack

      During this week, I was able to continue my runs and continue my goals with completing my half marathon. I had an excellent time running outside. Throughout my week of running, I did not change much of the course I run through, but instead I added more to it to pursue my goal of completing this half marathon. I decided to increase the amount of miles I ran throughout the week until I was comfortable with running 10 kilometers because that's what my goal was for the next week. Usually I run solo, but during this week I was joined with one of my friends and we ran together on one of my runs. I kept a good pace, we talked and caught up with each other, and I had an exciting adventure with my friend. I plan on continuing my long runs next week and hope to be joined by some friends again. 

    Once again, this week I have continued with the next week of training for my half  marathon. However, I mainly focused on the running since I learned from last week that I need to run for longer to boost my endurance. I decided to do four miles for somewhat every day for the entire week and stick to the diet. To give clearance on the diet, what I usually do is skip one to two meals for the day, lay off the carbs, only drink water, and get a lot of protein. During the summer, I calculated how many calories I should be eating a day, and what would be good for me to lose weight, and keep track of the calories listed in a meal. The list includes: 2,382 calories per day to maintain weight, 2,132 calories per day to mildly lose weight, 1,882 to have a normal amount of weight loss, 1,382 per day for extreme weight loss. The runs were difficult with the weather being so hot, and I had to stop by my house to grab some water every so often, but the sights were great. I eve...

     Throughout this week, I have continued on with the training list on my spreadsheet for the half marathon I am going to run. I have maintained a great shape throughout the years I have been running, so I tend to push myself a little farther than what the training requires me to do. The first requirement of the spreadsheet tells me to take it light with, I believe, one mile everyday, requiring me to do body workouts, and maintaining a diet. I decided to push myself with 3 to 4 miles every other day since I do not always have the time to do these runs. However, I am able to workout at home everyday and maintain the diet. At the beginning of my run, I used a Running Tracker App for my iPhone to check my speed and pace. During this run, I tried my hardest and pushed myself to the maximum. It was gruesome as I was gasping for air while "sprinting" this mile. When finishing, I saw that my time was roughly six minutes exact. I was proud of myself as I learned that my time ha...

     During the summer of my junior year at Post Oak I had the opportunity to volunteer with an organization called The COVID NineTEEN Project. The organization provides free teen-led activities and one-on-one tutoring to elementary school children. The project started as a small group of teenagers providing tutoring and grew to be advertised by Sirius XM, ABC, and other news networks. It grew to help hundreds of children throughout the United States.      The goal of the COVID NineTEEN project is to relieve parents from stress during the pandemic and keep children exciting and motivated about learning. Tutoring included a focus on science, Spanish, math and many other fun games including bingo, LEGOs and so much more. During my time at the organization, I got matched up with two other counselors and played bingo with a lot of different kids. It was a pleasurable experience to be able to give back. I had the opportunity to meet a variety of children from d...

     Throughout my life, I have always been an aficionado about running. It's been one of my favorite hobbies and my  favorite activity to do when I'm free. Recently, because of the pandemic as well as consistently having injuries every year, such as breaking my left ankle (twice), getting concussions, breaking my toes (three times), etc. it has halted my and reduced my strength and endurance and hindered my ability to run. Thus, I will need to continuously train harder and work out more to attain my goal. In addition, I will also cycle and bike more as a supplement to my training. I would like to increase my endurance and lose some weight to be able to not only run at a faster rate, but also run for a greater amount of time. Just recently, I began to run again and although I am certainly still lean and able to run for   5 kilometers, I certainly would like to carry through more training so that it becomes more easy and less strenuous. I am excited to carry...

       I have been doing choir at my church for almost 6 years now. During this week, we had a "zoom retreat". We normally have this retreat in person in a location I'm not too familiar with. However, I do know it's in Texas. Anyways, we had a zoom retreat this year because of circumstances with COVID-19. They originally thought they were going to cancel it this year, but they have done the retreat more than 50 years in a row, if I remember correctly. Before the retreat, we were given a bag that had a lot of things inside that we would use for the zoom retreat. We had items like glow-sticks, our music that we would rehearse with, some popcorn, etc. When we started the retreat they went over certain rules that were a part of the rehearsal. We were told that since zoom is glitchy, we were required to mute ourselves and sing at home when we were rehearsing. Also, we all had a breakout room that we were required to be with for a certain time each day for the three day br...

       I have always had a passion for running. I’ve run my entire life, even through the pandemic. Running during the pandemic is important to me because it’s a fun activity and it keeps my mind healthy and my body in great shape. I have always had a dream to run a half-marathon. There are many reasons why I want to run a half marathon and my mom is one of them. My mom has been a role model for me because she’s run innumerable marathons during her life. She has also benefited mentally from it as well which is also another goal of mine. My mom has a Houston Fit Marathon Training guideline that explains what I need to do in order to reach my goal. It will take more than a six months to complete. However, it might take me less time to train for this goal because I’m already in good shape. The spreadsheet consists of running three times a week with a long run on Saturdays. It steadily increasing the amount I am going to run from 3 miles to 12 miles. The schedule also ...

 This initial experience was one that I will not forgot. It was incredible to observe how thousands of parents will overcome hindrances to provide their children the opportunity to learn. In this era, COVID-19 has disrupted children's lives, their learning experience, their enjoyment. The pandemic has also caused a lot of stress on parents, grandparents, etc. due to the consistent worries of contracting the virus. Our intent in this project was to return opportunities back to the children as they are the future of our generation, our successors, and we need to provide the opportunities to further revolutionize this world. I was a part of this project throughout the entirety of the summer and enjoyed seeing a variety of kid's smiling faces as we would conduct and carry out science, math, and languages lessons as well as games like bingo. And, interestingly we conducted the project 'free of charge' as we recognized the strenuous tasks parents face throughout this time. Ov...