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The moving adventure continues. Let's see…
We were in Dubois PA for a night (and I ran in the morning). We were in a hotel in Parsippany-Troy Hills NJ for two nights (and I ran one morning). That stop allowed us to unhitch the trailer and drive into the city to pick up the apartment key (and drop off a few things). Then we drove north to North Hampton NH (with the trailer) and stayed a night. I didn't plan to run, but there was a donut shop across the street so I put on my running shoes to go the third of a mile to get a half-dozen on the morning we left. From there we drove to Blue Hill ME where we've been since midday Friday, still in the trailer but "boondocking" (and I've run twice).
Saturday was my nephew's 17th birthday and we held a joint part for him and my mom, who turns 80 later this month. We'd initially planned a family excursion to Zion, but what with the move, we had to cancel that.
Food highlights include the charcuterie boards that my niece made for the party (she had me make the salami roses); the porky fig toast at Throwback Brewery in NH; and the lobster roll at the Bagaduce Lunch.
Other random updates: I've started taking the "Running Resiliency" course from Greg Lehman (although I haven't touched the materials since I got to Maine); I have absolutely no idea what day of the week it is most of the time — that's good and bad (I posted this past week's Second Breakfast essay a day early); I realized that I need to get a different GPS app for when we're pulling the RV here in New England as there are a helluva lot of low bridges and Ye Olde Google Maps does not help you navigate such things. And finally: according to my Garmin Watch, my HRV is very low and my body is "strained." Um, yeah.
This week is finally move-in week, but not 'til Thursday. So the strain will not be gone anytime soon.
Coming at you from Elkhart, Indiana, where it's raining, we left Poppy's dog bed out overnight, and the smell of wet dog and the sop of wet dog bed is going to really suck for the next bit of our journey. We're in the Eastern time zone now, which despite my being ride-of-die for the West coast, is truly the best time zone — you're up and getting things done before the West has even settled into REM sleep. But even though we're east-ish, we still have over a week to go before Move In Day. (Hence my anguish over that wet dog smell.)
It's been a week:
Movers came on Tuesday and packed everything. I also started training for the Staten Island Half Marathon (big hint there as to where we're moving), with the first speed workout I've done in months. Brutal. We ate at Xolo Taqueria before we left town — the taco stand across the street from our apartment and where we ate for our first Oakland meal when we moved in three-plus years ago. We also grabbed an ice cream from Miharu, which just opened on the corner. I had one with brownies and corn flakes — because breakfast is my thing now, amirite?
We stayed at a Motel 6 in Fairfield Tuesday night so that we were near the storage site for the RV. Wednesday morning, we grabbed breakfast at Wendy's — like I said, breakfast is a theme — and then hit the road.
Wednesday's destination: Battle Mountain, Nevada. I got up Thursday morning and ran.
Thursday night: a KOA campground in Rock Springs, Wyoming. We had donuts at Cowboy Donuts on Friday, a nod to the usual donut run. (They weren't anywhere near as good as Happy Donuts.) We stopped at the Little America in Cheyenne for a couple of their 75 cent ice cream cones — one for each of us, Poppy included.
Friday night we were in Ogallala, Nebraska, just in time for a tornado watch and a storm that was so violent that I figured we were going to die. Kin slept through it, and I didn't wake him because I figure one wants to die in one's sleep and how fucking rude to wake someone up just to tell them "we're going to die." We didn't die. Saturday morning, I ran.
Saturday's breakfast — we're testing out as many fast food breakfasts as we can, and it's "research," right? — was at Sonic. It took almost half an hour for our food to come. It was pretty sub-par. Do not recommend.
Saturday night, we arrived in Adel, Iowa, in time for another tornado watch. I ran on Sunday morning — my long run, which was supposed to be 75 minutes but I got lost and ran for about 20 minutes more. Hardest run I've ever done — psychologically, for sure, but also physically because who the fuck put hills in Iowa.
And here we are in Elkhart. Kin is still asleep. Poppy is back in bed too. We'll hit the road soon, I imagine, and keep heading east. We'll run out of I-80 highway tomorrow.
Everything is in shambles, quite literally, as the packers and movers arrive tomorrow, and while they've been hired to deal with everything, I don't believe that "everything" means everything — so I've packed and sorted and disassembled quite a bit. It's a mess.
So yeah, we're moving east. More details forthcoming, once things are a bit more settled and situated and — vague, I realize — resolved.
Kaia came out to visit and to deal with the things she'd left in the spare bedroom closet. While she was here, we ate Ba Mi Banh Li — the best banh mi I've ever had; Dela Curo — Japanese black curry, which I'd never had before and was delicious (pictured above is the very Instagrammable fruit sando); and Tacos Oscar — I had the charred broccoli tacos again, along with a bean and cheese tostada which damn was extraordinary; and Ming's Tasty, for dim sum. Kin ordered so much dim sum that I think all the ladies serving the food were laughing their asses off at it. I'm not sure it'll make for great roadtrip leftovers, but one of the benefits of having the RV is we don't have to eat our way through middle America.
I went on my last donut run with the Lake Merritt donut runners. I saw my PT for the last time too. She thinks I can BQ — folks, get you a PT who believes in you like Dr. Bui believes in me.
Next week, I'll be writing this from somewhere… east.
We're back in Oakland — for a week or so. Then — oh hey, big news — we're packing up and moving. But that's next week. Here are some of the highlights of this past week (written quickly because holy shit we are moving and I have so much to do):
It's almost the end of Monday, and typically I try to get all my writing done in the mornings. Once it gets to be afternoon, I find it hard to write. (The challenge here is that I find the same to be true for running: so I try to front-load my days as much as possible so I can just collapse with a book after midday. Let's call it "research.")
We hiked up Kerby Peak today — almost 8 miles, with some 2700 feet of elevation gain. I'm not hurting too badly — a double cheeseburger and an hour-and-a-half long nap helped — but Kin and Poppy are a little beat-up.
So it's just a quick week-in-review — a bulleted list of things without the energy to add the little bullets. I can't even upload photos as there's no WiFi in this campground. Pathetic.
Anyway, I'm saving the photos for my "What's Good" newsletter on Friday. Second Breakfast officially launches on Sunday, and as I haven't looked at the news at all this week, what with being on the road, subscribers'll have to make due with photos of the flowers I saw today and reviews of the breakfast items I've eaten on the road. Today was a breakfast burrito — a bit heavy in the belly for the climb in the heat.
I announced Second Breakfast to HEWN this week, and I've been overwhelmed with the response. That's nice. I feel like maybe I am a writer again.
On our way out of town, we ate at Bud's Giant Burgers in Vallejo — perhaps the best burger I've ever had in my life. (Ate a double cheeseburger then too.)
We're headed to Bolan Lake tomorrow — a hike we weren't able to do last summer because of forest fire. Not sure what our legs will be able to handle; not sure what state the area will be in.
While many Americans make big plans for Memorial Day Weekend, our travel plans start this upcoming Friday — we're heading to Oregon to again recreate some of the hikes that Kin and Isaiah did during their "Drone Recovery" summer.
We're in "waiting mode," I guess, with anticipation for this trek — and what would have been Isaiah's 30th birthday. We're also in "waiting mode" to hear back on some follow-up test results for Poppy and her bladder maybe kidneys maybe nothing maybe tumor sort of horror.
In the meantime, I have the obligatory food updates to share: we had a most delicious coffee at Delah Coffee — I had a baklava and Kin had some cheesecake. If you're in Oakland and looking for a good place to sit and work, well, good luck getting a seat at Delah's as everyone else has the same idea. I had a delicious birria taco from La Santa Torta taco truck with my lifting coach KB. Kin and I ate the omakase at Delage, and it was expensive and exquisite — the black cod katsu was the best piece of fried fish I've ever had in my life, and I have eaten a lot of fried fish. (The header image is of the amuse bouche, and that little bubble was "crystal bread" (like one little crispy air bubble from pan de cristal), topped with smoked salmon, an edible flower, wasabi cream, microgreens, and a tuile made from bamboo charcoal. Amuse bouche > hors d'oeuvres > appetizer every goddamn time.) On the homefront, I made macaroons for the first time, and they turned out quite well (perhaps a little sweet for my taste, but Kin, typically not a fan of coconut, likes them so that's a win).
In other things to feed your body: it's on a lot of folks' "recommended summer reading lists" and I heartily agree: Malcolm Harris's Palo Alto is the best book we've read so far this year. It's about the history of the town and its university and President Hoover and its tech industry libertarian racist fuckery. If you know Harris then you know it's going to be biting and funny and radical AF. Speaking of revolutions and remaking histories, we finished Season 3 of The Great — loved it.
Now, I'm off to make my To Do list for this upcoming road trip. Oh, and I guess I'm going to officially unveil Second Breakfast this week — so I have some planning to do for that too.
One of the things I'm struggling with right now is my need for control. I've found having a schedule for the day and a list of tasks I need to accomplish has helped me get through the past through years — the ways in which my life has veered out of control, what with Isaiah's death, the pandemic, and so on. Planning has become a coping mechanism, and while I realize "the best laid plans" blah blah blah, I still feel as though I have control of the uncontrollable if I'm organized enough.
And then, of course, life happens. Plans change. Everything changes.
Kin and I are very much "in flux" right now for reasons that I can't yet detail here. It's been challenging, and it'll be challenging for the next month or so. I told him this morning as we were walking around the lake that one of the ways in which I managed this as a child was to anticipate being done with things rather than having to do them. (This is also why I say the best part of being a writer is having written, not writing.) It's not that I have a dentist appointment in three days, for example, it's that I'll be done with the dentist in four.
In preparing for change, I had a psych evaluation this past week and had Poppy formally declared as an emotional support animal — it's all sorts of problematic, I recognize, but Poppy is pretty key to both my and Kin's mental and physical health. So there we go. No plans to take her on an airplane yet, and terrify all the passengers with a giant creature that looks like a Rottweiler.
I'm not currently training for any races or anything, which also has me feeling a bit weird — I've put so much effort into doing so this year, and while I suppose my body enjoys the break, my brain isn't thrilled with it. My body's not thrilled either, truth be told, but I think I'm just taking longer to recover from this past half marathon — partially because I don't have my brain kicking myself back into training mode.
We watched the new Michael J. Fox documentary, Still, the other night. (It struck me the other day that back in the 80s, I thought that Alex P. Keaton was the worst possible Republican I could imagine. Ha! How fucking naive.) We're also flying through the latest season of The Great, which I absolutely adore — except for last night's episode in which — I won't spoil it, but damnit. And we've started watching High Desert, also dark and funny.
In food news: a follow-up to last week's post, we did indeed stop at Jollibees on our way home from camping, and the fried chicken was as good as people say it is. (I mean, I can't tell you the last time I ate fast food fried chicken, so really listen to other people when it comes to this type of dining.) We ate at Lovely's, our favorite burger joint, on Saturday night, and I ordered a fish sandwich — and having just eaten the "famous fish" at Mama T's, it's a toss-up there. I made the PB-and-miso cookies from The NYT as I have miso to use up; I still have miso to use up so I'm making pseudo-Milk-Bar corn cookies today, substituting some of the butter in the King Arthur Baking recipe for miso. But that's a story for next week...
We’re in Clearlake Oaks for a few more hours. Check-out time in RV parks is typically the same as hotels: around 11 am. It’s not a terribly long drive back to Fairfield, where we store the trailer. And fingers crossed, when I update the blog next week, I’ll be able to report that I’ve eaten at Jollibee’s for the first time. IYKYK.
In our ongoing quest to try as many new places in the East Bay as possible, we had the “famous fish sandwich” from Mama T’s. It’s a little hole-in-the-wall joint, just down the street from our apartment, and we’ve walked past it a hundred times, always saying “we should try the fish sandwich.” It was certainly one of those “damn, why did we wait so long?!” sorts of things. It wasn’t the best fish sandwich I’ve ever had — that would be the one at Lovely’s — but it was certainly the second best. And the buffalo fries put the meal over the top.
We’ll see how Jollibee’s stacks up. I think, of course, of Anthony Bourdain and his trip there. I think of him quite often; I was in Boston, visiting the Harvard University Archives working on my B. F. Skinner research when I heard that he’d died.
Death. Yeah, you knew I’d get to that subject eventually.
Saturday marked three years since Isaiah’s passing. And Sunday was Mother’s Day. The timing was fucking awful. As Lukas Volger put it in his newsletter, there’s simply “unrelenting Mom content” in the lead up to and during this weekend, which is ridiculously painful. This trip to Clear Lake has helped a bit. The weather was scorching hot, and other than getting out for my morning runs, I’ve sat in the trailer — yay air conditioning — and sat and thought and sat and thought. I tried to do a bit of writing; tried to do a bit of planning; cried a little; ate my feelings; and by the looks of it, I reckon, survived the weekend.
I’m still quite sore from the half marathon, which I’m hoping doesn’t signal an injury. I’ve started swimming — I’ll drop down to three or four runs a week rather than five, and I’ll swim while the weather allows. It’ll give my joints some rest. I’m also going to focus on weightlifting this summer — “the summer of swole” my coach calls it. Let it begin…
Yesterday I ran my second-ever half marathon and performed better than I could have ever imagined: 1:50:48 was the official time, which is 4 minutes faster than the race I ran 6 weeks ago. I'm pretty tired today, no surprise, and my legs are a little sore. But I am so amazed and proud of myself — and as I am still learning to run and learning to race, I feel like I can probably push myself to go farther, faster still, which is quite exciting.
In the lead-up for the big day, I ate a lot of amazing sandwiches: the OG pastrami at Delirami, which was certainly the best pastrami sandwich I've had outside a NYC deli (and perhaps the best potato chips I've ever eaten), and the Sichuan hot chicken from OK's Deli. (I also had a bite of Kin's egg salad, which he said was the best egg salad he'd ever eaten and I'd agree — just incredible). After the race yesterday, we ate dim sum at Ming's Tasty — so good.
There are other things to report that I can't yet report — changes afoot etc etc etc. I'm trying not to be too anxious about it all, particular with a very shitty weekend up ahead. I mean, Kin and I are heading to Clearlake, which will be great. But Saturday is the three-year anniversary of Isaiah's death; and Sunday is Mother's Day. (Stellar timing, kiddo. Stellar fucking timing.) Taper week — that is, the lead-up to a big race when one dials back one's activity level — is challenging because sitting still means sitting with one's thoughts; post-race recovery is hard for the same reason. If I can just focus on how much my quads hurt, perhaps I can forget about how broken my heart is.
I always think of my friend Tim when I cite the line from Deadwood: "Everything changes; don't be afraid." And here I am again, looking ahead to what is, quite likely, a new start. Again. I won't go into much detail now; it's too soon to say what's going to happen. Or rather, I can say that, whether or not this one particular thing that I can't yet write about happens, things are indeed changing here. I'm starting a big new writing project in 6 weeks.
And this weekend, I'm running another half marathon.
That's not really new. That's actually the culmination of a plan I put in motion last year. Although this will be HM #2, it's actually the one I'd planned on doing first, the one I signed up for on the heels of running my very first 5K in March of last year. It's across the Bay Bridge, which feels Quite Symbolic.
So that means this week is a taper week, where I sit on the couch a lot and reckon with how very much my mental health is tied up in maintaining a frenetic pace of activity, of training. Although my brain says "stay busy," my body is definitely ready for the break. On Tuesday's final speed workout, I really pushed myself, and then when I went into the gym a few hours later, I had the worst workout of my life. Every lift was terrible. I failed a bench press for the first time. (It wasn't a big deal; I had the safeties set and wasn't crushed by the barbell or anything. I could wriggle my way out from under it.)
On Saturday, Kin and I ate out at Yonsei Handrolls again. The first time we were there, we were really blown away, but this time around, I was a little disappointed. Perhaps my expectations were just too high; rather, I think, the quality had dipped rather dramatically. The wagyu beef was chewy; it's not supposed to be chewy. I cannot handle chewy meat at all.
(Saturday was "Bagel Day," and I will say that Boichik Bagels continue to be chewy. And that's perfect —4 exactly how a bagel is supposed to be.)
I read Virginia Sole-Smith's book The Eating Instinct last year, and it made me think about all sorts of issues surrounding our cultural and personal expectations of eating (and, particularly as a mom, of feeding others). I finished her latest book Fat Talk last night; I'll post a book review over on Substack today or tomorrow — that's where you'll find me writing more etc etc etc. I'll just say here that it's probably The Must Read book for parents and grandparents in helping them not be utterly toxic to their kids vis-a-vis bodies and diet culture.
I can't believe it's already April. And as such, it means the Worst Time of the Year is fast approaching — three years since I last saw Isaiah; three years since he died.
I got a tattoo last week, and at first I was pleased that, for once it seems, it's not a memorial tattoo. But all tattoos seem to be memorial tattoos, and since it's a poppy I was sad to think that, with time, I'd come to see it as a memorial for the best dog ever. The tattoo runs up the length of the back of my left leg. I was inspired, in part, by a woman who also runs around Lake Merritt and who is much faster than me. She has long tattoos on the back of her legs too, and as she breezes past me, I always admire them. I like the idea of giving those behind me something to look at, a reason to mutter "well, she's badass."
That I am.
I'm back into half marathon training again — just a month until my next one, this time running across the Bay Bridge. I ran 9 miles on Saturday's long run, and this week I'll restart the speed work. My body doesn't seem to mind it, which is a relief. I was, in some ways, more nervous about the recovery from my first half marathon than the race itself, knowing that I had this second 13.1 miler to do. Aging makes recovery much more challenging, and while there are so many gadgets and products that promise to make recovery better/easier/faster, the key is really sleep. (Klaxon: new writing project!) I get up really really early in order to walk around Lake Merritt with Kin every morning, but yeah, I go to bed really really early as well.
It's an old person's schedule: eat dinner early; go to bed early. But I don't mind. Also making me feel old: the movie Tetris, available on Apple TV. Not only do I have very fond memories of playing the video game many decades ago, but the scenes that take place in the Soviet Union reminded me of my visit there in the late 1980s. I've always associated the collapse of the USSR with the youth culture and rock music — there's a scene in the film where Europe's "The Final Countdown" plays in a club, and it hits just right (despite the almost universal agreement that that is one of the worst songs ever written). I hadn't known the story of the video game and all the political machinations surrounding it. And while I'm not always a fan of Eighties nostalgia for video games — Ready Player One is bad, I'm sorry, it's bad — Tetris is actually quite delightful.
Even though I'm still in training for a(nother!) half marathon, I'm going to re-title this series, back to the ol' "week in review." And despite last week being a recovery week from that first attempt at 13.1, it was a really busy one:
I finished my Precision Nutrition certification, so I'm now nutrition coach, as well as a personal trainer. (Next certification will be my running coach, but I'm going to do that in person; I'd also like to do some of the coaching-training sessions that Barbell Medicine offers, but that'd require travel, I reckon, and I'm not in a position to do that right now.)
All of these certifications dovetail with my new writing project, which still isn't ready for its big reveal yet, but I reckon I can probably link to here as no one reads blogs anymore.
I'm not sure what idiot scheduled a dentist appointment for three days after her half marathon — spoiler alert: it was me. I almost canceled it, but thankfully I was in and out of there in less than 20 minutes, with polished teeth and no cavities to boot. I both love and hate how the dentist (and doctor) have you schedule your next exam six to twelve months in advance. You look at your calendar and chuckle, "Sure, I'm free anytime that day," and then when that day rolls around, you find the timing is, actually, terrible. So let's see what I'm up to in late September, eh?
Speaking of planning things well in advance, at the beginning of the year, I scheduled weekend getaways for Kin and I for the calendar year — or at least, I snagged one long weekend a month on his calendar so that he'd be forced to take some vacation time. This past weekend was one such getaway — back to Sonoma County to an RV spot we'd been at in November. I was a little worried that, with all the rain we've been having, that it'd be muddy and the Russian River flooded. But it was lovely. I did my first run, post-half marathon, on Friday and even managed an 8-mile long run on Saturday.
It was "pivot week" at the gym — my coach programs me in 12-week blocks, and a new one starts this week. During the "pivot week," she gives me a bunch of different exercises to do — variations on the squats and deadlifts and so on. It's nice to have a little change to the routine. But this week, it's back to it — back to increasing my running miles to prepare for the Bay Bridge Half in May and back to lifting heavy to make sure I can age injury-free.
The weather, disappointingly, seems to want to continue its programming from the first few months of the year. I should do a speed run tomorrow, but it's supposed to be ghastly, with pouring rain and high winds. I will still run in it — just not at my "threshold" pace — as who knows what the weather will be like when I do my next race. And as it's across the Bay Bridge, already a pretty windy route, I think it's best to prepare for it to be challenging. Also: I'll do anything to avoid running on the "dreadmill" — which if you clicked on that link to my new writing project, you won't be surprised to learn will be a topic of a forthcoming essay.
One year ago, I did the Couch to 5K program and ran my first race at the Oakland Running Festival. As a brand new runner in the 50+ age group, I was thrilled to run it in under half an hour.
Yesterday, I ran the ORF Half Marathon at a pace that was faster — significantly faster — than I ran that 5K. I crushed it.
As my running has improved, I've been a little daunted by the race prediction times various calculators provided me. There was simply no way, I thought, I could run 13.1 miles in 2 hours, let alone under 2 hours. These doubts continued right up until yesterday morning, as the weather was wet and windy.
I lined up with the pacer tasked with bringing everyone in at the 2 hour mark. That meant a roughly 9:09/mi pace, which I thought was doable — much faster than I've been training, but doable.
One of my biggest concerns was going out too fast — easy to do with the excitement and energy of race day and with the jostling and pushing of a large crowd at the starting line. My plan was to stay with the pacer until around mile 7 and then, if I felt good, pick it up a bit to squeak in just under the 2-hour mark. And even if things went south, I was confident I could at least finish (despite 13.1 miles being over a mile farther than I'd ever run before).
No surprise, I immediately lost the pacer in the crush of the starting gun. And with that my plan sort of went out the window: I didn't run a single mile at the 9:09/mi pace.
| Mile | Time |
|---|---|
| 1 | 8:51 |
| 2 | 8:51 |
| 3 | 8:51 |
| 4 | 8:43 |
| 5 | 8:39 |
| 6 | 8:49 |
| 7 | 8:51 |
| 8 | 8:33 |
| 9 | 8:43 |
| 10 | 8:53 |
| 11 | 8:33 |
| 12 | 8:28 |
| 13 | 8:37 |
Although my brain was worried that I was running too quickly, my legs felt otherwise. And as my body decided that it was more important that my legs had blood and oxygen than my brain, I didn't really dwell too much on my fears. I just pushed.
I ate a "gel" at mile 4, 8, and 10. Not a "gel," per se, more like baby food — Spring Energy "fuel," a word I hate being used to describe any sort of food as it suggests the body is a machine that only eats for energy and not pleasure. (That's a topic for another day, dare I say, a new writing project...) But god, it's not pleasurable at all to choke down anything while running, no matter its consistency or flavor. I also tried to master drinking while running, grabbing a paper cup of water at every hydration stop, and as my physical therapist taught me, pouring about half out, pinching the rim, taking a sip, before throwing the cup on the ground. I did attempt to hit the garbage can, I swear. 6 water stops — maybe 1 basket. Good at running, I've become; throwing with accuracy? Not so much.
I was buoyed all along the route by the crowds that came to cheer us on. I knew that Kin and Poppy would be at the corner of Telegraph and Thomas L. Berkley Way — the race went right by our apartment building, and that meant at a little over halfway, I was energized to keep up the pace. I knew that the LMJS cheer squad would be up on Broadway, around mile 8. I ran faster and harder and stronger because of their cheers. The cowbells and shouts and applause from strangers heartened me too. If you have a friend or loved one who's a long-distance runner or if you live in a town where there's a long-distance race, please cheer for them. It means everything, I swear.
At mile 10, I heard someone behind me say "it's just a 5K now," and I tried to shift gears and go faster, but I hadn't really saved too much for the final kick. Indeed, the very final kick on the race course is the steepest hill up to the finish line — just a block, but damn it fucking sucks. I thought, as I pushed up that hill, that I might burst into tears, but thankfully the jock part of my brain had shut off all emotional functioning — can't cry and breathe and spring, yo. I crossed the finish line well under my 2-hour goal, running even better than I imagined I could.
After the finish line, the runners were corralled through a water station and a medal station and a banana station and people kept shoving things into my hands — my brain still wasn't fully functioning, and it took me a minute to realize that I was accepting a bunch of snacks. I handed these off to Kin, who was there to greet me, stumbled over to the LMJS booth to thank everyone and to grab a donut — truly the most important post-run food to shove in my face.
We came home. I drank coffee. I showered. I took an ibuprofen. We walked to Chinatown — "keep walking" is the best advice after a race, I reckon, despite being somewhat counter-intuitive. We stood in line for dim sum at Ming's Tasty for about half an hour — not a bad wait for a Sunday. I wasn't dying of hunger — something about kicking back all those gels during the race, yuck — but damn, when they started plopping down steaming baskets on the table, I was ready for it.
In fact, I'm going to go reheat the leftovers now...
I don't feel too terrible today. We got up and did our 4 mile walk around the lake this morning, perhaps just a little bit slower than usual. I won't run for a few days. But then it's back onto a training schedule again, as like a goddamn fool, I've got another half marathon in six weeks time.
"The taper" is here — I'll only be running ~20 miles this week, 13.1 of which will be the half marathon on Sunday. Needless to say, I'm nervous as hell. Kin is heading out of town in a few minutes, and he'll be gone all week — lucky for him as I'm likely to be out-of-my-mind with anxious energy, partly in anticipation of the race and partly with the deliberate rest that my training program has prescribed this week.
The last long run of the training program was on Saturday, and the half marathoners and marathoners ran the entire distance — 8.2 miles — together, which was nice, as all season long I've had to say goodbye to my pace group as those running twice the distance trudged onward. The conversations on Saturday were all about our plans — for this week, for the race. I've learned a lot by running with this group, and I appreciate all the advice that more experienced runners have given me. "What's your plan," folks asked me over and over and over.
I have a plan for my fuel: eat a gel (Spring Energy fuel, to be exact) at miles 4, 8, and 10 — that one at mile 8 will have caffeine. I have a plan for my pace: I'm running a steady 9 minute-mile (I hope), which means I'm slightly slower than the 1:55 pace group and slightly faster than the 2:00 pace group. (Goal: come in under 2 hours.) It's hard to predict how quickly we'll move out of the starting gate, so I just want to keep things steady at a pace I know (or I think I know) I can handle. I have a plan for this week: I'm running on Wednesday and Friday — I wouldn't miss the donut run — but just 4 miles each day. And 4 slow miles. I'm going to lifting on Tuesday, but skipping Thursday. I don't need to carb load like marathon runners do, but honestly, who doesn't love carbs so I'll be eating lots of breads and oatmeal cookies and pasta this week. (I always make dal when Kin is out of town, and while one doesn't want to overdo the fiber before a long distance run for obvious reasons, I'll probably eat that too.) I have a plan with what I'm wearing — shorts, short-sleeve shirt, hat, race shoes — and I'm hoping that it doesn't rain.
The weather has been so crap here lately. "Atmospheric river" — supposedly there's yet another one on the way this afternoon. But as we've trained in this weather, if we have to race in this weather I'll be ok. I might not run it in under 2 hours, but then again, I have another half marathon in six weeks time — WTF was I thinking — so I have another shot.
I'm taking a week off from running after this race — I'm not sure how long it's going to take my body to recover. And I'm going to try training for the next one with a heart-rate monitor. This technological intervention is part of my new writing project, which, incidentally, had a soft launch this past week. More details to come, I promise.
But as I start up this new writing project and as I wrap up my HM training, things are probably going to shift here on my blog. It's definitely going to remain "my personal blog," and as such is going to stay loosely written and conceived. I have no interest in shaping the words here into something polished. I'd like to recover some of the freedom I felt in the earliest days of blogging — when no one really read things but a small circle of friends, those who really did care about the mundanity of life because that's what we shared (as opposed to some professional affinity or what have you).
Anyway.
I'm reading Jenny Odell's Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, and as I'm completely obsessed with the clock this week — with how fast I really can run 13.1 miles — I am going to try to unwind with some of her thoughts on how capitalism and clocks are destroying our souls. Sounds encouraging, doesn't it.
The taper has begun. Saturday's long run was only 10 miles — "only," LOL. We'll do 8 this weekend, and then the half marathon is March 19. Eek! I am nervous as hell, but after Saturday's run, I'm feeling fairly confident that I'll be able to run the distance. I'm not sure at all if I'll be able to achieve my goal of running the distance in 2 hours. I took my new "super shoes" for a test drive this week. They feel great. Weird, but great. They're light as a feather, which is nice as the legs start to feel pretty heavy after a while. And they feel good on my feet, which is key — and probably while I'm running the most painful part on my body. After the run, on the other hand, it's my ass that usually hurts. After the 12 miles last weekend, it was my knee, and that freaked me out as I've never had any knee pain before. Was it "runner's knee"? I don't know. It is funny how worried people seem to be about injuring oneself while powerlifting when, in my experience at least, it's running that absolutely fucks your body up. But I've been doing my PT exercises, foam-rolling the hell out of my quads and IT band, using the massage gun on my calves, and praying that I can stay injury-free.
The work on my post-Hack Education project(s) is proceeding nicely. I started my Precision Nutrition coaching coursework this past week, and wow, what a difference between it and the NASM Personal Training coursework I just completely. The mission of the organizations — totally different. The curriculum — totally different. (Not a surprise there, I guess: nutrition coaching versus fitness coaching.) But the pedagogy — totally different. And the ed-tech — sigh, there is no escaping it for me — totally different. I'm taking copious notes on this as part of my new writing project, and I'll write more about this at length — but it is so crucial, as more and more industries seem to be turning to online PD and online certification that we address this (dammit) because if you rely on surveillance and shaming as part of how you train people, surveillance and shaming are going to be part of how, in turn, they work and relate with others.
Speaking of relating with others, I thought I'd fire up the ol' RSS reader again, but I want to start following feeds from scratch rather than reusing an old OPML file. Because I really do not care about ed-tech, despite that last paragraph. But then I realized that I hardly know any bloggers who aren't in ed-tech.
"Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in." — Silvio Dante, channeling Michael Corleone.
I have many food-related updates: 1) we tried out a new Yemeni coffeehouse in our neighborhood: Kin had a rose latte, and me, the cardamom latte. Kin had a strawberry-syrup infused cake; me, Turkish Delight, but nothing like the wretched pink rosewater flavored cubes I've eaten before. 2) We also ate at Day Trip, a restaurant that specializes in fermentation. It was astounding, and I had to keep double-checking the menu to try to identify what ingredients were imparting the flavors, the acidity. (Lemon verbena chlorophyll. Tomato miso and gochujang.) 3) After living here almost three years now, I finally grocery shopped at Berkeley Bowl. Man, why did I wait so long?! (The pandemic, I guess.) I love a good grocery store — it was "the family business," after all. And this one is the best I've ever shopped in. 4) I bought a waffle-maker. Consider it "research" for the upcoming project (which now has a logo and a URL, and soon a newsletter.)
It's almost the end of February, and this morning, I checked the final item off my list of goals for the month: pass my personal trainer certification.
On Saturday, I ticked off another one too: run 12 miles. Saturday's run was my longest to-date, and it'll be the longest run before my first half marathon race, which is in just a few weeks. (Eek!) It wasn't too tough, but it wasn't that easy either. I still feel like my body's a little pissed off about running the distance, which arguably doesn't bode that well for racing it — plus another 1.1 miles — on March 19. My first pair of "super shoes" arrived in the mail today, and I'm hoping that these can perform some sort of technological magic and help me attain my goal of a sub-2-hour half.
My new writing project has much to do with this sort of food-and-fitness gadgetry, and the PT certification and the half marathon training are all part of that. The former was my first experience using online test proctoring software, and wow, what fuckery. I mean, I knew it was terrible from all the reporting I've done on the topic. But to sit through it myself — be admonished for having my hand over my mouth as I thought hard, having to film my room and the kitchen table over and over to prove there was nothing there to cheat off of, having to explain the writing on my forearms were tattoos, not notes to remind me which direction the blood flows through the heart or what the under-active muscles are when someone leans too far forward during a squat — was awful. I mean, I already feel like a fraud trying to move into this new field; it doesn't help that these certification procedures heighten that by pointing out the potential criminality of your body, your gestures, your physical space.
I've started to talk to more and more people about my new project, and I'm getting good feedback, which is encouraging, as I've felt fairly stuck professionally for the past year or so. This past week was really reaffirming as I saw several friends with whom I shared professional interests in ed-tech, and I guess it sounds strange but it was a relief to find that they were indeed still friends, not just professional acquaintances who disappeared as I changed fields. (Much love to Sherri, Chris, Jim, and Brian.)
Food. Food. Food. We ate out at Mela Bistro, one of Oakland's best Ethiopian restaurants. Kin and I also tried the new United Dumplings that just opened in Rockridge — it was okay, not great. I'm getting better at making dumplings, and I didn't feel like these were much better than mine. (And when I say "mine" I mean the recipe I follow from To Asia, With Love.) The only memorable thing, truth be told, were the "Mission potstickers" that had chicken, corn, and cheese. So the next time I make dumplings, I am going to steal that idea for sure.
We ate the obligatory donuts on Friday. We got Boichik Bagels yesterday. But the best food — perhaps the best sandwich I've ever eaten — was from Banh Mi Ba Le, which we've been meaning to go to for years and finally visited on our way home from Saturday's long run. Kin got two sandwiches — a pork banh mi and a mixed cold cuts one; I got the meatball and egg and holy shit I haven't stopped thinking about it since. It wasn't really meat ball; the egg was still runny; the bread was just perfect. The restaurant is just a little hole-in-the-wall — cash only, no receipts, busy as well but incredibly efficient at moving through the orders. We also got Vietnamese iced coffee, and that caffeine hit so hard and I was so amped — AMPED! — from my run until I crashed just as hard, pretty much for the rest of the weekend.
I have a long list of "recommended reads" I should share — I've been bookmarking them for the past few weeks and haven't got back in the routine of sharing them here. I think I'll use that to kickstart the new project — hint: it's like HEWN, but not. One recommendation that I will spell out now: Marc Moran's HBO show, From Bleak to Dark. It made me laugh some very, very cathartic laughter. And I just can't recommend that sort of thing enough.
Just a quick update to knock this item off my To Do list. This week, I:
Write the Week in Review: check
One of my 2023 goals was to run my first 10K. A secondary goal was to run a 10K in under an hour. I accomplished both this weekend, coming in — according to the chip time — at 51:13. (My watch said I was faster.) It was fast, but the competition among women distance runners 50 and older is fierce, and I wasn't even top five in my age bracket. I'm a little disappointed in that, and I keep running through all the things I'll do differently the next time I do a 10K. Mostly, I hope the weather is nicer, as I didn't get to wear my "fast shoes" as it was raining and they have zero traction. The race started and ended on grass, which definitely detracted from my ability to get started and to "kick" at the end. I mean, I am thrilled with how well I did. My training partners kept asking me what my strategy was for the race, and I really had no idea what to say let alone plan for, as I had no idea what racing for 6.2 miles would feel like. (Mostly: it hurts.) "Don't go out too fast," was probably the best advice Ann Marie gave me, but even if one tries to rein it in, one still spends a ton of energy jockeying around runners at the beginning, and that's something I need to remember. This was, after all, only my sixth race ever. Next up: the half marathon.
After the race, Kin and I went out for dinner at Rose Pizzeria, one of the pizza restaurants named "the best" in the East Bay. It certainly lived up to the hype, particularly the spicy caesar's salad made with Shared Cultures miso. I think it was supposed to be a sharable starter, but I wolfed the whole thing down, along with half the mushroom pizza, which just hit that rosemary-cream-sauce note perfectly. Kin and I always say we want to return to places like this and work our way through the whole menu, but there are so many great restaurants here that that would mean eating out every night. And that would interfere with my cooking — I made Eric Kim's Salisbury Steak recipe this week. Can't say I've had Salisbury Steak in anything other than a TV dinner, so when I say the recipe is great, know that that means it triggers a pleasant nostalgia less for a taste than the rare occasion Fred and I would be served something like this, often at the countertop before the babysitter arrived. Kin said he thought that the Salisbury Steak came with the chocolate dessert, so honestly that could be part of the fond feelings for the entree.
Kin and I have been watching the new Apple+ show Shrinking and enjoying it more than we anticipated. (I mean, I adore Harrison Ford, sure, but he is just so unexpectedly wonderful in this.) It's about grief, in part, and even though I'm moving into the rough part of the calendar year for me — three years since I last saw Isaiah, three years since he died, and then, in June, what would be his thirtieth birthday — I'm finding the show to be touching not triggering or insulting. Grief is unescapable, and technology can make it worse, even when one hopes (and is often told) that others' experiences, shared experiences — we are all grieving in some way, after all — can make us feel like we're less alone.
Virginia Sole-Smith wrote this week how "we've all been taught to control our own bodies in order to feel loved, to have a space in the world." And I do recognize that my fervent embrace of "fitness" and my attempts to control and train my own body are deeply deeply intertwined with my inability to control Isaiah's. I could not save my child. Perhaps I can save myself. — I mean, that's delusional, but it's real. It's part of my coping strategy for my own grief, no doubt. "Fitness," for me, then isn't about aesthetics, it's about power, or the lack thereof. Contrary to what Sole-Smith argues, it's not that "control is not love"; but rather there's a mad attempt to fill that loss of love with something something something anything.
I don't know… These are all ideas that I'm trying to stir into something much more publishable that this rambling summary of my week. Technology. History. Food. Grief. Labor. Caretaking. Performance. Data. Taylorism. Compliance. Behaviorism. We'll see what comes of it all. My goal is to launch my new writing project in June. Add that to the training schedule, eh?
This past week was pretty good and pretty awful, but let's stick to the former for the purposes of writing publicly on the Internet, eh? This past week was helpful, I'll say, in my finding some clarity and direction around "what's next" for me professionally. I mean, I've finished the personal fitness trainer coursework (haha) and I took the practice quiz and without studying at all managed to get a passing grade (hahaha). That's not the plan for "what's next," but it's related to the next writing project, which I've started working on (yay) and feel pretty good about (yay yay yay).
A new writing project means, of course, lots of new research, so I've restarted my old process of gathering links throughout the week of things both directly and contextually related to the topic. Here's what I bookmarked this week:
I had breakfast with my lifting coach this past week, which was amazing because she's amazing — coach, friend, mentor, etc. We ate breakfast burritos and tried to analyze what exactly went into this particular version — it had a green chili sauce that wasn't too cheesy and potatoes that were seasoned well and a tortilla that could withstand — yeah, I'll say it — reheating in the microwave. She also went through all the exercises that my physical therapist has given me and revamped my lifting routine to focus on single leg work after my four main lifts (squat and bench on Tuesdays and deadlift and overhead press on Thursday).
In other breakfast news, I had donuts from Happy Donuts twice this week: a strawberry fritter on Friday with the donut run crew and again on Sunday after the half-marathon training run. I ran with a faster group, which was fine physically and great socially. It's a race week, so tune in next Monday for results of my first 10K. Goal is to run it under an hour.
Holy crap, January is almost over!
With this past weekend's long run, I hit my running distance goal for the month: run a 9-mile run. The LMJS Half Marathon group ran along the Embarcadero on Saturday — from the Ferry Building to Fort Mason and back. (The Marathon group kept going, all the way across the Golden Gate Bridge and back for a total of 18 miles.) I didn't feel too terrible, until I thought about the fact that the half marathon is still 4.1 more miles farther… but I'll get there. I put in a lot of miles this week — almost 30 total — including a very hard speed workout on Tuesday that had me running about 7 miles, a substantial portion at my threshold and interval paces. (And from there, I went to the gym for squats and bench press.) I am feeling strong again post-COVID, post holiday-break, so that's good. I saw my physical therapist too, well-timed since she assured me that the "niggles" I was feeling were probably just that — indeed they went away after seeing her.
Speaking of PT, I finished my personal trainer coursework this week, and I've signed up to take my exam at the end of February. It's pretty hilarious to announce "I'm quitting ed-tech," then take a bunch of online courses, culminating in online test-proctoring. Something to write about, I guess…
And speaking of "something to write about," I am making some headway on my next writing project, which feels like a huge relief. Maybe I will actually still be able to call myself a writer in all my social media profiles.
Of course, we're all being told that ChatGPT spells doom for writing. It's such a familiar story: [Fill in the blank with the latest technology] means the end of [fill in the blank with a profession or institution] as we know it. Remember how MOOCs were going to be the end of college? Remember how self-driving cars were going to upend driving? Remember how Watson was going to remake medicine? Yeah. It's all bullshit futurology but people love these stories, particularly when trying to cultivate panic around labor and the economy. I had several people ask me this week what I thought about ChatGPT and the future of education, and I said "I don't." Or rather, I am far less concerned that robots are going to outperform students (or that students are going to use robots to cheat) than I am that plenty of powerful people seem to prefer it when students are more robotic, foregoing any sort of creative or political curiosity on an educational trajectory to become more mentally mechanistic and compliant. Anyway.
As always, I'm thinking a lot about food these days.
Thought 1: I absolutely love the Antiracist Dietician's newsletter, particularly this week's missive on white-washing and the Mediterranean Diet.
Thought 2: I made gumbo. It was delicious. A riff on Chef Prudhomme's recipe
Thought 3: We finally ate at Tacos Oscar. I had the broccoli taco, and I think it was the best taco I've ever eaten in my life.
Thought 4: I'm experimenting with fueling during my long runs, but as a texture eater I have no desire to even try a product called "Gu." So on Saturday's run, at mile 4.5, I ate a packet of Spring Energy "awesome sauce" — it was like sucking down an ounce or so of applesauce while running. I'm not sure I like eating and running, but as there were no other gerunds — no cramping or shitting — we'll stick with that.
Speaking of shitting, go read Cory Doctorow on the "enshitification" of technology. Me, I'm going to re-read it and think about how this idea applies — very broadly, perhaps, and quite specifically — to some of the technologies and practices I'm thinking about for my new writing project.
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