(Repost:) Please Stop with the Fitness Tips for the Holidays

(It is that time of year again, so reposting this seemed appropriate. Enjoy. :) )

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It looks like a smile, but it's really a scream for help. PUT THE FREE WEIGHTS DOWN, CINDY.

Seriously. You are making the rest of us so, so sad for you.

I don't know how to tell you this, but every time you start listing practical tips for staying fit & healthy during the holidays, everyone is laughing at you and definitely not taking notes.

Here is a list of real-ass "helpful holiday fitness tips" I have actually heard or read over the past week or so that have made me throw up a bit in my mouth with embarrassment for those doling them out:

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In addition to maintaining your normal exercise schedule, squeeze in an extra workout or two whenever you can. You know, in all that extra free time you have around the holidays. Bring your free weights to office meetings. Do laps around the cell phone lot as you wait for loved ones at the airport. The possibilities are endless. (I prefer wine aerobics and cookie yoga, myself.)

After a midday holiday meal, convince your friends & family to go for a fun, festive post meal jog or walk. GODDDDD please don't be this person. Please. You want to go for a fun, festive calorie-burning walk/run? By all means go for it. But please don't attempt to browbeat the rest of us who kind of just want to sit on our asses and shoot the shit with a glass of whiskey with people we only ever get to see once a year. Don't be that guy/gal.

Before you go to a party, decide ahead of time to limit yourself to three bites, three cookies, your three favorite foods, etc. and stick to it. Yes, limit yourself. To three bites, or three cookies, your three favorite foods, three foods of each color, three plates of food, three foods that remind you of each person at the party, three vats of artificially colored cookie frosting, etc. Again, the possibilities are endless. You do you.

Buy a low-fat, low-sugar eggnog and skip the alcohol to save calories per cup. Or, you could skip directly to stabbing yourself in the throat. :D

Enlist a fitness-minded friend or family member to be your holiday exercise buddy! Look. Those of us who want any kind of exercise buddy probably already have one. Those of us who don't want you to stop talking about this because you're making it weird for everyone.

Instead of baking cookies or playing board games, pass the time with an active pursuit like snowshoeing, hiking, or building snowmen or igloos. Recent studies show that holiday board games are definitely, DEFINITELY a leading cause of the Obesifying Of America^TM. Probably also terrorism. GET OUT THOSE SNOWSHOES, PEOPLE.

Instead of mulled red wine, make mulled cider. You save the calories not only from the alcohol in the wine, but also from the added sugar, since cider is naturally sweet. You know what makes cider 'naturally sweet'? FUCKING SUGAR. See also: Stabbing oneself in the throat.

Instead of dark meat slathered in gravy, choose lower-fat white meat without the skin and enjoy it with just a drizzle of gravy made with defatted pan juices, dry white wine, and low-sodium chicken broth. If you come to my holiday dinner and start talking about 'defatted pan juices,' we are so over. SO. OVER.

Bring your own healthy snacks to the holiday party. Yes, please totally be that sad person sitting in the corner eating celery sticks and homemade GMO-free hummus out of your sad little tupperware while you gaze longingly at your Three Favorite Foods. It won't be weird or awkward for ANYONE, TRUST ME.

Skip the baking; you probably eat more cookies while baking. Fuck that noise. You wanna bake? Fucking bake. YOU BAKE THE SHIT OUT OF THOSE FESTIVE HOLIDAY COOKIES AND EAT AS MANY AS YOU WANT. You baddass motherfucker, you.

Invite holiday vacation visitors to join you at the gym or a favorite exercise class. No. NO. NOOOOOO. Trust me; they do not not NOT want you to do this. HOLIDAY. VACATION. Look it up.

Do some yard work. What?

Lace up your sneakers and powerwalk between holiday errands at the mall. This is definitely not the saddest, most depressing thing related to exercise I've ever heard. Definitely, definitely not. (See also: stabbing in the throat.)

When traveling for the holidays, bring along a favorite fitness DVD and yoga mat. ARE. YOU. JOKING.

Eat and chew slowly. Take a second to savor each bite of baked brie or scoop of spiced nuts! Oh, so it's not enough that I'm packing my own fitness DVD and drinking sad teetotaler eggnog and powerwalking the mall between murdering children errands, now I have to monitor my chew-rate? IS THERE SOME KIND OF APP FOR THAT???!?!?

Turn away from temptation by facing away from the dessert spread. Don't worry, your chew-monitoring app probably also comes with DessertCompass^TM.

Choose a tall, skinny glass instead of a short, squat one; you'll drink less. Ha. Hahaha. Hahahahahaha wanna bet? (Or, maybe your chew-monitoring app also comes with CupChooser^TM.)

Sneak puréed veggies into baked goods in place of butter or oil. Bitch, I will straight-up cut you.

When baking [IF YOU MUST], try subbing half the flour with whole-wheat flour to increase the fiber, which fills you up faster & makes you feel fuller longer. You guys, sorry to be the killer of dreams, but I have spent way too much time sitting in a sports nutritionist's office and the whole wheat flour thing is 90% bullshit.

Stand up to "food pushers" -- Just say no, over and over and over again! Is this, like, the grown-up equivalent of the war on drugs? You would actually think it's that serious, based what WebMD has to say about the matter: "Despite your best laid plans, your holiday food goals can still go awry thanks to 'food pushers' – friends, family members, and co-workers who refuse to take 'no' for an answer when they're offering fattening treats. These are the people who, for whatever reason, seem to believe that their holiday celebration just isn't complete until they get you to give in to their food weaknesses.' YOU GUYS, DON'T GIVE IN TO THEIR FOOD WEAKNESSES, NOOOOOOO! J/K, you eat WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT, you baddass motherfucker.

(RealTalk: OK, sure, I agree that this is SUPER weird behavior that some people definitely engage in, but it's not limited to the holidays, and part of being a grown-ass adult is learning how to politely say 'No thank you' with a lovely smile plastered on your face when a thing is not your jam. So, like, stop making it weird, WebMD. This is not about Teh Holidayzzz or getting fat.)

Instead of trying to squeeze exercise into your schedule, take other things out. Like parties. And alcohol. And baking. And free-form chewing. Basically, anything that might bring you joy for half a second.

Skip the savory finger foods, creamy dips, and fried canapés, help yourself to a small handful of nuts, reduced-fat cheese and fresh fruit, or chilled shrimp. I have an idea, what if you helped yourself to whatever the fuck you felt like eating and didn't make a big deal out of it?

Honestly, you want my tips for staying fit & healthy during the holiday (AND I THINK YOU DO)?

• Eat like a normal person most of the time & have a tasty holiday treat or two when you goddamn feel like it.
• Do your normal exercise when you can but do not feel bad & flagellate yourself if you are sometimes too busy kissing under the mistletoe or slapping under the slappy spider or just feel like today you're more interested in wine/pie/polishing off that whiskey advent calendar.
• Stop talking about it like it's a thing. Everyone is laughing at you.

Race Report: California International Marathon 2016 (Logistical Info)

(This post is about the all the logistical stuff you might be interested in if you're thinking of running CIM. If you want to read about how my race went, check out this post.)

Location: Folsom to Sacramento, CA

Date: Early December (Dec 4, 2016 this year)

Why run it? CIM is my favorite marathon to date, but the reason I was running it this year in particular is because when I had to skip the Santa Rosa Marathon in August 2015 due to a stress fracture, I'd signed up for CIM that December, thinking I'd let my leg heal, then keep building on my summer 2015 training, & be ready for a strong marathon in Sacramento. Alas, the healing took longer than I expected, and I lost a lot more fitness than I thought I would. I probably could have run CIM that year and finished just fine, but I didn't want to just finish, I wanted to run my best marathon ever. So instead I deferred my entry to 2016. (Pure luck that that was the first year they offered deferrals!)

Field Size:

6174 Finishers. The cap is 7,500 plus the guaranteed entries (see below) and CIM always sells out, so this number of finishers seems awfully low to me. I wonder if that is partly due to the new deferral option.

Pricing & Deadlines/sellout factor:

dotting i's, crossing t's, etc.

Race report here, ICYMI.

In case you're dying to know what went on BEHIND THE SCENES of Sunday's gift of a race, I figured I might as well tie all this up with a nice neat bow. Without further ado, I present to you Week 18.

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Grand Total:

Race Report: California International Marathon 2016 (My Race)

Sooooo it turns out that if you get your act together and actually, like, train hard for stuff, pretty amazing things can happen.

WHO KNEW besides everyone?

On the plus side (at least as far as CIM was concerned), my talk in Monterey on Saturday was cancelled, which meant I was actually able to get some good sleep Friday night and get to Sacramento before dinner time. Don & I got to the expo on Saturday around 4pm, a little later than intended due to bad traffic, but still in plenty of time for me to grab my bib & shirt & hunt around for a pair of sunglasses (having left mine in Palm Springs a few weeks back).

HERE WE GO.........

Well, here we are.

As I said previously, it's been quite a ride, and no matter what happens on Sunday, I couldn't be happier with how this training cycle has gone. (I mean. I could have done without the knee drama in weeks 8 & 9. But still.) I feel like I've trained well & am prepared for a solid race, and the time will be whatever it will be.

However. I *do* have to make some decisions about pacing ahead of time, and I have to base that on *something*. (I'm not experienced enough at marathons to run them by feel.) My original thought was that as long as I was healthy and feeling reasonably good and the weather isn't doing anything ridiculous, it wasn't TOO audacious for me to go out with the 3:35 pace group (8:12/mile) and see how it feels. But, that was before I learned that apparently there is no longer a 3:35 pace group, only a 3:38 group & a 3:33 group, presumably to give people a shot at actually *getting in* to Boston should they qualify. SO NOW WHAT???

Eh, whatever. I'll probably start with the 3:38 group & then see how I feel & maybe work my way up (er, hopefully that's how it will work). My recent 10K and half marathon times back up a time somewhere in there, and my training has been simply head and shoulders stronger than the year I ran 3:36. There is definitely something kind of freeing about being able to look back on this training cycle and say, In this training cycle, I ran 35% more miles than ever before. I hit 50 miles or more in twice as many weeks. I did twice times as many runs of 16 miles or more. I did three times as many runs of 12 miles or more. I did longer and harder speed and tempo workouts than I've ever done before in my life. I did multiple workouts that scared the pants off of me.

Still, since I have never run faster than 3:36, I think it's probably smart to be a little conservative and plan to run no faster than 3:35 pace for at least the first half. If I'm feeling absolutely amazing, then maybe I can think about pushing just a tiny bit harder after that, and around 20-22 basically run as fast as I think I can manage.

But, I'm also completely prepared for 8:12 to feel just barely manageable start to finish. And also for it to feel too hard. I know I should be feeling pretty happy & comfortable for the first 13-18 miles, & if that's not what 3:35 pace brings on Sunday, I'm more than willing to back off a bit in the interest of running a negative split.

So, we'll see. At this point I've done all there is to do, training wise; all that's left is to remember to pack everything & not oversleep. D:

(BUT SERIOUSLY IF YOU HAVE ANY PACING SUGGESTIONS OR ADVICE I AM TOTALLY TAKING THEM.)

See you on the flip side of this thing!

Evolution of a Distance Runner: Systems & Process Goals

I wrote a few weeks back about how I'm not really hitching myself to a particular time goal in this race. I've done that lots of times in the past because it's a very bloggerly thing to do ("My A/B/C/D goals for xx race next week are this/that/the other thing!") and because if you're not setting goals how will you ever make any progress ("goals are dreams with deadlines" or some such). Regardless of whether I achieved the goal or not, though, something about defining things that way always felt kind of...off.

There could be a lot of reasons for that. This research, for example, that found that stating a goal publicly can actually make you less likely to achieve it, because "announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed." And if you set a goal and then don't achieve it, how do you understand that? Or this bit from Scott Adams' Secret of Success: Failure:

"If your goal is to [accomplish x], you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary. If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize that you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or to set new goals and re-enter the cycle of permanent presuccess failure."

CIM WEEK 17 of 18: Deep Breathes

Man, I do NOT understand people who talk about the "taper crazies." I love taper. I'm great at it. I don't even see why I have to run as much during taper as I do. I still had a couple of workouts this week, but outside of that, put my feet up, you say? Get lots of extra sleep, you say? Eat plenty of carbs, you say?

Done, done, and done.

'Race' Report: Berkeley Half Marathon

I signed up for this race back in September back when I was looking down the barrel of a dozen+ CIM long runs and already dying of boredom from running my same old routes over and over again. I'd run the inaugural Berkeley Half back in 2013 and been disappointed by the course (which spent about 8 miles dog-legging along freeway frontage roads), but since then it seems like they've been able to get the permits to create something more interesting & scenic where you actually get to see a bit of Berkeley. My schedule called for 17 miles with a fast finish and doing it on a race course seemed more appealing than doing it on my own with pedestrians and traffic lights to contend with, and since BHM was close to home and not stupid expensive, I figured what the heck.

Inaugural Berkeley Half 2013 with IronHubs, the Dude, & friends of Cat.

Moments later with Courtney, Cate, & Renee.

I got to Berkeley around 6:30 & easily found street parking two blocks from the start. (Our wave was starting at 8:12.) The forecast called for rain all morning, and though there were definitely plenty of ominous clouds, there was no sign yet of rain. I walked over to the staging area to find the port-a-potties, then started my 4 easy pre-race miles around 7.

Pretty sure I was the first one here.

Those first miles felt so awful. Like I almost think if I hadn't paid to run a race I would have scratched it. My feet and legs felt sore and heavy and "easy" effort was getting me like 10:30-11:00 pace. I just felt completely awful, and when my watch ticked off mile #1 I kind of wanted to cry at the thought of running 16 more.

Start

I felt *slightly* better after three more miles, then headed to the bag drop in the Berkeley High School to meet Jen & get my bib from her. We made our way to the corrals and found our wave and also Jen's friend K (who is also running CIM). We were all running pretty much the same pace and I was happy for the distraction.

Around mile 4, maybe, it started to drizzle, which was actually nice and refreshing. It was cool but not cold and not at all windy. In the second half of the race the rain picked up at bit and by mile 10 it was full-on raining. (Coming back across the University bridge from the out-and-back section at that point, we past a lot of walkers at maybe mile 6 just headed out, and as the rain intensified I thought that if I were facing the prospect of walking 6-7 more miles in this, I would have probably quit.)

I now present for your enjoyment a collection of facial expressions from the Berkeley Half:

And the pièce de résistance (courtesy of Kimra):

EXTRA CREDIT: Caption this picture.

Mile markers matched my watch exactly until mile 10, which appeared when my watch read 9.86. Every mile marker after that showed up at exactly x.86 by my watch, and I got 13 exactly at the finish, which seemed in line with what most other folks got. Given the accuracy of the later mile markers, I kind of wondered if maybe we went through a GPS dead patch in that two-mile out-and-back section & lost .14 miles somewhere. Then again I don't think the course is certified, so it could also have just legitimately been short.

Something else strange happened in that section. We started the out-and-back in the north lane, with folks running back in the south lane, but the mile 8 marker was in the south lane and the mile 10 marker on our side (facing the other way). Then suddenly out of nowhere we found ourselves running straight at people heading back in our lane! People were suddenly frantically trying to switch sides so that outbound runners (us) were now in the south lane and those returning were in the north lane. Weird, but we just went with it. After the turnaround, we ran in the north lane for a good bit, and all our mile markers were on the correct side, but then were directed by course marshals in a smart cart to cross over to the south lane. Now our mile markers were on the wrong side of the road.

Not long after that, we heard someone screaming behind us, "LOOK OUT LOOK OUT!!" It turned out to be probably the 10K leader, running, I dunno, 5:30-6:00 pace & desperately trying to weave his way through our crowd running 9:00-10:00 pace. More super fast 10K runners followed him. We tried our best to stay out of their way, but it was still a mess for the faster 10K runners. I still don't know what happened with the course during that section but it was a mess.

I was never running even remotely hard in this race but even so, by mile 10-11 I was *SO* over it and ready to be done. On the plus side, once we finished and I wasn't running anymore, I actually felt fine almost right away and was fine for the rest of the day, so I suppose that's the combination of peak cumulative fatigue along with being in pretty much peak shape endurance-wise. I felt horrible, but I felt horrible from the first step and it never got any worse than that.

You can't tell but all three of us leapt into the air at the finish. Apparently I was the only one the photographer caught. #lame

Soaked. (Also, it took me until maybe mile 7 to realize that the 'B' on the shirts was supposed to be a '13'. GET IT???? SO CLEVER.)

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~LOGISTICAL STUFF~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Location: Berkeley, CA

Date: Mid/late November (Nov 20, 2016 this year).

Field Size: 4225 in the half, 1544 in the 10K, 1472 in the 5K

Deadlines/sellout factor: This year all three races sold out. I think the 10K went first and the other distances sold out closer to race day. (Weirdly, there was a "Race Registration" tent in the staging area. I'm not sure what that was about. Maybe early registration for next year?)

Price:

It looks like the website now has only the most recent price ($110), and I don't remember what it was when I signed up or how many times it increased. Fail. It might have been like $80 in September & I think I had a discount code. If you decide to run this race, I recommend poking around the internet for Groupons, race ambassador promo codes, and other discounts.

The Expo:

The expo/bib pickup was Friday and Saturday at Berkeley Sports Basement. There is no race day bib pickup, but you can have a friend pick up for you. (Since she lives closer, Jen volunteered to pick up my bib for me. THANK YOU JEN!!!)

Staging:

Race Start was on Milvia St. at Kittredge St., & the finish was just a block or two away, on Milvia at Allston.

Bag check was in the Berkeley High School gym right by the start, and when the rain showed up it was REALLY nice to have an indoor area available after the race!

As mentioned above, there were plenty of port-a-potties. I also appreciated all the picnic table seating (though due to weather there wasn't much use for it). Often after races I find myself lamenting the lack of available seating areas that are not on the ground.

The Course:

The course was a big loop with lots of turns, a few steep-ish hills, and one nasty two-mile out-and-back section along the Bay. This year's course was MUCH nicer than the first year I ran it, meandering through various parts of Berkeley. I've been told that in the second and third years the course actually wound through parts of the UC Berkeley campus, but no such luck this year. Some of the roads were fine but a not insignificant portion of them were chewed up and riddled with potholes. (Between this and the rain, I decided to wear trail shoes.)

Aid stations were every couple of miles with water and Nuun, which makes the second time I've run this race without any useful sports drink out on the course. Nuun is electrolytes; it contains no calories. This makes it next to useless in terms of distance running. One of the aid stations had chews and a few had granola bars of some kind, so there was that. But still. I don't understand why so many races seem to be switching away from calorie-rich sports drink to low- or no-calorie drinks. It makes zero sense to me.

Like I said above, pretty much everyone I know clocked a short course, starting at the mile 10 marker. The course isn't certified, I believe, so it's hard to say whether this was a GPS issue or a legitimately short course. Also there was definitely some sort of issue in that out-and-back section that will need to be sorted out, as well as the issue of the fastest 10K runners getting stuck behind thick crowds of half-marathon mid-packers. Either something went very very wrong with the 10K or someone just didn't think the whole situation through.

Swag:

Long sleeves tech shirt & finisher medal, plus post-race snacks and free race photos.

If you decide to run:

• Poke around for discounts from race ambassadors and other sources. They've usually been out there & you can often get ~$10 off or so.
• There is plenty of street parking along University if you get there a bit early, or you can be a good person & pay $20 to park at Berkeley High School (though I think it's actually not closer). But do not repeat DO NOT pay any for-profit company $21 to reserve you a parking spot ahead of time. It's a total racket.
• If you're driving back toward SF after the race while it's still going on, just remember you can't take University or realistically anything south of that. Instead head up to Gilman & take that to I80 & the Bay Bridge.
• There are no super bad hills, but two reasonably long-ish ones that definitely take some extra work. Just know they're there & adjust your time goals accordingly.

Overall Assessment:

This race was fine, I guess, but I didn't love it. The course is okay but not particularly fast or scenic, and there is some question in my mind as to whether it might be short. (Though, I think the course has been different every year, so who knows what future years will bring.) It's not stupidly expensive, but not particularly cheap either (~$80-110, I think, maybe a little less with a discount), so the only real reason I can come up for running this particular race is that it's nearby and the date most likely means cooler weather (though you could also get a downpour as we did). Due to all the turns, the few hills, the uncertainty about the distance, and the funkiness with the course in the out-and-back section, I don't think I'd recommend this race for a PR/time trial course.

CIM WEEK 16 of 18: Opioids, speed work, & a soggy weekend.

The upside of shorter days is catching these gorgeous sunsets at the track.

Oof. Taper is here, & not a moment too soon. I'm super excited to have made it through my last big(ish) week of training injury-free, but I can tell the miles are beginning to pile up & take a toll on my body. My feet & lower legs ache constantly, & my hip/glute/hamstring muscles are reaching that point where my brain says "Let's go!!" but the muscles are like, "Sorry, Chief, that's all we've got." Cumulative fatigue: It's a thing!

Evolution of a Distance Runner: Running & Privilege

I wouldn't blame you if you cringed a little when you read that title. Privilege is a hot, touchy subject these days. Seeing as it plays an important role around a lot of the work I do re: access and equity in math education, though, it's hard for me to ever completely abandon that lens.

I actually started writing this post over a year ago for a variety of reasons and have worked on it on and off, because it's a tricky one and I want to get it as close to right as possible (though I'm kind of just accepting that it won't be perfect and please let me know if I miss or screw up something important). Unfortunately it feels a bit timely right now, so while that wasn't intended, perhaps it's fortuitous in some ways.

In a (really oversimplified) nutshell, privilege just means anything about your appearance, background, experience, etc. that makes it so that certain situations are a little easier for you to navigate than they would be otherwise. I'm white so people are less likely to assume I'm doing something criminal and more likely to assume I'm educated, so that's a certain kind of privilege. If I'm feeling lazy I can grab takeout for dinner and not really worry about how it costs like 3x as much as it would cost to buy groceries & cook, so that's another type of privilege. I grew up in an environment where people told me, "Of course you are smart and will go to college and be successful," so that is another type of privilege. I've sat in any number of classes or meetings where a dude repeated the same idea I just said and instead of ignoring it people would tell him how smart he was and what a great idea he'd come up with, so that is a kind of not-privilege.

Basically, it just means that some of us get to play the video game of life on harder or easier settings because of things we didn't choose, like race, gender identity, who our parents are, where we were born, how our bodies are made, etc. You can still win the game if your settings are harder; you just have to work a whole lot harder than someone playing on the easiest settings.

Some people really, truly don't believe privilege exists, and that if you got something good in life, it's either random good luck or because you worked hard and earned and/or deserved it, and if something turned out shitty for you, it's either because you didn't work hard enough or are just super unlucky. (This idea is called meritocracy.) And, I get it; it's really comforting to think that we all get exactly what we work for and deserve, and scary to think that there are parts of that that are completely out of our control. And if you've never been exposed to anything different, your own privilege very well may be completely invisible to you. Alas, privilege is extremely real and has been scientifically documented over and over and over.

(If you are interested in learning more about privilege in general and how it works, I really like these two posts:

• Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is
• A short comic gives the simplest, most perfect explanation of privilege I've ever seen)

Something I've thought a lot about in recent years is how different types of privilege play into what I think of as "recreational fitness," ie, spending more time and effort on athletic- or fitness-oriented than is strictly necessary for making your living and/or maintaining reasonably good health & wellness. For example, if you do endurance sports or other athletic/fitness related things and spend time on the internet, this will probably not be the first time you've seen memes like these:

Like I've said before, I understand that most of the time pithy sound bites like this are intended more to motivate than to describe philosophical positions or literal beliefs. And as long as people get that, it isn't really the end of the world. But I have read enough blog posts and talked to enough overly zealous athletes/fitness buffs to know that, for an unsettling number of people, that is not the case.

These folks comprise what I have started to think of as the fitness meritocracy. (Again meritocracy is the idea that people get what they've earned, and have earned what they've gotten.) So, I call these folks the fitness meritocracy because they seem to believe that if your body or physical fitness or abilities are not to your liking, it is mostly because of your own actions and choices and if you want things to be different, all you have to do is make different choices; and likewise, that people who are strong and fit and have nice bodies (read: bodies that fit a certain rather narrowly defined stereotype) got that way mostly from their own hard work, sacrifice, perseverance, etc.

Again, it's a nice idea. It's comforting and lets us feel in control. Like social meritocracy, however, "fitness meritocracy" just doesn't pass muster.

Do people's actions and choices play important roles in how their lives and situations turn out? Are there things we can do sometimes, in certain situations, to make changes? Undoubtedly, YES. I'm certainly not saying that our lives are pre-determined and we're all just adrift in the universe, at the complete mercy of our circumstances. We all get choices and we all have to live with the consequences.

Are people's actions and choices the sole determinants of those things? Do we have the sole power to make and re-make our lives and bodies and situations in any way we like, if we just work hard enough? Unfortunately, NO. There are a lot of things we can control, but there are also plenty of things we can't, and sometimes those things are way, way bigger than we are.

I think about this in my own running. Obviously my goal is to get stronger and faster, and there are a lot of things I can control around that:

• I can do my runs, even when I'm tired or the weather is crappy or there's something else I would rather be doing.
• I can go to bed on time so that I'm not dragging myself through workouts, even though I'd rather stay up into the wee hours reading the internet great works of literature.
• I can eat nutritious foods in reasonable portions at the right times, even though life would be so much more awesome if I just had half a pizza & three glasses of wine every night.
• I can think through my week ahead of time and plan and move things around and negotiate and whatever else I need to do to make sure I get, if not all my running in, as much of it as possible.
• I can be consistent about my strength work and massages to help me avoid injury, and see appropriate doctors/PTs/etc. if I get injured anyway.
• I can stretch and roll and do all the good recovery things, even though it sucks and I'd rather sit on the couch drinking wine & watching Netflix & playing 2048.

But, it's worth thinking about why I'm able to control these things:

• I can do my runs *at all, ever* because I am able-bodied and (by and large) free of major health problems and have the expendable income for serviceable running shoes & clothes.
• I can exercise in public without fear of body shaming or mistreatment because by and large I 'fit the mold' of what society thinks of when they think about ladies doing exercise (fairly average size & body shape, cis, etc.).
• I can do my runs in my own neighborhood because I live in a safe, clean neighborhood with serviceable sidewalks, and even if I didn't, I could drive my car to safe, clean trails or to the gym that I pay for with my expendable income.
• I am able to control the minor health issues I do have thanks to the health insurance (that I have thanks to my full-time job with benefits) that lets me see doctors and get prescription medications at affordable prices.
• I can sleep eight hours a night because I only have to work one full-time job and have no dependents to care for.
• I can choose nutritious foods because my paycheck and lack of crushing debt means I can afford to buy and eat pretty much whatever I want. Also I can afford to live not in a food desert, and have a car, and access to easy public transit, which means it is fairly easy (parking non-withstanding) to get to any number of stores that sell fresh, nutritious foods. (Hell, I can even get a fancy take-out salad at about fifty restaurants within a three block radius, because San Francisco.)
• I can get quality massages and strength coaching because 1) job 2) no dependents/crushing debt 3) free time (one job, fairly flexible, no dependents) 4) car.
• Yes, I've worked very hard to get into the schools I've attended and earn the degrees I needed to get the jobs I've had and to be successful in those jobs. But that stuff was made at the very least more probable in part thanks to growing up in a white, suburban, working/middle-class family near reasonably good schools that prioritized education and supported me however they could. Privilege often has a domino effect that way (as does lack of privilege).

Not everyone has those things, which is why fitness memes & articles that offer advice like, "All you need is a pair of running shoes!" "Running is free, just go outside!" "Just start with 30 minutes!" etc. are a bit problematic. I understand that this intended to encourage people and make getting started feel less intimidating, but often it misses some critical challenges and makes some serious assumptions about fitness privilege.

A pair of running shoes is really not all you need, and even if it were, not everyone has that. (For a while I helped "coach"--which mostly meant organize and cheerlead--a small running group at the high school where I taught. We found out through a series of conversation that one rather unlikely boy kind of wanted to join & run the 5K that the group had targeted for later in the year but never came because he felt ashamed that he didn't have running shoes and his family couldn't afford them. The faculty took up a collection & we took him to RoadRunner Sports & got him a pair. He came to every run after that and eventually ran the 5K and it kind of changed his life, at least for that year.)

Not everyone can "just go outside" (many of my students lived in an area where it was literally not safe to be outside your house beyond going to and from the car/bus/etc.) and not everyone has 30 free minutes a day or even each week (many of the adults at the community college where I taught briefly managed school on top of multiple jobs, single parenting multiple kids, and other responsibilities, like the woman who cried in my office about how she never slept enough because she was up most nights caring for her father who was dying of stomach cancer).

Not everyone can shop for, pay for, and prepare a kale-quinoa-beetroot post-run recovery salad.

Is this post meant to make you feel guilty about getting your hours of running/riding in in your lovely safe neighborhood and/or using your expendable income and/or somewhat flexible schedule to eat well and/or get to the gym/that group fitness class/run a million races a year?

Not at all! I think one of the most pervasive myths surrounding the idea of privilege is that we should all feel guilty for the privilege that we have and apologize for it and/or not use it. No one is saying that. Certainly not me, who pays a coach and has a gym membership & shops at the ridiculously overpriced local organic market half a mile from my house and spends 10 hours a week running.

However, at the bare minimum, I do think it's important for those of us with certain kinds of privilege to a) recognize that that we are privileged in those ways, and b) appreciate everything that privilege allows us to do. I think it's important for us to realize that not 100% of our success in the health/fitness/endurance sports world is due to our own efforts, and not to jump to making judgments about the decisions other people make around health/fitness/etc. and assume that they *could* do x but are just *choosing* y because they're lazy/undisciplined/lack work ethic/don't really care/whatever.

I also think that, ideally, with great privilege comes great responsibility--that we have an obligation to use at least some of our privilege to improve the lives of those with less privilege in whatever way we can, whether that means volunteering or donating or mentoring or helping out someone in need without any expectation of getting something in return. Your privilege is a wonderful thing when it is put to good use to help out those around you! (Full disclosure -- Personally, I can't claim a *stellar* track record around this, but in light of recent events, it's something I'm planning to work harder at in the near future.)

I have more to say on this topic in the future, but I felt like I needed to get my general position out there with a little explanation first. Hopefully it was useful or informative!

CIM WEEK 15 of 18: Hang in there.

Sunrise at the Berkeley Marina

Ugh. This week.

I'm not sure what I can possibly say that hasn't been said a thousand times. However, if you're having a hard time right now like so many of us are, here are some things I read in those first couple of days that didn't make me feel better, exactly, but maybe gave me a tiny bit more courage. I am the type of person that feels calmest when I have concrete things I can *do* (as opposed to wringing my hands or sharing alarmist articles of questionable origin or writing misty-eyed Facebook statuses), and some of these posts have been very helpful with that. So maybe they will be useful to someone else as well.

• Here's Why We Grieve Today, by Jay Pavlovitz
• What Now? I Have A Couple of Ideas, by Fit & Feminist
• A List of Pro-Women, Pro-Immigrant, Pro-Earth, Anti-Bigotry Organizations That Need Your Support, by Joanna Rothkopf
• How to Survive an Authoritarian Regime (In 10 easy steps!), by Jay Burns
• Okay, Fine. Here's What You Should Do Post-Election, by Ruby-Beth Buitekant
• So You Want To Wear A Safety Pin, by What A Witch
• Speak Up: Responding to Every Day Bigotry, by the Southern Poverty Law Center
• How to set boundaries with people who think boundaries and hurt are manipulative, by Captain Awkward

CIM WEEK 14 of 18: Fun mileage facts & some HR wonkiness.

With these 50 miles, I've now officially run more miles training for this marathon (594.55) than I have in the 18 weeks leading up to any previous race. Looking back at old training logs, my previous high was 566.4 (NVM 2015), and although I ran that race comfortably and not for time, it suddenly makes a lot of sense why those 26+ miles felt so easy and how I felt better afterward than any other marathon I've ever run.

It was a little surprising to me because apparently I've had a false idea in my head of how hard I'd trained for various marathons in the past. With the exception of doing more/longer long runs, I didn't think I'd been running all that much more this time around than I had before. False!

Books: 2016 Quarter 3

As you probably already know, I've been reading a classic a month for the last two years. It started as a one-year project in 2014, but I've enjoyed it enough to keep going with it & will probably continue until it starts to feel like a chore.

2016 Classics: Quarter 1

2016 Classics: Quarter 2

Here's my third set of classics of 2016:

July: Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs (1959, 289 pages). Abandoned. I made it about 10 pages before I seriously thought I was going to throw up. I might try again at some point but I just found myself going "Ew ew ew!" & really really wanted to read something different, and since this "read all teh classix!!!!" project is supposed to be fun and not drudgery, that's what I did.

August: To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf (1927, 209 pages). 3 stars. This was a really pretty, gorgeously written book in the sense that impressionist paintings can be really pretty and gorgeous and give you a sense of something indescribable, even though it looks like chaos up close. It was also one of the most painfully boring books I have ever read. The entire thing is about this one family and their friends, and they are going to go the lighthouse, or maybe they're not, and maybe people are going to get married, or maybe not, and there's a lot of angst and anxiety about it, and really about life in general. 99% of what happens takes place in people's heads, which, yes, is about as unhealthy as it sounds.

September: Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein (1961, 528 pages). 4 stars. I'm actually really glad I read this, partly for the cultural references but also for the literary gift that is the character of Jubal Harshaw. Yes yes Valentine Michael Smith was born on Mars to human parents and then orphaned and raised by Martians whatever whatever but it's the brilliant and lovely Southern doctor-slash-lawyer who becomes his sort of advocate and liaison who ends up stealing the show. It got super weird and a little incoherent toward the end, but was also kind of shockingly progressive in a lot of ways when you consider it's a white dude writing in the late 50s/early 60s.

OTHER RECENT READS:

OMG you guys. *So* many amazing reads to share with you this quarter!! Here were my favorite reads for July through September:

All the Missing Girls, by Megan Miranda. (2016, 384) 5 stars. Haven't had enough mystery/thrillers with 'Girl' in the title?? Not to worry! Having spent 10 years clawing her way out of & away from the depressing, dysfunctional Appalachian backwater where she grew up, 28 year old Nicolette Farrell is called back to her hometown to help her older brother deal with her alcoholic, senile father's deteriorating health and financial situation. The town is haunted for her by the mysterious disappearance of her best friend Corinne not long before Nic's own departure, and she's barely arrived before her younger neighbor--whom her high school ex is now dating--also mysteriously disappears. The twist with this book is that most of the story is told in reverse one day at a time, from day 15 back to day 1 when Nic first arrives. You get the beginning frame (the message from her brother to come home, some basic set up about her life, the trip back to her home town), then flash forward to two weeks later, where the story starts going backwards. After day 1, it flashes forward again to wrap things up. I was skeptical at first, but I have to say that once you get your mind around it, the author pulled off the backwards storytelling brilliantly. As soon as I finished it, I flipped back to the beginning for a second read which was AMAZING.

Girl Through Glass, by Sari Wilson. (2016, 289 pages) 5 stars. Yes, ANOTHER "Girl" book! At least this one involves an actual girl (as opposed to grown women who for some reason keep getting referred to as girls). The story flashes back and forth between the story of young Mira, an incredibly driven 11-year-old ballet student in late-70s New York with a messed up family and dreams of becoming a professional ballerina, and present-day Kate, a forty-something ballerina-turned-dance history professor trying to sort out her own life and disturbing past. It's not a light read, and some parts were truly disturbing. On the other hand, it's really, really, really brilliantly written, and gripping in a way that I don't usually find these types of stories. My dance/ballet training/experience was quite limited, and the author did an amazing job of making that aspect of it feel incredibly real (and, at times, profoundly upsetting); I'd be curious to hear what someone thought of that part who had actually done ballet at such an intense level as a child/young teen.

American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis. (1991, 399 pages) 5 stars. This book is absolutely unlike *anything* else I have ever read in my life, which is saying something. It is also absolutely, 100% the most upsetting, disturbing, nausea-inducing book I have ever read, by an incredible margin. That said, it is not for everyone, or even most people. Imagine the most grisly, graphic, horrifying, over-the-top depictions of sexual violence, up to and including dismemberment and murder. Got it? Throwing up in your mouth a little? Well, the scenes in this book are almost guaranteed to be worse than whatever it is you've just managed to dream up. So why five stars? Because Bret Easton Ellis is brilliant. The book has a clear mission, a clear point, and (yes, partly through the soul-destroying, horrifically graphic scenes), it achieves that mission masterfully. I am absolutely glad I read it, just for its sheer brilliance and singularity, but I can't imagine I will ever put myself through it again and I would not blame anyone for quitting part way through or skipping it altogether. Definitely, definitely not for the faint of heart (or stomach).

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, by Walton Leslye. (2014 320 pages) 5 stars. Ava Lavender, born into a family with a long history of making foolish romantic decisions, is born with the wings of a bird. Her father never knew she existed and her mother, terrified for her daughter's safety, keeps Ava at home with her, neither of the two ever leaving the house. The book tells the story of Ava's family, flashing back and forth between generations (Ava's, her mother's, and her grandmother's), with a particular focus on Ava's own bizarre life in their little 1950s/60s town. This book is industrial-grade magical realism, and the writing itself is absolute poetry. Think of it as One Hundred Years of Solitude meets The Night Circus.

Bird Box, by Josh Malerman. (2014, 262 pages) 5 stars. Something is causing people all over the world to fly into a gruesome homicidal, then suicidal rage. The prevailing belief is that the violent madness is caused by seeing something, perhaps catching even just a glimpse, of some kind of creature. Those who have not yet been driven mad have locked themselves in their houses, covering windows with boards or blankets and wearing blindfolds any time they must leave the safety of their houses or let others inside. Just as the global catastrophe was beginning, Mallory found herself alone and pregnant. Four years later, she lives in terror, alone in a house in Detroit with her two children. She knows that there is safety out there, but it will require a day of negotiating a boat down the nearby river, with the children, all of them blindfolded, with nothing but their ears to rely on. The story flashes back and forth between the trip down the river and the events four years before leading up to the children's birth. This book 100% wins at the psychological, high-tension & -suspense game of being absolutely terrifying without ever "showing" anything. It was so brilliantly and cleverly written and so excellently paced that I could not put it down.

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel. (2014, 336 pages) 5 stars. In the not-too-distant future, a super bug has wiped out ~99% of the population, & technology has been set back about a hundred years. Small populations of people live in isolated communities, and somewhere in the midwest, a tiny orchestra-cum-theater company spends the year traveling around to entertain them. The book flashes back and forth between the sometimes sinister, sometimes quaint apocolyptic present and the past events that led up to it, focusing on a particular cast of characters whose various connections are slowly revealed. Beautifully & fantastically written. The Night Circus (yes again) meets Twelve Monkeys meets pretty much anything by David Mitchell.

My Best Friend's Exorcism, by Grady Hendrix. (2016, 336 pages) 5 stars. I loved this book, but I have this very strong suspicion that it's the kind of book you either absolutely, 100% love or think is utterly stupid. In the fall of 1989, juniors Abby, Gretchen, Margaret, & Glee are best friends, until Gretchen goes missing in the woods one night and things get very, very weird very, very quickly. Little by little, Abby is forced to include that, obviously, Gretchen is possessed by a demon. She'll do anything to save her oldest, dearest friend, up to & including recruiting a Jesus freak power lifter and taking the devil on herself with nothing but the power of E.T., roller skates, The Go-Gos, and Phil Collins. Dark, disturbing, and completely hilarious, this book is more than anything else a love letter to the 80s & the secret lives of teen BFFs.

You Will Know Me, by Megan Abbott (2016, 352 pages). 5 stars. Megan Abbott is my current literary obsession. Her style will not be for everyone, but I am plowing through her body of work and find most of it un-put-down-able. This book is about 15-year-old gymnast Devon Cox and the hurricane of family, friends, dreams, relationships, and intrigue that blows up around her as she pursues her dream of becoming an Olympic gymnast. Weeks before her elite qualifying meet, the boyfriend of one of her coaches is killed in a car accident and Devon's entire world devolves into chaos. The interesting part is that the story is told not from Devon's perspective, but that of her mother. Opinions will probably vary as to whether this is really YA or not; it is definitely very dark and disturbing in places, and while Abbott does a great job writing the teens, so much of the story is bound up in adult relationships (and adult perceptions of teen relationships, and vice versa) that it might be one of those books you can't really, truly grock until you're well through young adulthood & out the other side.

Dare Me, by Megan Abbott (2012, 290 pages). 5 stars. Okay, here is the thing about Megan Abbott. You either just kind of "get" what she's trying to do end up transfixed by how brilliantly she does it, or you don't, in which case you'll probably find the premise of most of what she writes to be ridiculous and/or melodramatic and/or boring. (And I suspect a lot of which camp one falls into has to do with your gender, and what your high school crowd was like, and how much time you've spent around teen girls as an adult.) Because I can describe the premise, but it really just will not in any way do justice to the writing. If Gossip Girl were actually realistic, and really brilliantly written and plotted, with characters so achingly authentic and rich they practically jump off the page, maybe you'd have something like a Megan Abbott book. In a world that pretty much belittles & mocks practically everything that your average teen girl is into, her voice is incredibly refreshing.

Run, by Ann Patchett (2016, 304 pages). 4 stars. This book chronicles 24 hours in the lives of the Doyle family and Doyle-adjacent (former Boston mayor Bernard Doyle, his two adopted college-age Black sons Tip & Teddy, an unknown Black woman who saves Tip from being hit by a car, and her young daughter Kenya). Doyle really wants his sons to go into politics. They're interested in other things. The woman who saved Tip may or may not be the boys' birth mother. All Kenya wants to do is run. I think a lot of people would probably give this one five stars. It's more of a character study than a story, which isn't my cup of tea, really, but it was incredibly well-written with great characters and and very moving, so four stars for that.

Dark Matter, Blake Crouch (2016, 342 pages). 4 stars. An entertaining sci fi thriller built on ideas like Schrodinger's cat, quantum superposition, & the multiverse. If you have, like, actual knowledge about those topics, you might fnd yourself asking some tough questions, but the story itself doesn't require too much of the casual pop-science fan. Jason Dessen is a relatively happy, middling-successful physics professor married to a middling-successful artist with a 15-year-old son; then one night he is abducted by a mysterious stranger, injected with something, and wakes up in some kind of high-tech hangar to find that 1) he is a wildly successful physicist who has accomplished an absurd breakthrough, 2) he's apparently been missing for 14 months, and 3) almost all the rest of the details of his life are different. The rest of the book is Jason trying to learn how to wield his incredible breakthrough invention and get back to his old life. I have to admit that with maybe 15% of the book left, I still had no idea how he was going to wrap it all up.

Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella (1982, 272 pages). 4 stars. I've wanted to read this book for years but could never find it, so I was pretty excited to finally find a Kindle copy for cheap. It's the book that the film Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner was based on, which I have always loved, so I was curious to read the original. Firstly, it's just really gorgeously, poetically written. Particularly for those of us who grew up in the 20th century in a flyover state, particularly listening to baseball on AM radio, the language and anecdotes bring a tear to the eye. Secondly, I was surprised to see that the movie tracked so closely with the book. They compressed the timeline a bit & replaced JD Salinger with the fictional Terrance Mann, but it was a remarkably faithful interpretation. The only thing I didn't love was the way it kind of romanticized/whitewashed the "good ol' days," back when life was good/simple/wholesome/relaxed/etc. etc. Still, a beautiful, heartwarming love letter to baseball, family, & dreams.

The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad #2), by Tana French. (2008, 466 pages) 4 stars. I have shunned Tana French for years because I read In the Woods like nine years ago and hated it. Though, perhaps I should go back and read it again (still have my copy, actually) because I picked up The Likeness based on recs from friends and it was excellent. In a nutshell: Dublin detective Cassie Maddox was so messed up by the murder case at the heart of In The Woods that she transferred from the murder squad to domestic violence where people die at least less often. Then one morning her boyfriend/murder squad cop calls her to a murder scene in a hysterical panic. She arrives to find 1) her old boss from when she used to work undercover and 2) a murdered woman who is a dead ringer for Cassie and using an identity that Cassie and Frank made up years ago for Cassie to use while working undercover as a college student. They have no clues whatsoever and the girl has no known family, so instead of announcing her death to her four housemates (suspects all, naturally), they announce that she was stabbed and "in a coma," then send Cassie back to the house to play the part of the dead girl while feigning coma-related memory loss and doing investigate-y undercover stuff. Yes, it is a little melodramatic and yes, you have to accept the premise, but it's a really well-written, entertaining story and an excellent character study. Plus, having been in Dublin recently, it was fun to actually understand all the slang and know a lot of the locations in the book.

* * *

Currently Reading:
Salvage, by Keren David

Currently Listening To:
Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn

Up Next:

• The Blood Mirror, by Brent Weeks
• Mort(e), by Robert Repino
• The Last Days of Jack Sparks, by Jason Arnopp
• Fractured, by Catherine McKenzie
• Broken Monsters, by Lauren Beukes
• Use of Weapons, by Iain M. Banks
• Dear Mr. M, by Herman Koch
• Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
• The Doors of Stone, by Patrick Rothfuss (though...the odds are looking slim we'll see it this year)

And who knows, whatever else tickles my fancy. (Taking future suggestions as always!)

CIM WEEK 13 of 18: One More Block......

My training thoughts this week:

• Holy matzah balls how are we at week 13??
• How the heck are we only at week 13, can this race just get here already??
• I do NOT feel like I ran a race last weekend, what is this 32 mile "recovery week" nonsense?
• God I am so tired. All the time. There is not enough sleep in all of creation.

Also, in October I apparently ran over 200 miles in a calendar month for the first time in years. I've done it a few times in 30 consecutive days since I started training again in June, but this is the first time it's actually happened within a calendar month. So, that's kind of cool.

Race Report: Folsom Blues Breakout Half Marathon (2016)

I swear I blinked and this race/entire race experience was over. How the heck did that happen?? I can't even give you like a mile-by-mile account because it was over so fast and I barely remember the details.

As I said in previous posts, I like to run a half all-out 5-6 weeks before a marathon to get a sense of my fitness. So I wanted a race with a nice solid course (not necessarily flat but nothing crazy), high probability of good weather, well-organized, not too big or too small, and reasonably close to home. (At 2-2.5 hours depending on traffic, Folsom is probably right on the edge in terms of what I'm willing to drive to for a non-goal race.) Not breaking the bank ranked pretty high as well.

I'd heard a lot of good things about Lake Natoma Four Bridges Half, but lo & behold, when I looked into it, that event had been taken over and re-routed by Sacramento Running Association and rebranded with a Johnny Cash theme as the "Folsom Blues Breakout" Half & 5K. SRA is the group that runs CIM and a few other well known, well respected races in the Sacramento Area, and they have a reputation for doing solid events "for runners, by runners," so my interest was piqued right away by that. The date was a good fit in terms of building up to CIM, and after investigating the course (gently rolling but net downhill, paved & closed course, reasonably shaded) and seeing that I could get the early bird price of $45 if I registered before March (!), I was sold.

Bib lady ready to go (except for the bib)! If you run this race,
I highly recommend staying at the Lake Natoma Inn maybe 50 yards from the finish.

CIM WEEK 12 of 18: Race week cutback, blah dee blah dee blah...

The big story of week 12 was Folsom Blues Breakout Half, my last tune-up race before CIM, which also meant a much-needed mileage cut-back.

When I was scheduling things way back in March this race & my sister's wedding weekend seemed AGES apart (a whole week!!), but reality was very different. I kind of hit the ground running once we got back & felt like I never really got a chance to catch my breath, & several late nights and early morning work calls meant I didn't get as much as sleep as I probably needed.

By Wednesday I was actively starting to feel sick which was not not NOT how I had planned for this race weekend to go! I don't know what I would have done if this was supposed to be another 50+ week.