July 2023 Reads!

Alright, we're more than halfway there! Enjoy these July reads!

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads
February 2023 Reads
March 2023 Reads
April 2023 Reads
May 2023 Reads
June 2023 Reads
Reads from previous years

(51) ℹ️ 🏫 Collective Efficacy: How Educators' Beliefs Impact Student Learning by Jenni Donohoo (152 pages, 2017). Paper book. Work read! A good one!

(52) 🔎🔪🧨 The Survivors by Jane Harper (384 pages, 2020). Audiobook. Returning to his tiny Australian seaside town with his new wife and baby after some time away, Kieran finds there are still people who blame him for two accidental deaths that occurred during a giant storm in his teen years. The plot thickens when a young woman living in town turns up dead and Kieran’s father–suffering from quickly-progressing dementia–can’t account for his whereabouts that night. As police investigate, connections begin to surface between events in Kieran’s past and present.

Thanksgiving Week! (Kaiser Half Week 3 of 13)

This past week was a strange one. It probably all started when I was in Southern California for work last week and basically didn't sleep the night of the 15th, predictably sending my recovery score into the toilet. I recovered a bit over the next couple of days, but after a tempo interval workout Friday followed by a friend's birthday bash, it was back in freefall. I really tried taking it pretty easy those couple of days and was rewarded by a nice solid green spike on Monday just in time for a speed workout! But after that it was right back into the toilet. 🤣😭 

I didn't even look at the score before the Turkey Trot (because why), but later was happy to see that things are slowly once again trending in the right direction!

Anyone else determined to be an absolute sloth the day after Thanksgiving? 😅

 ~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 3 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 37 miles

🐌 Easy: 31.4 miles
🐎 Speed: 2.5 miles
🏅 Race: 3.1 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 85% vs. 15%

Race Report: Silicon Valley Turkey Trot 5K

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

Not that I've signed up for anything even *remotely* high stakes in quite a while, but honestly, this race is about THE lowest-stakes thing I've signed up for in recent memory. I am almost always traveling for Thanksgiving, and since we're staying home this year, I wanted to take the opportunity to run a local Turkey Trot just for funsies. 

A few weeks back I polled my team just to see if others were thinking about doing one and if there seemed to be critical mass somewhere (we have a number of local options here). A lot of ladies were planning on doing the Silicon Valley race in Mountain View (which offers both a 5K & 10K), so I figured it would be fun to join the group. I really, truly had no goals or ambitions whatsoever other than to run just fast enough to have fun.

And then what happened?

Generally I've felt really good running lately, but in the week leading up to the Turkey Trot, I started to struggle a bit, with my recovery score gradually sliding down through the yellow and into the red, in spite of really trying to focus on rest. In retrospect I think this was mostly about work stress and Thanksgiving prep stress, which I've learned can have a *huge* effect on how well your body recovers. On Wednesday I was feeling pretty exhausted so I decided to skip my usual shakeout run altogether in favor a bit more rest. To be honest, that choice was at least as much mental as it was physical -- a super easy 3 mile jog with a few strides thrown in shouldn't feel like much of a strain, but what was kind of a strain was planning out my day and fitting that in at a reasonable hour plus the whole rigamarole of getting dressed and cleaning up after. Mentally, I just did not want to deal with it, and it was such a (weirdly) huge weight off my shoulders after I emailed my coach to tell her. Like I said, this race had never been a high stakes thing for me but the closer it got, the more my motivation and ability to care about the outcome dropped. 😅 I was glad I'd already signed up and paid for it because otherwise I totally might have just flaked!

Getting It Done in SoCal (Kaiser Half Week 2 of 13)

Just toodling along last week. One harder workout but otherwise this was a pretty chill training week with lots of easy miles, a work trip, and a bit of race spectating thrown in for good measure.

 ~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 2 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 32.5 miles

🐌 Easy: 29 easy
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 3.5 miles
⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 89% vs. 11%

Tempting Fate... (Kaiser Half Week 1 of 13)

God I'm terrified to start posting training logs again. It seems there is no better way to attract the universe's attention (in a bad way). 😅

Anyway, now that I have a half marathon mark on the board, it's time to count down to the next one--that old Golden Gate Park classic, Kaiser Permanente (which is actually officially called The San Francisco Half Marathon but that gets easily confused with the San Francisco Marathon First and Second Half Marathons, so pretty much everyone I know just calls it Kaiser Half after the headline sponsor). It's reasonably priced, super close to home, has a reliable and good-enough course, and we always have a good contingent from the team running. (Also one of my teammates is one of the race directors so it's nice to support her.)

I'll have 13 weeks to prepare myself, though a big chunk of those weeks will involve work and holiday travel, which tends to disrupt organized for-real training. Still planning to do whatever I can do, though, with a very loose goal of dipping under 1:50 in the worst case and under 1:45 in the best case.

 ~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 1 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~

Grand Total:  37.5 miles

🐌 Easy:  21.8 easy
🐎 Speed:  2.5 miles
🏅 Race: 13.2 miles

June 2023 Reads!

Another pretty light month on the book front! Must have been another podcast heavy one.

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
March 2023 Reads
April 2023 Reads
May 2023 Reads
Reads from previous years

(44) 🛹🪐 The Memory Index by Julian Ray Vaca (384 pages, 2022). Audiobook. In an alternative 1987, a global disease begins destroying human memory. While there's no cure, the lucky ones can create "artificial recall" via a daily treatment. Others, like Freya--the "degens"--need the treatment several times a day. Desperate to make sense of her father's mysterious and violent death, she makes a poor decision that gets her invited to a special school trialing a new technology that claims to make artificial recall obsolete. But questions abound--why is Freya the only degen in the trial? Why are students starting to vanish? And what is the school dean doing in a bunker in the woods behind the school? This book was weird and dark and kind of overly dramatic. There's a sequel but I keep feeling...not really that compelled to read it.

Race Report: Clarksburg Country Run Half Marathon

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

Mentally, I'd been planning on running this race for a while. It's nice and flat and usually has good weather (Also it's a PA race, so I'll get reimbursed for it.) And it was one of the first half marathons I ran when I started racing again in the Bay Area, so there's also some nostalgia there. 🥰 (Related, let me point out that in 2011 I ran this race for $45. This year it was $70. Gotta love inflation. 🤣)

Back when my knee was all messed up, I didn't know if it would happen, but once I got through the 12K in September with no issues, I felt pretty confident I could at least get into *plausible* half marathon shape (by which I mean, able to finish the distance at faster than a jog). At no point was I ever audacious enough to think it would be even remotely fast. But as I've been ever so gradually working my way back into shape, I've been trying to cultivate an attitude of not getting too precious about race times, and taking the opportunity to race less to see how fast I can run and more to practice running by feel and effort (though of course seeing how fast you can run x distance at y point in time is useful information as well).

When I was more consistently at a certain level of fitness, I raced all the time by trying to hit a certain goal pace, mile after mile, even if it felt too hard, and often, that worked. But when your fitness is kind of all over the place (except for high 😆), that approach just really does not work at all. So as I've been coming back from this knee injury, I have really let myself throw pace entirely out the window and just run by feel. (Like. Darling, you have run something like thirty half marathons in your life, *surely* you know what the right effort level feels like, regardless of your fitness? If not by now then when??) 

And then what happened?

May 2023 Reads!

May was a light reading/listening month. I think I was super into some podcasts and so spent more of the time I'd usually be listening to audiobooks doing that instead. On the other hand, not a single miss among them this month! Highly recommend all of these!

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
March 2023 Reads
April 2023 Reads
Reads from previous years

April 2023 Reads!

One of the things that I find myself missing about blogging is not just writing about running, but also just kind of documenting other stuff that I'm doing. One of those things is what I'm reading.

Of course being that it's now November, I'm super behind on this! But I had a couple of drafts in the hopper before things got crazy last April/May that I figured I'd go ahead and share.

Enjoy, and as always please feel free to share anything you've read lately that you're particularly excited about.

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
March 2023 Reads
Reads from previous years

NOT DEAD YET (Part 3)

Welcome back, friends. If you missed Part 1 & Part 2 of this little update, you might want to take a skim before continuing on. :)

Last we left off, I was dealing with a wild-out-of-left-field knee injury that took me out of running for five weeks, and had started dealing with it via as much elliptical, spin bike, & swimming as I could psychologically stand. (Which was still only a moderate amount, don't @ me.)

SEPTEMBER
Little by little, my knee did start to heal. I was able to run half a mile, then a whole one, then four in a row. I felt like I was walking such a fine line, trying to balance rest days and cross training with ever-so-gradually inching up the mileage to see if I could even get close to 7.5 and have a hope of finishing 12K. On Monday September 11, I ran seven miles; it gave me just the TEENSIEST little twinge in my knee and so I immediately pulled back, & did only cross training until we got to new Jersey that Friday.

Friends, I ran the race! And you know what? While it wasn't fast (of course I knew it couldn't possibly have been fast), I am still actually really proud of the way I ran it, in that I ran totally by feel, without looking at pace. And given how I felt at the end (ie LIKE DEATH), I feel like I actually nailed the effort releative to my current fitness.

Thankfully we had three other masters women running who (again) ran much, MUCH faster than me and brought home another 3rd place National Champs medal for the team. I ran 8.5 miles total for the day (7.5 race + 1 mile warm up) & had not a single peep from my knee at any point. Friends, I will take that!

NOT DEAD YET (Part 2)

Heyyyyy you came back! Always a good sign.

If you missed Part 1 of this little update, you can find it here.

Onward, shall we?

JUNE, CONT'D
When we left off, I had just run one of my slowest 5Ks ever despite not terrible training. The next race on my docket was Tracksmith Twilight 5000m on the track at Kezar Stadium on July 19th. We had a vacation scheduled for early July, so I thought, "Maybe Stow Lake was just a bad day, let me get a bit of rest and some solid speed workouts in, and then I'll run one more 5K before we leave & see where I'm at." I picked the Stars & Strides 5K in San Jose since it was July 1st & we were leaving the next day. 

Not much else of note happened in June, BUT I did make this delicious cherry clafoutis!

NOT DEAD YET (Part 1)

Hi hi friends! Honestly I do not know who even reads this anymore, but since the worst thing that happens is that this missive sits unread out in the ether, what is there to lose really?

Anyway, if you are here and reading, welcome! You are great and I love you.

I'm finding that I sometimes go through the following cycle:

(1) Blog semi-consistently for a while 

(2) Get super-duper-hella busy & overwhelmed with life & work 

(3) Realize that in some ways blogging gives my life & thoughts a certain kind of structure that I start to miss after a few months 

(4) Sheepishly slink back to Blogger & write an awkward/apologetic "Heeeyyyyy it's me again????" post 

I heard keeping readers on their toes like that is great for getting those clicks and growing readership. Everyone love a little "will-she-won't-she" tension, amirite? Now you know my secret.