Race Report: Oakland Twilight 5000m 2024

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

No joke, I have been trying to get a track race in since 2017! I tried twice that summer to run a track 5K and both times had to pull up short with a sudden calf strain. Since then I'd mostly been focused on other things, but a few years back, Tracksmith started their Twilight 5000 summer series, in which the company hosts a series of multi-heat 5000m track races around the country. When you sign up, you enter an estimated finish time, and then based on those times, they organize everyone into heats of ~40 people or so. (Estimated finish times range from 45:00 to sub-15:00 and there's also a kids' 500m heat, so definitely a heat for juuuuust about everyone who cares to run.)

Last year (2023), I signed up to run the San Francisco edition, but then--no joke--strained a calf muscle during a track workout a week before. 🤬 It had improved somewhat by race day but not even close enough to consider racing, so instead I cheered on my teammates and took photos. Having missed out, this year I signed up (as did many others) for both the Oakland and San Francisco iterations.

A couple of shots from SF Twilight 2023 last July

And then what happened?

Race Report: Impala Stampede 5K 2024

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

This race has I think been a Pacific Association race & part of the Road Short Course Grand Prix since its inception. Up until this year it had been called the Stow Lake Stampede, but with the renaming of Stow Lake (for very good reasons), the race needed a new moniker as well. Since "Blue Heron Lake Stampede" doesn't quite roll off the tongue in the same way, the race ended up taking the name of its sponsoring team. Because it's a PA race and starts literally three miles from my house, I signed up for it a long time ago because it's an easy way to help meet my team obligation of running eight PA races per year.

And then what happened?

Race Report: Mile of Truth 2024

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

This race has often been a Pacific Association race & part of the Road Short Course Grand Prix. (This year it was also the USATF Masters Road Mile Championship, which means some REALLY FAST masters were out there competing for an individual national title.) I ran it last year more as a warm body than anything else because we needed three masters women and no one else was available. 

To refresh your memory, I had a rough spring of running & racing in 2023. I'd been fighting with various injuries on and off for months and because of that really struggling to run more than 6-7 miles at a stretch, let alone get in anything resembling a workout. I ran an absolute dumpster fire of a 10-miler in early April, then had a bunch of travel over the next two weeks that culminated in getting Covid about a week and a half before the Masters 10K National Team Championships in Dedham, Massachusetts. There were only three of us going at all, and it was really a race against time in terms of testing negative so I could get on the plane in good conscience. (If you've never raced a 10K the week after having Covid, I do not recommend it!) The Mile of Truth was just six days later and I was really, really hoping someone else would end up available, but a couple days out it became clear it was just my two teammates and me.

Because there was no one else, I showed up, definitely not fully recovered from Covid and definitely DEFINITELY not recovered from racing a hilly 10K in the rain while *barely* not sick with Covid. I told the ladies I would do it but just, it would be a gd miracle if I managed to run even *one* sub-seven mile. They said all I had to do was show up and do my best, so that's what I did.

Mile of Truth 2023. My official time was 6:58, so. Who delivers for you, babe? 

Now. I am not nor have I ever *really* been a miler, so I wasn't personally invested in my time in this race at all. Though I have sometimes been curious about what kind of time I could run in an all-out mile if I really trained for it and had a good day. A funny thing happened after running this race in 2023, though, which was that I suddenly became really really curious about that, especially given that I knew circumstances were so especially bad for me on THAT day. I resolved there and then to run the race again in 2024 and to be in at least better-than-passable shape for it, even if I didn't specifically train for the mile.

And then what happened?

Race Report: Eugene Half Marathon 2024

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

The truth is, I got peer pressured by teammates. 🤣 I had a few shorter races on the schedule for the year but nothing that felt "big-ish," so when a group was planning to make a trip to Eugene with various members running the half or full, I decided to jump in for the half.

And then what happened?

I had a pretty solid February and March, but April was a bit catch-as-catch-can with all my various work and personal travel. By the end of the month I was feeling a bit run-down and struggling to recover super well from hard runs, but I was still excited for the trip to Eugene and to see how all my work over the spring would translate into the race.

Pre-race:

Eugene Half Taper Pt 2 (Eugene Half Week 8 of 8) Apr 22-28

OMG you guys. Work and life. They've been absurd lately. YES I am still out here running and racing but have not had the spare time or bandwidth to write about it. 😂 So here is the *final* installment of my Eugene Half training cycle and maybe one of these weeks I'll actually get the race report published too.

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3
Eugene Half Week 4
Eugene Half Week 5
Eugene Half Week 6
Eugene Half Week 7

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 8 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 33.07 miles

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Eugene Half Taper Pt 1 (Eugene Half Week 7 of 8) Apr 15-21

ICYMI, on April 13, I made an arguably (smart? stupid?) choice to spend one of my days in Philadelphia driving 2+ hours to a local community 15K so I could get one more race experience in before Eugene. (Originally I was going to run the Prospect Park 10 Mile in Brooklyn on Sunday April 14, but my conference talk got moved and when I knew I wouldn't be able to make it back in time, I had to shift to a Saturday race.)

While the race itself was generally a good experience, the drive back was not kind to my knee. By the time I finished running, it was a bit stiff and achey, and then after three hours sitting in the car driving back, it was a bit swollen and not too happy with me putting weight on it. I had planned to run seven easy miles that Sunday the day after the race, but when I got up that morning I knew it was absolutely NOT happening.

Thus, the theme of week 7 became, "For the love of god, Angela, don't wreck your knee again." Thankfully, being just two weeks out from the race, all the work was already done, and as we recently learned, extra rest is almost always only going to help you.

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3
Eugene Half Week 4
Eugene Half Week 5
Eugene Half Week 6

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 7 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 16 miles

🐌 Easy: 12.25 miles
🐎 Fast: 3.75 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 76.6% vs. 23.4%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Race Report: Ninja 15K (Apr 13 2024)

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

I wanted to run one more race before Eugene, ideally something longer than 10K (so I could treat it as kind of a Eugene dress rehearsal/long tempo) but less than another half marathon (because I didn't want to risk getting over-excited and blowing Eugene by all-out racing two weeks before). 

One of the main reasons I wanted to do this was because back when I ran NorCal Redding 10-miler in March, I did not run a good race tactically. I knew I'd had a rough week and was not fully recovered and epically misjudged my initial effort level, and when that happened and I suddenly started to feel really really bad, I sort of had a little mini-panic attack. I spent the whole race really unhappy and desperate to quit and also watching my pace creep up and up and up no matter what I tried to do. It got a little better in the last two miles but I *really* wanted another chance to practice the mental & strategic side of things, and bonus if it was a day when circumstances are not 100% perfect (as is usually the case, if we're honest).

Originally I was going to do this 10-miler in Brooklyn on Sunday since my talk was scheduled for Saturday, but then just a few days before the talk got moved to Sunday and there was absolutely no way I was going to make it back in time. So, I poked around a bit and found this little community race about two hours from Philly put on by this group offering a 1-mile, 5K, 10K, 15K, and half marathon (!) and signed up for the 15K (which is ~9.3 of The King's miles for those keeping score at home).

And then what happened?

Eclipse! + Far too many time zones for one week (Eugene Half Week 6 of 8)

OK, so. Last weekend, I had to give a paper at a conference in Philadelphia, and being two weeks out from Eugene and really wanting one more chance to get on a starting line before then, I'd planned to Amtrak into Brooklyn on Sunday morning to run this 10 miler in Prospect Park.

Buttttt then the talk was changed from Saturday to Sunday at 1:15pm, and there was just no feasible way to run a 9:15am 10 mile race and get back to Philly in time for this talk. So.

What do we do?

We turn to the internet to see what else is around. And what do we find?

This cheeky little 15K race (that's ~9.3 miles according to The King's Mathematics) in central Pennsylvania on Saturday morning. 

Is it glamorous? No. But did I care about that? Also no! I really just needed to run a *sorta* long-ish tune-up race where I could practice HM effort and using all the mental stuff I've been working on in a situation that feels more formal than weekend long runs on my own in Golden Gate Park.

Race report coming soon!

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3
Eugene Half Week 4
Eugene Half Week 5

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 6 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 30.85 miles

🐌 Easy: 20.35 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 9.3 miles
🐎 Fast: 1.2 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 66% vs. 34%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Fatigue is piling up but so is fitness (Eugene Half Week 5 of 8)

Oof geez I am so behind with all the work / running travel lately! I have a lot of these to get through so let's just get to it.

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3
Eugene Half Week 4

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 5 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 38.6 miles

🐌 Easy: 30.85 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 6 miles
🐎 Fast: 1.75 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 79.9% vs. 20.1%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Big Miles + Radical Rest (Eugene Half Week 4 of 8)

Like most weeks, lately, this one was stressful and exhausting. Maybe not as much as some weeks. But still, I spent so much of the time feeling tired, both in terms of feeling fatigued (runs are hard, hard to motivate off the couch to accomplish basic tasks such as feeding myself) and sleepy (not always getting enough sleep, fighting off daytime naps).

By the time I finished Friday's 7-mile easy run, I was already thinking forward to Sunday's nontrivial long run workout (15 miles including 3 x 2 mile reps at half marathon effort) and strategizing about how I was going to make sure I got the most out of it. Thankfully, this past weekend was one of those rare and beautiful ones where I had absolutely no concrete commitments beyond keeping myself & the cats alive and doing the bare minimum necessary to keep our living space some basic level of functional/not gross.

The strategy I settled on was radical rest, which included the following pillars:

• After running on Friday evening, feed & hydrate self/cats ➡️ sit on couch & watch TV ➡️ go to bed early.
• Saturday ➡️ sleep in as much as possible ➡️ feed & hydrate self/cats ➡️ mostly sit on couch, feed/hydrate as necessary / carb load like a mother ➡️ go to bed early.
• Saturday ➡️ sleep in as much as possible ➡️ hydrate/consume moar carbs (& feed cats) ➡️ coffee ➡️ friggin' *crush* this long run workout.

Now, this *mostly* went to plan, though I cannot honestly say there were *no* deviations:

How Quickly Do We Lose Fitness? (Eugene Half Week 3 of 8)

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2

One of my favorite running podcasts as I've mentioned before is Pro Running News with Dave Lipman and Matt Fox; recently Matt Fox has also started doing his own separate podcast in addition to PRN called Sweat Elite (after his training/coaching company of the same name). 

In general Sweat Elite doesn't speak to me in quite the same way as PRN, but every now and then there is an episode or two that piques my interest. Recently Matt has been doing a series called "Training Talk" which is more focused on the nuts and bolts and fiddly details of designing good training and how a well-designed training plan creates the physiological adaptations (ie., "fitness") that make for strong performance. This week I listened to episode six in the series, entitled How Fast Do You Lose Fitness?, in which Matt interviewed Max Frankel, one of the Sweat Elite coaches and in fact the coach who has actually been designing Matt Fox's own marathon training. (Historically, Matt was/is a pretty high level middle distance runner who I believe even ran for some Australian national teams in his younger days.) 

Originally the episode was supposed to focus on a different topic but thanks to various Life Things, Matt had recently taken some unplanned days off from training, so instead they pivoted to discussing the role and impact of such unscheduled rest days. Ergo: How Fast Do You Lose Fitness?

Spring is Busting Out All Over! (Eugene Half Week 2 of 8)

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 3

You guys it's like the time changed and suddenly it's summer 🌞🌞🌞😎😎😎💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻. Or at least some semblance of spring. How lovely to procrastinate one's afternoon run until 5:30 or 6:00pm and not have to worry about the light. Simply marvelous.

AND AND AND it's been kinda sorta warm-ish here??? Or like 65ºF-ish at least??? Honestly when it's 65ºF and full sun, we call it summer and live it up.

The view from Tuesday's run through Golden Gate Park

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 2 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 43 miles

🐌 Easy: 38.5 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 0 miles
🐎 Fast: 4.5 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 89.5% vs. 10.5%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

A Belated Look at Eugene Half Marathon Week 1 of 8

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3

Eek, getting behind on these! Just about six weeks left until Eugene. If you cast back into your memory, you might recall that this was the week right after NorCal John Frank Memorial 10 Miler. The race was Saturday March 2 and I took the Sunday completely off for some much needed rest. Then on Monday, it was back to work!

(Also, look, sorry, no photos this week, it turns out when you're strapped for time & just living your life, you don't really remember to take a lot of photos. Sorry. 😬)

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 1 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 43 miles

🐌 Easy: 37.625 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 5 miles? (Counting anything 9:00 or faster at altitude as "moderate")
🐎 Fast: 0.375 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 87.5% vs. 12.5%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

A Hectic Race Week! (John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 4 of 4)

Well, race week has come and gone! If you want to know the deets, race report here. As for the week itself, it was kind of a stressful one with a short-but-intense work trip and some unfortunate travel woes. That plus a bit of insomnia earlier in the week (no real reason, just run-of-the-mill "HI HELLO THIS IS YOUR BRAIN LET US SPIN WILDLY THROUGH ALL THE THOUGHTS UNTIL THE WEE HOURS" brain stuff) meant that I unfortunately spent a lot of it exhausted and sleep-deprived, and checked off the first unintended zero day of the year (fortunately, just an easy four miles, nothing that tragic).

 ~*~*~ 🌁 🌁 John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 4 of 4 🌁 🌁 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 28.5 miles

🐌 Easy: 17.25 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 10 miles
🐎 Fast: 1.25 miles
(🏅 Race: 10 miles)

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Race Report: NorCal John Frank Memorial 10 Miler 2024

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

NorCal JFM10 is a PA race and when I'm able I'm trying to run as many of those as I can to support my team. (We get reimbursed for PA races as long as we run 8 per year.) Also, there was nothing else I was super excited to run this time of year instead and we had a pretty good size group going, so it just kind of made sense.

And then what happened?

From a training/staying healthy perspective, things actually went mostly according to plan. (I know, 🤯.) I had kind of accepted that my training might fall off a bit during my December travels, which did in fact happen (and also, I got a nasty respiratory virus which did not help, plus holidays, which, y'know, holidays). 

But after that I was able to pretty much jump back in! I believe the only run I skipped leading up to this race was the four easy miles I was supposed to do the Thursday before the race (due to travel woes). THIS NEVER HAPPENS! It helps that I had minimal work travel and the only weekend I had to be out of town was the weekend I spent in Tahoe (where getting the running done is usually pretty easy). Of course I was supposed to run Kaiser SF Half on Feb 4, which didn't happen due to weather, which meant a down week without a hard effort. Since then, though, I've been able to get right back at it without any interruptions which is always nice.

On the other hand, the week leading up to the race was rather stressful and I found myself constantly crunched for time, and had pretty poor sleep in the three nights leading up to the race. So while my fitness was pretty decent, I think, I did not arrive at the starting line feeling super rested and ready to go.

This is 43! (John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 3 of 4)

Hello! Here we are just a few days from the Johnny 10 and I am feeling particularly wise and sophisticated, having just completed my 43rd circuit around the sun. I spent the first part of the week frantically trying to meet work deadlines & then the last part chilling in Tahoe and blessing folk there with my hard-earned wisdom and life experience. Too busy skiing to take pictures so please enjoy these shots from a year ago:

Different year, same lake

 ~*~*~ 🌁 🌁 John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 3 of 4 🌁 🌁 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 38.85 miles

🐌 Easy: 25.51 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 9 miles
🐎 Fast: 4.34 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 65.7% vs. 34.3%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Two Weeks Till Johnny (John Frank 10 Miler Week 2 of 4)

Two weeks to go until we drive up to Redding and play in the hilllllzzz! Nothing too bananas to report this week, just chipping away. Some days feel better than others but over all I am feeling good and generally getting the training done more or less in the right vein. There is always the temptation to tack on a couple miles here & there, but sitting right in the low 40s has been working well for me for the last few weeks and I don't see a good reason to get greedy at this point.

 ~*~*~ 🌁 🌁 John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 2 of 4 🌁 🌁 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 43.1 miles

🐌 Easy: 34.1 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 6 miles
🐎 Fast: 3 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 79.1% vs. 20.9%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Back to Work (John Frank 10 Miler Week 1 of 4)

...And we're back at it. Next up on the schedule is John Frank Memorial 10 Miler in Redding in March 2, with the longer-term goal being the Eugene Half on April 28. (Did I mention I signed up for the Eugene Half? I signed up for the Eugene Half! #peerpressure). 

JFM10 is a PA race so I'm mostly doing that as a club thing. The course is a bit hilly so I think a PR (sub 1:16:45) is unlikely, but even if it's not particularly fast, it'll still be a good workout and a good chance to race double digits before Eugene.

This week was mostly about just getting back in the swing of things, plus a 48-hour work trip to Orlando:

 ~*~*~ 🌁 🌁 John Frank Memorial 10 Miler 1 of 4 🌁 🌁 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 42 miles

🐌 Easy: 33 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 4 miles
🐎 Fast: 5 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 78.6% vs. 21.4%. 

Guess which day was my first full day of jet lag.

January 2024 Reads

...And here we are in February. People will talk about how January is such a garbage month, the Monday of the new year, but friends, I freaking loooooove January. The emptiness of it. The blissfully free evenings and weekends that no one is quite up to filling with social events this soon after the bacchanalia of the December holidays. SO. MUCH. FREE TIME. Honestly it just makes my little introvert heart glow.

Of course, this means more quiet winter nights for curling up with an actual paper book, which inevitably gets harder for me as the year goes on. I read four count 'em four full paper books this month! Unbelievable.

Also totally by chance, I had no work travel this month, which meant more time for running, particularly longer runs, which meant the audiobook count was also up there this month.

Check out this month's list and see if anything calls to you! (Also, I've decided to start starring my favorites every month just to make it easier to scan for which ones I particularly liked.)

(1) 📚🎭✨ The Magus by John Fowles (656 pages, 1965). Audiobook. In 1950s Britain, a disaffected and aimless young man takes up with an Australian girl, then breaks up with her when things get too serious. Soon after he pursues a job teaching English at a boys' school on the Greek island of Phraxos, where he meets the enigmatic and eccentric millionaire Maurice Conchis, who may or may not have been a nazi collaborator in the second world war and who is soon engaging our young protagonist in what I can only describe as a kind of dreamy LARP involving a pretty girl who is first introduced (impossibly) as Conchis's young lover from back in 1915 and also a lot of Greek mythology cosplay. It only gets more bizarre from there!

Womp Womp (Kaiser Half Week 13 of 13)

The big story of this week was definitely the weather. We've been in the path of an atmospheric river here in the Bay Area this week, with one pretty bad storm Wednesday night and another forecasted for--you guessed it! Sunday morning.

Starting around midweek, the group chat was full of discussions about what to wear based on how conditions shook out and the logistics of getting in a warm-up and cool-down but also not dying of hypothermia.

Then Friday afternoon, we got the news that race organizers were changing the course due to concerns from SF Parks & Rec around the possibility of falling tree branches in the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park. Instead all three distances (5K, 10K, half) would start together & run laps up and down the Great Highway.

Obviously this was disappointing, but falling tree branches in big storms have killed and maimed enough people since I've lived here that I completely understand the decision. (Back at cross country team nationals in December 2022, a big branch fell on the course during the race, prompting race organizers to move the race to the Polo Fields. Having witnessed that I'd definitely like to NOT witness something similar again.)

Road Warrior Kitchen: Radicchio Bean Salad

One of my hobbies is buying cookbooks (sometimes out-of-print obscure ones) and then continuing to cook the same seven things. Every now and then, though, I catch them watching me disdainfully as I ignore them yet again. Usually I just shield my eyes and get on with what I was doing but every now and then I am overcome by guilt and declare, "Okay fine, let's go through one of you mothers and see what looks good and interesting and not too complicated."

One such cookbook is that of our Italian queen and collective great-great-grand-nonna Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. If you want to learn to *properly* cook Italian, Nonna Marcella is *the* canonical starting point. 

There are all kinds of wonders in this cookbook, with all different levels of complexity. Knowing the Italians do love their beans, I was flipping through it one evening looking for something new to do with my most recent Rancho Gordo haul that was simple yet classic, and it wasn't long before the page-flipping gods blessed me with this find, exactly the type of thing I was looking for:

And That's (Mostly) A Wrap! (Kaiser Half Week 12 of 13)

And here we are, just one week to go, all over but the tapering. This month has been a little bit of zero to ninety in some ways, and though it's gone really well and I feel fitter than I have in *quite* some time, I am also very, very tired and SUPER excited for a week of mostly four-mileish runs with non-easy work limited to some short strides here & there. It's that feeling of all the miles starting to pile up, being able to execute longer harder workouts pretty well but then feeling *suuuuuper* super fatigued at most other moments. The overall mileage and workout load of the last few weeks is definitely starting to accumulate and I am feeling it. 😂 

Most of the time when my assignment for the day has a range (ie 4-6 easy or 6-8 easy or 12-14 long), I will opt for the higher number because why not. But when I feel the way I have this week, I am instead doing  e v e r y t h i n g  I can to make easy days as easy as they can possibly be, no shame whatsoever. This week on easy days I have been doing the minimum mileage, and taking things as comfortably as I feel like, regardless of what that means for pace. Because on the big workout / long run days, I want to be able to fully execute and get the full benefit, and if I am out here adding extra easy miles when I'm already tired and pushing the pace because I'm self-conscious about what shows up on Strava, then I might not be able to do that.

On easy days towards the end of a cycle, yes, yes I do

People are always saying "Don't leave your race in a workout" but something people do not say often enough in my opinion is "Don't leave your workouts in easy days." I want to be able to run truly hard on hard days, and the only way I can do that (especially as I round the corner towards 43!) is to take the easy days truly super duper easy.

 ~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 12 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~

Road Warrior Kitchen: Kale Pesto Beans

Welcome back to The Road Warrior Kitchen, friends. Today we are talking about beans.

It seems to me that beans are somewhat polarizing. Some people, when you mention a bean dish, kind of wrinkle their nose, like, "...Oh. Ok, if you insist." Other people are absolute bean fiends who will expound at length about their love of legumes of all types. Still others are kind of like afraid of beans, either for digestive reasons or because they see them as "high calorie" or "starchy" or they are simply afraid of eating carbs for some reason.

On the scale of "bean fear" to "bean fiend," I'm maybe like 80% of the way to fiend. I grew up mainly on mass-produced canned beans and my granddad's weekly pot of pinto beans from dried, and felt pretty neutral about them for the most part (other than having a serious, SERIOUS dislike of lima beans and any kind of sweetened baked beans). They were food and as long as they weren't actively nasty, I'd mostly eat them.

My modern love of beans did not really emerge until I discovered Rancho Gordo beans around 2015 or so. Rancho Gordo is a bean farm based in Napa, where they farm a huge variety of North American heirloom beans, some of which make it to smaller boutique-type markets but most of which are sold via their bean club. I had been buying their cassoulet beans in our local market for years, but then the pandemic hit and we all went into lock down/survival mode and started panicking about stocking up on hearty non-perishables. 

It was then that I discovered the bean club; alas it was also when everyone else in the US also discovered the bean club and I found myself on a waitlist. BUT, a year later, I got an email with the subject line "You're In!" and it's been beans, beans, beans, six pounds of beans every quarter, ever since.

Now, you might be thinking, "Very cool bean club story, thanks for sharing. But this is a running blog. What do beans have to do with running? What does the wide world of heirloom beans have to offer me, a runner?" Let us discuss.

Rain, Soup, & Another 40+ Mile Week (Kaiser Half Week 11 of 13)

It's been a wet one here in the Bay Area! On the other hand the temperature has remained solidly in the mid-50s, so we really cannot complain too much considering what a lot of the rest of the country is going though.

We've also been big into soup-making over the last couple of weeks, which will maybe prompt me to resurrect Road Warrior Kitchen sometime soon. This week's soups of interest included chicken mushroom farro; smoky miso chicken; sausage white bean & spinach; and turkey chili with ayacote morados. There is nothing like making a warm, cozy soup on a rainy day.

I am feeling incredibly grateful to get another 40+ mile week in the books while still feeling pretty good. I know those fitness graphs in Strava aren't everything but I am still pretty happy to see mine trending consistently upward rather than kind of bouncing around all over the place like it did for most of last year.

For reference, the highest number I've ever seen on this little doohicky is like 54 (at CIM 2016). But 26 is the highest I've seen since May 2022, so let's lean into that.

Just two weeks to go!

 ~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 11 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 43 miles

🐌 Easy: 37 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 5 miles
🐎 Fast: 1 mile

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 86% vs. 14%. 

December 2023 Reads!

We made it friends! We made it all the way through the 2023 books before we had to start talking about the 2024 books! 🎉🥂🎊 I hope you've found something interesting to add to your to-read list.

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
March 2023 Reads
April 2023 Reads
May 2023 Reads
June 2023 Reads
July 2023 Reads
August 2023 Reads
September 2023 Reads
October 2023 Reads
November 2023 Reads
Reads from previous years

(100) The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (356 pages, 2023). Audiobook. The disinherited son of a local god tries to make sense of his life and early upbringing by his vengeful mother who, bitter and resentful of the god who abandoned her and their child, raises her son with the goal of committing patricide. Fetter's travels lead him to investigating the Bright Doors, mysterious and ornate doors that regular doors sometimes turn into, which in turn leads to unexpected revelations about his life and family tree.

So far so good + an achievement unlocked (Kaiser Half Week 10 of 13)

Three weeks to go until Kaiser SF Half! Honestly when I signed up for this race I'd been of the mindset that it would be kind of a rust-buster, just a way to start the year off with some motivation to do some for-real training. But other than the few weeks in December when I was out of commission, I've been pleasantly surprised at the quality and quantity of training I've been able to put in and am honesty feeling pretty curious and excited to see what the race brings. 

As a reminder I ran 1:53:57 at Clarksburg in November, which is a pretty low bar in terms of showing some progress. I think sub-1:50 is extremely realistic unless I have a really bad day or bad pre-race week and around 1:45ish is not unreasonable. Can I beat Clarksburg by a full ten minutes? That would be awesome but who can say! And really anything faster than that would be absolute gravy.

(But also, I am trying not to get *overly* optimistic--all I can do is continue to train smart, then show up and do my best on the day, and if I do those things, then whatever happens will be good enough.)

(But then, at the same time, I have to remind myself that I ran 1:56:05 at Kaiser in 2022, knowing that I was in not-great shape and mostly just trying to finish, and then six weeks later ran 1:40:57 at Oakland Half freaking out of the blue. So hey, sometimes magic happens, folks.)

In other exciting news this week, a multi-year dream was accomplished with the installation of this sweet shoe rack in the garage:

#Levelingup

This is mainly important because it gets stinky running shoes (at least those in the regular daily rotation) out of our indoor living space. 😂 So now I go in and out of the garage for running, and the shoes never have to come inside at all. Living the dream, amirite.

 ~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 10 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 42.3 miles

🐌 Easy: 28 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 9.8 miles
🐎 Fast: 4.5 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 66.2% vs. 33.8%. Definitely an unusually big week for quality miles!

November 2023 Reads!

Friends, it will be February before we know it and time to post January 2024 reads, so I'm trying to make a solid effort to knock out these 2023 monthly recaps. Enjoy!

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
March 2023 Reads
April 2023 Reads
May 2023 Reads
June 2023 Reads
July 2023 Reads
August 2023 Reads
September 2023 Reads
October 2023 Reads
Reads from previous years

(90) Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia (368 pages, 2019). Audiobook. I nearly quit this book. It wasn’t bad, per se, but just, nothing about the story or characters interested me and I couldn’t convince myself to care about any of them or anything that was happening to them. I can’t really pinpoint why. I think part of it is the supernatural element, which rarely works for me in a mystery/thriller style novel.

Back to Work! (Kaiser Half Week 9 of 13)

Gradually upping the mileage, & starting to mix in some faster miles here & there with just four weeks left to go until our 2024 season opener! (And, with only the *occasional* monkey wrench thrown in by the universe, one can only assume to keep us on our toes. 🤦🏻‍♀️😬)

 ~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 9 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 34 miles

🐌 Easy: 26 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 8 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 76.5% vs. 23.5%

Holiday Running Update! (Kaiser Half Week 8 of 13)

Hello all, I hope the holidays were kind and you are refreshed and reinvigorated and that your new year is off to a solid start. Mine were a bit chaotic and scrambled. Thanks to work stuff, available venues/facilities, and horrific jet lag (if you've never experienced twelve hours of jet lag or "the full jet-lag monty" as I've been calling it, it is, well, really something), I got absolutely zero running accomplished on my trip to Dubai. I pretty reliably adjust to jet lag at the rate of one hour/time zone per day, so I was there pretty much exactly long enough to acclimate and then get back on a plane and do the whole thing over again. (Again, if you've never been jet lagged for twenty-four full days, it is...really an experience. Not one I recommend, but an experience.)

I arrived back home late the night of Dec. 18th, slept like a log thanks to an absolutely hulking thirty-three-hour travel day, had a great six-mile run on the 19th, then promptly came down with some kind of respiratory virus on the 20th (not Covid, thank Jesus for small blessings). 🤦🏻‍♀️ I always wear masks in airports and on transit now, so I'm going to blame my visit to the Burj Khalifa on Sunday the 17th for whatever I caught. (If I'd been thinking I absolutely would have worn a mask given how crowded/close quarters it is, but for whatever reason it just didn't occur to me, so stupid.) 

Honestly, whoever designed the whole plaza area surrounding the Burj really nailed it. You just cannot take a bad picture here no matter how hard you try.

Anyway, this was absolutely fantastic timing as I was getting back on a plane on the 22nd to fly home to Texas for Christmas. (Again: Insane jet lag? Respiratory/sinus infection/**more** air travel?? An experience! That literally everyone should try to avoid!) Long story short, I spent most of that trip including Christmas sick with something and not at all up to running. So, weeks 6 & 7 were pretty much a bust.

But!! I started feeling better after Christmas, and as of Week 8, started to get kiiiinda sorta back on track. Behold:

 ~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 8 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 29.5 miles

🐌 Easy: 16 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 13.5 miles (at least, if we're going by my heart rate for most of it 🤣)

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 54.2% vs. 45.8% (not ideal but I regret nothing)

October 2023 Reads!

Slowly but surely getting caught up!

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
March 2023 Reads
April 2023 Reads
May 2023 Reads
June 2023 Reads
July 2023 Reads
August 2023 Reads
September 2023 Reads
Reads from previous years

(78) The Drowning Woman by Robyn Harding (336 pages, 2023). Audiobook. After a failed restaurant leaves her drowning in debt, restaurateur Lee Gulliver finds herself living in her car on the streets of Seattle. When she witnesses a sobbing woman throw herself into the ocean, Lee rescues her without thinking, only to learn that Hazel was attempting to escape her abusive marriage by taking her own life. But then Hazel seeks Lee out again the next morning, and proposes Lee help her with the new, intricate plan she’s come up with to escape her husband in exchange for financial help. Meanwhile, Lee is falling for an intriguing new man. Can either of her new acquaintances really be trusted, though? An entertaining enough psychological thriller/crime drama.

Race Report: Brazen New Year's Eve Half Marathon

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

The story of how I ended up running this race is a bit silly. To be honest I was sort of thinking of it as a kind of New Year's Eve turkey trot, i.e., the rest of the day is going to be busy & involve a bunch of socializing and celebrating, and it will be nice to have a nice, solid plan in place for getting a long-ish run in early in the day. Originally, I just started googling for local Dec. 31 half marathons, but unless I missed something, this was the only half marathon within a reasonable driving distance of home. I hadn't really been planning on making my trail half debut at this time but figured, "Eh, trail races, that's just, like, a kind of long cross country race? And I'm not even trying to run fast, just get in the miles, so who cares. Hills, pshhhh, whatever."

And then what happened?

WELL, I went to Dubai for 1.5 weeks during which time I wasn't able to run at all thanks to work scheduling, travel logistics, and jet lag. I got one good run in after I got home and then promptly got sick and spent most of my holiday travel feeling terrible (as well as jet lagged). By the 26th I was starting to feel a bit better so went for a short four-mile run, then six miles a couple days later, and six miles when we got home on the 30th. I was definitely not feeling 100% and went back and forth on whether running a trail half was smart or not (vs. just going out for an easy 6-10 miles or so at home). Partly because I had looked at the elevation profile for this race, and because the first trail race I EVER ran back in 2011 was in this park, I knew *exactly* what that second big hill was like. 🤣

In the end, though, I thought, "Eh, how bad can it be, it's only a 35 minute drive," and went for it. #famouslastwords

Race Day:

The Year in Cities: 2023

OK so normally with this I do a nice little five-by-five grid of cool photos from cities I visited in the past year. And I did do that! 

Top Row: Taking off for Greece on Condor Airlines | Washington Monument, Washington, DC | USATF Masters 12K National Championship, Sandy Hook, NJ | Harley Davidson Bar, Milwaukee, WI | Moran Face/Washakie Glade, Jackson Hole, WY. Second Row: Chicago Waterfront, Chicago, IL | Persian Gulf Dinner Cruise, UAE | Venetian Harbor, Xania, Crete | Choiropoiito Restaurant, Patras, Greece | Atlantis The Palm Hotel, The Point, Dubai, UAE. Third Row: L’Ecole Winemaker Dinner, Walla Walla, WA | Palisades Tahoe, Olympic Valley, CA | Pacific Electric Trail, Rancho Cucamonga, CA | Nafplio Old Town from the Fortress of Palamidi, Nafplio, Greece | USATF Masters 10K National Championship, Milford, CT.  Fourth Row: Venetian Harbor, Xania, Crete | L’Aventure Winery, Paso Robles, CA | Maluaka Beach, Wailea-Makena, Maui, HI | Kalama Park, Kihei, HI | The Parthenon, Athens, Greece. Fifth Row: Al Khayma Camp, Arabian Desert, UAE | Falasarna Beach, Crete, Greece | Burj Khalifa, Dubai, UAE | Samaria Gorge National Park, Sfakia, Crete, Greece | Lake Arlington, Arlington, TX 

But after I finished picking out and editing all the photos, I kind of thought, "You know what? I have iMovie. I know where to find free stock music. What if I stuck all these little guys in a movie file." And so I did: