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: