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.

Road Warrior Kitchen: Basic Sautéed Chicken Breast

Welcome back, friends. I have been living it up in Milwaukee the past few days (j/k, actually just working) & engaging in such wild activities as having a beer at the Harley Davidson bar, eating some REALLY good food  (one restaurant had a bottle of wine from a tiny little winery I actually visited in Galicia, Spain, back in June??? Wild!), and doing a little shakeout run along Lake Michigan.

Now I am home for one day, trying to relax and rest up before our masters team heads up to Sacramento on Saturday for Sunday's USATF 10-Mile Masters National Championship. (I will not be running fast BUT my right ankle has been doing a-ok, so I'll be very happy just to get a double-digit run under my belt for the first time since Victory Half over a month ago now.)

I know you have been waiting with bated breath for your next visit to The Road Warrior Kitchen, so let's dive right in. Today, we're talking sautéed chicken breast.

Road Warrior Kitchen: Chopped Veggies in Dressing

Here is the thing. We already know we should eat more vegetables and that it's good for us both as regular people with bodies and as runners. But if you are like me, you don't necessarily default to vegetables. That means that when we are extra tired or busy or annoyed with the world or we forgot to buy groceries this week, vegetables are probably the first to go.

Over the years, though, I've found some strategies for getting back on the veggie bandwagon when I don't necessarily feel like just crunching on raw celery sticks; today The Road Warrior Kitchen is bringing you one of them.

Consider the watermelon radish

You may be thinking, "But Angela, chopping vegetables is not a recipe. Everyone already knows about chopping vegetables and some people even do it regularly."

True enough, friend. Everyone knows about chopping vegetables; not everyone knows how to make chopped vegetables delicious and attractive and if you have not yet mastered that voodoo I am here to help.

You Are Invited to The Road Warrior Kitchen!

Hello friends, welcome to The Road Warrior Kitchen!

Let me disabuse you of the notion, should you be harboring it, that we are here at The Road Warrior Kitchen to learn all the finer points of sports nutrition. I have written some about that in the past based on work with a for-real sports nutritionist, but a) I'm not truly an expert at that stuff, & b) I don't find it that interesting to write about.

On the other hand, a big topic of conversation between my various groups of running friends is more like, "How do we balance the logistics of eating *generally* in a way that supports our training with all the bullshit of real life, AND is also delicious?" 

I always love hearing what recipes, hacks, strategies, whatever that others have in their arsenal and seeing if maybe they can work for me. Perhaps you will learn something that works for you! Or perhaps you will share a hack of your own in the comments. 

Before we begin, let me provide a bit of framing. I want to be clear that Road Warrior Kitchen is not about describing *THE* one true way of cooking/eating for runners, even just for me. But it will obviously reflect my personal beliefs, preferences, biases, experience, likes/dislikes/etc.

So please understand the points below as a kind of lens for understanding what does or does not show up in the Road Warrior Kitchen and why I cook & eat the way I do.

Road Warrior Kitchen: Tacos Edition + One Week to Giant Race!

Just one more week until The Giant Race 10K!

This week was once again a little odd because we spend the weekend camping with a *different* group of friends. Why? Frankly, because we both love camping and are really terrible at actually planning it, so our strategy is mostly to sidle up to other friends we know like camping and are better at planning, talk about how much we like camping, and then glom on to the group camping trips that *they* plan. It's working out pretty well tbh, so I've got no real plans to do anything differently.

Each couple/family on this particular trip took on one meal to prepare for the group, so we made build-your-own tacos for Saturday night. We made everything except the guac at home in advance so that the only thing we had to do at the campsite was heat up the ingredients & set them out.

Too busy having fun to take photos during the camping trip it so please enjoy this documentation of me crushing an entire head of garlic to make carnitas for Saturday night camp dinner

Rolling Into Fall: Mini Pumpkin Pie Bites

You guys. I can't believe it but our renovations--which began in February 2017--are almost DONE.

There are still tiny things left to do. A few light fixtures to choose, an intercom system to install, a few missing cabinet doors, a few places where the paint needs touched up. But the big stuff is done. We have a working kitchen and bathrooms, and a fully completed media room & guest suite/laundry area. (Now...there is no 'media' or anything else, really, in the media room yet, but the ROOM is done.)

We don't really have much furniture yet but that will come. In the mean time, we're getting ready to throw a little shindig in October, where I am letting my love of all things fall run wild. (I know it's kind of #basic to love fall, but...well...sorry not sorry.) In the past few weeks I've been trying stuff out, recipes & cocktails & decor ideas, and I'm getting too excited about it not to share.

Today, let me tell you about my mini pumpkin bites.

I love a good pumpkin pie in the fall, but pies aren't super-conducive to the kind of shindig we're throwing, an all-day, come-and-go affair where folks can grab a few snacks & drinks with minimal dishes & utensils involved. What DOES play well with this sort of thing are finger foods--little snackies that you can just grab and pop into your mouth, or your kid's mouth, without the rigamarole of slicing and serving and how-big-a-piece-do-I-want & finding half-eaten slices of whatever all over the house.

Hence pumpkin bites.

Adventures with Iron Deficiency, Part 3

(Once more for those in the back -- I AM NOT A DOCTOR OR NUTRITIONIST. I basically just read the internet. Below is what worked for me, but that doesn't mean everyone should do it, and you should definitely *definitely* not start taking an iron supplement without having your levels checked because you CAN get iron poisoning, and some people have a condition that keeps their iron levels abnormally high. Just sayin'.)

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We've been talking iron deficiency (not the same thing as anemia) this week on the blog. You might want to catch up on Part 1 & Part 2 before dividing into Part 3, in which we talk about how I ultimately fixed my low ferritin issues.

Adventures with Iron Deficiency, Part 1

Adventures with Iron Deficiency, Part 2

When we left off, I'd just learned about a month before the Boston Marathon that my ferritin was at 13 ng/mL. Normal for sedentary couch potato pre-menopausal women is 12-300 ng/mL, but female athletes training a lot--particularly runners--generally need to be around 30 ng/mL at a bare minimum and many feel weak and exhausted unless they're closer to 45 or 60.

I'd also learned that raising low ferritin numbers often requires getting 60-180 mg of iron a day (four to 12 times the couch potato recommendation of 15 mg per day) and I'd been eating more like 22 mg. And, also, that it's virtually impossible to consume this much iron through food alone. Ergo, supplements.

Adventures with Iron Deficiency, Part 2

(Once again: I am not a doctor, nutritionist, dietitian, coach, etc. and have absolutely no formal training whatsoever in medicine, diet, sports training, etc. and probably no one should listen to me about anything. Everything I know, I've learned from reading or talking either to people who ARE experts or other female runners who have had similar experiences. This entire blog is just Some Lady Rambling on the Internet and if you are getting your medical and/or training advice from me something in your life has gone very, very wrong; please go pay an actual expert actual money.)

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So, last time we were talking about iron deficiency--what it is, and why runners (especially female runners) might care. You can read Part 1 where I discuss my first experience dealing with iron deficiency & some things I learned about it here.

All caught up? Excellent!

Fast forward to about a month before the Boston Marathon. In my first couple months of training I felt amazingly good--workouts were easy, and I had no trouble hitting the mileage. After that (as you know if you've been following along), I had some injuries and got really sick one week, so I would never in a million years have thought that I was training hard enough to mess with my iron levels.

Still, I kept getting that same feeling I remembered from when I was training for Eugene; just exhausted all the time, hitting workout paces starting to feel way, way too hard (and for the first time I can ever remember, sometimes actually impossible), and that sleep-deprived/low-blood-sugar, knock-me-over-with-a-feather feeling while running, even just on short easy runs.

For a while I was chocking it up to stress, losing fitness from all the missed miles, and maybe just getting old. But chatting about it with Don one day, he was like, "When was the last time you had all your blood work checked? Could it be iron or thyroid or something?"

Adventures with Iron Deficiency, Part 1

(Super obvious disclaimer: I am not a doctor, nutritionist, dietitian, coach, etc. and have absolutely no formal training whatsoever in medicine, diet, sports training, etc. and probably no one should listen to me about anything. Everything I know, I've learned from reading or talking either to people who ARE experts or other female runners who have had similar experiences. This entire blog is just Some Lady Rambling on the Internet and if you are getting your medical and/or training advice from me something in your life has gone very, very wrong; please go pay an actual expert actual money.)

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People didn't talk much about iron levels when I was in high school and college. Or, at least, not my particular circle of runners & coaches. In fact I don't think I ever even had mine tested until I got a summer job running the barn at a Girl Scout horseback riding camp in college, and I had no idea what the numbers meant or even what the deal with low iron really was, except for some vague notion of how iron bonds to oxygen and that's why you need it to make red blood cells. Which, y'know. Sounds important. But wasn't exactly something I worried about.

My next encounter with iron talk was many, many years later, reading running blogs by people way, way, WAY faster than me (like RoseRunner, and Kris Lawrence, and Camille Heron), how they'd started generally feeling shitty on their runs while training hard, and so the doctor said, "You know, let's just check your iron just to be safe." It was't a problem I was personally having at the time, but I guess I must have put a mental pin in it to revisit if it seemed relevant.

So, a few years later, while I was training for the Eugene Marathon, I started feeling just really awful. Like tired and cold all the time even when there was no good reason for it, and so many runs, even short easy ones, where I felt like I might fall over at any moment. The way I tried to describe it to my doctor was that it felt like being sleep deprived and low blood sugar at the same time, only it happened when I was definitely definitely not either of those things. Also my workouts were just a slog. I could hit the times still, usually, but felt like I was dragging myself through them & when I got home I just wanted to lay on the couch and not move.

SJRNRHM Week 4 of 14: More like it (+ some thoughts on disordered eating in sport)

While in Tahoe over 4th of July, Don & I got into talking about the extremes of disordered eating that pervades our respective (current & past) sports--rock climbing for him, distance running & (in my younger days) gymnastics for me. We'd been talking about rock climbing & how a friend of his had mentioned how she'd recently lost like 5 pounds and how it made a real, noticeable difference in how easy climbing felt, & from there about the siren call of weight loss in endurance sports in general ("If I can just lose 3/5/7/etc. pounds, x/y/z will feel easier/I'll be faster/more powerful/etc.") & how then depending on your personal background, psychology, & environment, it can be such a short, slippery leap to really dangerous, misguided stuff like skipping meals and cutting out entire food groups and intentionally not fueling your workouts in order to create a larger calorie deficit.

Then completely coincidentally, this Outside article popped up in my Facebook feed the very next day, which I found fascinating and sent on to Don.

Clamoring back on the wagon....

In a way, the timing of my ill-fated 5K was good. My taper happened to coincide with some busy weeks at work, and the week after when I couldn't run because of my messed up calf, I was traveling for a kind of intense workshop with K-12 math teachers. I usually stop lifting the week or two before a race, which worked out well since there was no time for it anyway, and I didn't feel the need to jump right back into it the week after.

But now I'm back home, and not traveling for more than a day or two at a time (that I know of) for a good while, and work is a bit calmer, so it is time now to clamor my way back up onto the srsbzns training wagon and get my shit at least in the same general vicinity as together.

How the wagon feels sometimes

(Also, I ran just a few easy miles on Monday and Tuesday for the first time since the 5K and my leg feels back to normal, so hopefully it won't revolt again!)

I know that sometimes people lament their inability to do something consistently, day in and day out, but honestly, I've come to realize over the years that that's just life. It's impossible to train hard core day in and day out, to eat like a lean mean machine year round, to get in the strength work and stretching and rolling and whatnot come hell or high water. You just can't. Nor should you!

And that doesn't just apply to we humble age groupers. Even most professional and elite athletes make a real point of taking breaks and letting their bodies and minds fully recover before launching into another super intense training cycle (and the internet is littered with the cautionary tales of those have tried to go hard week after week and year after year and suffered physical setbacks, mental burnout, or both). So I don't feel bad about having had a few easy weeks and one completely off before I for-realsies put that 1:35 half marathon in the crosshairs & prepare to take a big ol' fatty swing at it come October.

While training for CIM last year, I kind of threw the time goal out the window & instead focused on process goals, which worked out pretty darn well, so that's what I'm trying to do this time around as well. (I mean; I still have 1:35 in the back of my mind, but on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis, I'm going to not worry about the numbers on the clock & instead concentrate on the process.)

So. Here are the goals:

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

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

* * *

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:

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

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.

Book Review: "Run Fast Eat Slow"

Like many other runners I know (particularly those who are obsessed with food), I recently caved & purchased Shalane Flanagan's new cookbook, Run Fast Eat Slow, co-authored with her former cross-country teammate & now professional chef, Elyse Kopecky.

I have a whole other post sitting in the drafts about how my eating/cooking habits have changed in the last three months, but long story short I've gone from eating out/getting takeout 5-7 nights a week & almost never cooking to cooking (or eating leftovers) most nights, eating out maybe once a week, & getting takeout only when the cooking is truly unfeasible.

Things I have cooked in my actual kitchen this summer:

Homemade chili verde pork with heirloom tomatoes, red cabbage, avocado, & cilantro

Grilled tuna with piperinata & tapenade

Chicken & sausage jambalaya

Grilled salmon with a soy-ginger glaze

I've really enjoyed going back to regular cooking from scratch and it's made a huge difference in my quality of life lately. There are a lot of days in the week, though, so now I'm always on the lookout for tasty, healthy recipes to try. Run Fast Eat Slow, then, was kind of a no-brainer.

It isn't really fair to call this post a book review since I've only skimmed most of it, selecting a few of the recipes to read word-for-word and only actually made maybe 3-4 so far. However, the ones I have tried have been fantastic, so I felt inspired to put a little plug out there.

First, I am obsessed with this kale & quinoa recovery salad. We try to have a salad with dinner every night as much as possible, but a lot of times that means I end up making the same old basic thing over and over again & I was interested to try something new.

And OMG, I was not disappointed. Seriously, I think I could eat this salad every night of my life. Basically it's kale, quinoa, red bells, red onion, jalapeno, black beans, cilantro, green olives, feta (or cotija) cheese, avocado, EVOO, & lime juice. It's practically a meal all on its own! Now, it is not a quick salad as there is quite a lot of chopping involved, but the first time I made it I did all the chopping on the weekend & then quickly assembled it the next night.

Pre-chopped veggies

Bad light in our kitchen...Sorry. :(

We did not love the prescribed quinoa-to-veggies ratio & probably only included about half the quinoa, but the nice thing is that you can adjust that to taste. Also if I'm having it as a side with something else that's already got plenty of carbs, I just skip the quinoa altogether & it's still absolutely delicious.

Literally eating this as I type.

Our other favorite is the "Marathon Lasagna," which is like most other lasagna recipes except it swaps the usual ground beef or sausage for ground turkey and adds in egg, sweet potatoes, and spinach. So good! A lot of times I don't love ground turkey because it comes across as sweet to me, but the seasoning you do with it beforehand makes a big difference. Don was also a big fan & encouraged me to make it more often.

Baking the sweet potatoes

Egg-ricotta slurry

Seasoning the turkey

Final assemblage

ENTIRE BAG OF SPINACH YAAAASSSS

Final product (in bad light, sorry)

Again, this is not a *quick* recipe (I think it took about 3 hours start to finish, though some of it you could prep in advance), but it makes a giant pan-full that you can go back to for a week or more. (I imagine it would also freeze just fine as well.) The story is that this is what Shalane traditionally eats the night before the Boston Marathon, though I think it's probably too rich & acidic & dairy-filled for me to try that. (You could probably easily make it vegetarian by just leaving out the meat or replacing with your vegetable protein of choice.)

My favorite thing about this book is how the focus is on nutrition, not on weight loss or calorie-counting. In fact, there is no calorie information included at all, but the dish descriptions do go into the various nutrients in the ingredients and why they're beneficial for athletes. (Which....is why about a third of the recipes involve beets. I'll be skipping those.) There are no calls for low-fat/non-fat cheese or artificial sweeteners; in fact, there is a decided emphasis on eating plenty of healthy fats (including full-fat dairy). Basically the central message of the book is to try to cook with a variety of fresh, whole, nutrient-rich foods as much as possible and avoid processed things whenever you can. (Shalane credits this approach with finally stabilizing her weight & allowing her to stop counting calories and end a 15-year battle with amenorrhea.)

(Seriously, the lasagna is NOT diet foot. But it's packed with nutrients and sooooo tasty! It's been great for post-speed or tempo run with a big salad.)

Looking forward to trying more recipes in the future!

MP miles, back sprain, lobster

While I'm still sort of in "pre-season," I've been trying to get to the gym to lift every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. Sadly, this has not been a good week for it. We got back from LA on Sunday around 6 and I immediately set out on a long run, meaning I wasn't done until around 9. I got to bed late and was more exhausted than usual when my alarm went off at 6am, so I figured it probably made more sense to sleep for another hour rather than drag myself to the gym.

Then on Friday morning, I woke up with my lower back feeling like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. I don't remember doing anything to it Thursday and it was perfectly fine when I went to bed, but when I got up I found myself completely unable to bend more than about 30°forward. Thankfully it was a good day for working from home!

My massage guy is 30 miles away in Palo Alto & usually takes at least a couple of weeks to book, so I was thankful that I managed to get a same-day sports massage with a reputable place here in the city. In addition to a bunch of stuff I already know (I live on the outside edges of my feet, have a super effed-up right hip/groin situation, a petrified left ankle, & generally insanely tight leg muscles all around), the therapist told me that it looked like I had basically sprained my right SI joint, i.e. threw my back out, probably via running (because seriously what else).

It was much improved after the massage though not perfect, and he said I could expect it to take another few days to a week to get back to normal. In the mean time, he said I could do whatever I wanted as long as I could tolerate the discomfort & it was pretty unlikely I would make it worse. Running didn't seem to bother it that much so I went ahead with my Friday pace run as planned -- 2 warm up, 50:00 @ marathon pace, 2 cool down.

This workout was not god-awful (I did complete the whole thing at a completely within-expectations pace & heart rate, pausing only for traffic lights in the Park + 1 water stop), but it was definitely MUCH harder than the 11.4 mile speed workout three days prior. (It was also on rolling concrete instead of the track, so there is also that.)

Part of me really wonders what would happen if I swapped Track Tuesdays with F-pace Fridays. Those speed days don't really feel that hard at the time, but I think they really do have a lingering effect in terms of general fatigue.

At 7:30 I was sitting on the couch in sweats & wet hair when Don texted me like "Let's go out for a nice dinner!" and I kind of snorted because the idea of getting a Friday dinner reservation in SF anywhere good when it's already dinner time is hilarious, but I dutifully fired up OpenTable & SeatMe to see what was available. In a completely random & bizarre turn of events, I snatched up an 8:30 res at Nightbird, a new restaurant that I remembered reading about recently. I didn't remember much about the food except that it was supposed to be really good & people were super excited about it opening.

Well, it turned out it was only their second night, so I have no idea how such a prime reservation for a highly anticipated opening was just sitting there an hour beforehand! The food was an absolutely brilliant five-course pre fixe (plus a couple of snacks) with wine pairing.

Lobster with grilled hearts of palm, chantarelles, & black truffle.
This is the only picture I managed to take because too busy eating.

They also had some really interesting & tasty cocktails. So Bay Area peeps, if you're looking for a splurgy, amazing dinner in the city, check it out!

CIM WEEK 3 of 18: A discount code to share, back on Strava, & threshold run #1

This week's big news is no, I have not completely lost the ability to move my body at a sub-7:00 pace. #smallvictories

FIRST: So when I started counting weeks for CIM, I updated my defunct Strava profile & started posting runs again. I don't know why, or what I hope to get out of it. I don't know why I signed up for Strava in the first place. I don't even read other people's workouts because who has time for that once you finish reading blogs, facebook, twitter, & instagram. But there it is, so if seeing my weekly miles unfold in real time before your very eyes will somehow improve your life, by all means click over.

Sojourn on the Emerald Isle...

Don't worry, this isn't going to be an eight-part modern epic on My Summer Vacation. I just wanted to say HEY! and I AM BACK! and HERE IS A TINY FRACTION OF THE COOL STUFF I SAW AND DID IN IRELAND!

The backstory is that Don and I have actually been attempting to plan an Ireland trip since 2010. But it didn't work out, and instead we ended up in Alaska.

Why yes, I did climb a glacier up to the highest ice field in the world!

We tried again in 2013 and wound up in Hawaii.

Making undeniable progress on the 50 States bingo card,
but still longing for the other side of the Atlantic.

In 2014, we found ourselves in Italy:

Technically, getting closer.

Don't get me wrong, this was all AMAZING, but for all that we'd declared we were not not not leaving the country and/or taking any big trips this year due to the ongoing saga of our house renovations, it was a little hard to say no when Don's parents mentioned the "Gourmet Ireland" trip they were going on with two professional Irishmen and there were only a few spots left and were sure we didn't want to tag along.

Since our renovations show no sign of actually beginning soon (le sigh) AND we wouldn't have to be in charge of anything except showing up, we finally said "What the heck" & sent the Irishmen a check.

We have never done a group tour before and only did this one because a) it was a tiny group (less than 15 people) and b) Don's parents, who are not package tour people either, had done a "Gourmet Spain" tour with said professional Irishmen & utterly raved about them.

I'm happy to report that we had an absolute blast. Yes, it was a very specific type of trip with a very specific focus, so there are definitely plenty of things in Ireland that we didn't see or do, but we also got access to people and places and experiences we never would have on our own.

So here you go -- "Gourmet Ireland" in one roll (24 shots).

70° and sunny in Dublin!

Pints at the Gravity Bar, Dublin

The Long Room, Trinity College Library, Dublin

Dublin Castle Gardens

Dinner at The Pig's Ear, Dublin

St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin

Christchurch, Dublin

On the way to lunch in County Clare

Cliffs of Moher, County Clare

Kilbeggan Distillery, County Westmeath

Whiskey tasting with Ireland's top whiskey expert (A LADY!) in County Kerry

Midleton Distillery, County Cork

Midleton Distillery, County Cork

Ballymaloe House, County Cork

Ballymaloe Cookery School (where we cooked our own dinner!)

Dinner at Ballymaloe (we cooked it!!)

Dessert at Ballymaloe Cookery School (Raspberry fool made by yours truly!)

Cheese Tasting at Cashel Blue, County Tipperary

The Giant's Causeway, County Antrim, Northern Ireland

Belfast River Walk

Belfast River Walk

Belfast Cookery School (where we cooked lunch!)

Teeling Distillery, Dublin

Ha'penny Bridge, Dublin

{We now return to our regularly scheduled program.}