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:

September 2023 Reads!

Friends, we will get back to the relatable running content you are here for sometime in the very very near future, never you worry. But we are behind on book reviews and that just will not stand.

Like August, September included a few lemons on the reading front, but also some of my favorite books of the year!

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
Reads from previous years(70) 

 🪐🔍🗡️The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa (pages, 2023). Audiobook. This book reminded me in turns of things I’ve read by Ian M. Banks and Nnedi Okorafor. We open in the wake of the Holy Vallbaran Empire’s failed attempt to conquer the Ominirish Republic. All this means little to Ominirish scribe-cum-tea mistress Enitan until her lover is assassinated and her sibling abducted by Imperial soldiers. She then proceeds to trade on her tea-making skills in an attempt to work her way up through the Vaalbaran capital in order to rescue her sibling and solve her lover’s murder, and soon finds herself at the heart of intergalactic intrigue and scandal. I am very picky about sci fi and this was smart, refreshing, and super well done.

August 2023 Reads!

Hello friends! I am safely back from the Middle East and readjusting to the Pacific time zone and regular life. I was super busy with work and jet lag and got absolutely zero running done, but I got through some books, so there is that.

Speaking of books, we are now up to August in terms of recapping the year's reads. August was a mixed bags in terms of books--a few lemons in there, but also some of my favorite reads of the year!

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
Reads from previous years

(58) 👻😱🧨 The Lost Village by Camilla Sten (348 pages, 2019). Audiobook. Alice has finally secured enough shoestring funding to make her dream film–a documentary about the old Swedish mining town where her grandmother grew up and from which all of the residents had mysteriously vanished in 1959, leaving only two people behind–a newborn baby girl and woman stoned to death. Not long after the tiny crew sets up camp, though, distressing things begin to happen. Are they really alone here? And can they all be trusted? Pretty dark at times, but an interesting, well-written psychological thriller/drama/horror.

One last (kinda) normal(ish) week... (Kaiser Half Week 4 of 13)

Since I'm off to Southern California today and then to Dubai on Friday, this will be my last kind of "normal-ish" week of training for a while. I'm still planning (hoping?) to continue doing whatever following-of-the-training plan I can while I'm on the road, but one just never knows how things are going to work out during travel (particularly to somewhere you've never been before).

Here's how this week went down:

 ~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 4 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 36 miles

🐌 Easy: 28.2 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 3 miles
🐎 Speed: 4.8 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 78% vs. 22%