James Joyce Ramble 10K Week 1 of 4

Whew! SacTown 10 Miles is in the book and now we're looking forward to the USATF Masters 10K National Championships at the James Joyce Ramble in Dedham, MA on April 30. I am not starting from the best place in terms of health OR fitness, but we've got four weeks so I'm definitely going to make the most of it! I'm a bit behind here but doing my best to catch up. 😬

In case you missed it, most of my worries about this April 30 10K have been around my nuts travel schedule in April and how I was possibly going to fit in enough running, particularly workouts, to make flying across the country for a 10K worth it. 

All that started at the end of March with a work trip to Milwaukee. I got back from Sacramento Sunday afternoon, then had three days at home before Don and I flew to Walla Walla for a wine party we've been attempting to get to with Don's mother since before COVID (since it was cancelled in '20, '21, and '22). 

And of course if you're going to fly all the way to Walla Walla for *one* wine party, it only makes sense to stay some extra days and do some additional tasting, amirite? 😆 Truly, friends, there were no bad stops on this trip. Every winery we tasted at was excellent.

Rotie! A fantastic stop! Highly recommend.

Race Report: SacTown 10 Miles 2023 (+ USATF Masters 10 Mile National Champs!)

Friends, this month has been and will continue to be rough in terms of work and travel, but I was determined to get this race report up in a more timely manner than the last one! Please enjoy.

Why did I sign up to run this race?

Like last year, SacTown 10 Miles was not only a Pacific Association long course race but also the USATF Masters National Championship race for the 10 mile distance, so I signed up to compete with my team. Last year I ran 1:16:47 here so I thought it would be fun to see if I could beat that time.

And then what happened?

March 2023 Reads!

Hello friends, I don't know about you but I am SO EXCITED that it is properly spring. The time has changed, my evening light is back (as an evening post-work runner I *super* appreciate this), and we've even had a few pleasant days of weather (in spite of all the bananas rain & wind we've been getting in SF lately).

March was a pretty solid month of reading, including several starred reads! As always, I am taking recommendations if you have any to offer.

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
Reads from previous years

(19) The Last Guests by JP Pomare (336 pages, 2021). Audiobook. Lena & Cain, an Australian couple with money worries, reluctantly decide to put the family lake house Lena inherited up on a vacation rental site, a situation that is complicated by an increasingly problematic secret she is keeping from Cain. Then one night a harrowing experience at the lake house threatens to destroy everything. Has Lena’s secret finally come home to roost or is there something even more sinister going on? The premise here was a bit outlandish in my opinion and the ending felt sort of unbelievable and unresolved, as if this were intended as the first half of a book rather than an entire story.

(20) What Remains of Me by Alison Gaylin (384 pages, 2016). Paper book.

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.

Race Report: Victory Half Marathon 2023

Whew, finally getting this one out into the world!

The deets:

Brazen Racing is well known in the Bay Area for fun, inclusive, reasonably affordable, and extremely well-organized events, with the vast majority including a 5K, 10K, and half marathon. Most of them are trail races (including some real doozies!), but they host a few flat, paved events as well (including Hellyer in the South Bay and the Bay Breeze/Summer Breeze races at the San Leandro Marina). It is always a really fun and supportive crew, and their races are known for such perks as big beautiful medals (including age group winner medals), cool shirts that you'd actually consider wearing *not* only for running, free photos taken by volunteers stationed on the course, and an epic post-race spread.

Why did I sign up for this race?

I didn't have anything on my spring race calendar until the USATF Masters 10 Mile National Championships on April 2nd, and I wanted to run *something* in the 10K-to-half-marathon ballpark between New Years and then just to see where I was fitness-wise. My criteria were a) late Feb/early March, b) 10K, half, or something in between, c) mostly flat-ish course, d) reliable organization, e) fairly close to home, & f) not too pricey. That's a lot to ask for in one race! So I actually felt very lucky that I was able to find even ONE race that checked all the boxes.

Victory starts and finishes at Craneway Pavilion in Richmond, just over the bridge and a bit down the freeway, about 30 minutes from me. It's a really pretty area of Richmond with some gorgeous waterfront views (a lot of which you get to see on the course). All three courses are mostly out-and-backs and pretty close to totally flat. I have run the 10K at Victory twice before (2017 and 2020) so I felt very comfortable with the logistics (getting there, parking, the course, etc.).

Brazen has always put on some of the highest-value "low-stakes" races in the Bay Area--if you just wanted to run and have fun and see what you could do, it's always been hard to do better in terms of price and what you get for it. Alas, inflation has of course come for us all of late, including race directors. So prices have gone up a bit. But prices have gone up everywhere, so Brazen is still a QPR winner any way you slice it.

This year's prices for the 5K/10K/Half:

• Until 12/18/22: $58 / $67 / $83
• Before 1/22/23: $63 / $72 / $88
• After 1/22/23: $68 / $77 / $93
• Race day: $73 / $82 / $98

And then what happened?

February 2023 Reads!

Oof, hi friends, long time, no post. I have a race report almost ready to publish BUT in the mean time, please enjoy this missive covering my February reads. Hang on to your hats, last month was a doozy. 

 In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads Reads from previous years

(8) First Born by Will Dean (368 pages, 2022). Audiobook. Outgoing, extroverted Katie is at Columbia on a full ride, while her mousy, introverted, pathologically anxious twin Molly hides from the world back in her London condo. But when Molly's parents call to tell her that Katie has been murdered while they're visiting her in New York, Molly must steel herself to fly to the U.S. to support her parents and the investigation of Katie's death. This took a super interesting turn riiiiiight at the end but there was a lot of kind of boring stuff in the middle and I came very close to not bothering finishing it.

(9) Run Time by Catherine Ryan Howard (373 pages, 2022). Audiobook. Another mystery/thriller with a twenty-two-year-old woman at the center. Once a rising star, recently disgraced actress Adele Rafferty has left her native Ireland for LA in a desperate (and thus far unsuccessful) attempt to revive her career. When she's offered the lead in a small, hush-hush indie horror film back in Ireland out of the blue, the deal seems almost too perfect. But soon Adele starts to feel as if the eerie events of the script are happening around her for real, and it seems as if her tumultuous past has somehow come back to haunt her. Reasonably entertaining but I've liked previous works of hers better.

(10) Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl (336 pages, 2018). Audiobook.

January 2023 Reads!

 ...And just like that, the cycle begins anew. 👵 ➡️ 👶 Welcome back, readers!

I got off to a solid start in January in terms of reading. Here's what was on my nightstand / in my headphones this month:

(1) The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan (336 pages, 2012) (psychological drama, lgbtqia+). Paper book. I can't remember how this book got onto my 'to-read' list but about a quarter of the way through, I was like, "You know, this book realllly reminds me of a different book I read ages ago." It bugged me so much I had to hunt that book down and guess what? It was The Red Tree, by Caitlin R. Kiernan. The story is presented as schizophrenic India Morgan Phelps's attempt to make sense of some very strange recent events by writing things down, since she can no longer trust her own memories. Plot points include a tumultuous new relationship with a gamer girl, the suicides of her mother and maternal grandmother, and her encounter with a vicious siren, a wolf, a feral little girl, or something altogether else. This was a really interesting well-written book but it was also very, VERY strange.

(2) Survive the Night by Riley Sager (336 pages, 2021) (crime/mystery/thriller).