The taper has begun. Saturday's long run was only 10 miles — "only," LOL. We'll do 8 this weekend, and then the half marathon is March 19. Eek! I am nervous as hell, but after Saturday's run, I'm feeling fairly confident that I'll be able to run the distance. I'm not sure at all if I'll be able to achieve my goal of running the distance in 2 hours. I took my new "super shoes" for a test drive this week. They feel great. Weird, but great. They're light as a feather, which is nice as the legs start to feel pretty heavy after a while. And they feel good on my feet, which is key — and probably while I'm running the most painful part on my body. After the run, on the other hand, it's my ass that usually hurts. After the 12 miles last weekend, it was my knee, and that freaked me out as I've never had any knee pain before. Was it "runner's knee"? I don't know. It is funny how worried people seem to be about injuring oneself while powerlifting when, in my experience at least, it's running that absolutely fucks your body up. But I've been doing my PT exercises, foam-rolling the hell out of my quads and IT band, using the massage gun on my calves, and praying that I can stay injury-free.
The work on my post-Hack Education project(s) is proceeding nicely. I started my Precision Nutrition coaching coursework this past week, and wow, what a difference between it and the NASM Personal Training coursework I just completely. The mission of the organizations — totally different. The curriculum — totally different. (Not a surprise there, I guess: nutrition coaching versus fitness coaching.) But the pedagogy — totally different. And the ed-tech — sigh, there is no escaping it for me — totally different. I'm taking copious notes on this as part of my new writing project, and I'll write more about this at length — but it is so crucial, as more and more industries seem to be turning to online PD and online certification that we address this (dammit) because if you rely on surveillance and shaming as part of how you train people, surveillance and shaming are going to be part of how, in turn, they work and relate with others.
Speaking of relating with others, I thought I'd fire up the ol' RSS reader again, but I want to start following feeds from scratch rather than reusing an old OPML file. Because I really do not care about ed-tech, despite that last paragraph. But then I realized that I hardly know any bloggers who aren't in ed-tech.
"Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in." — Silvio Dante, channeling Michael Corleone.
I have many food-related updates: 1) we tried out a new Yemeni coffeehouse in our neighborhood: Kin had a rose latte, and me, the cardamom latte. Kin had a strawberry-syrup infused cake; me, Turkish Delight, but nothing like the wretched pink rosewater flavored cubes I've eaten before. 2) We also ate at Day Trip, a restaurant that specializes in fermentation. It was astounding, and I had to keep double-checking the menu to try to identify what ingredients were imparting the flavors, the acidity. (Lemon verbena chlorophyll. Tomato miso and gochujang.) 3) After living here almost three years now, I finally grocery shopped at Berkeley Bowl. Man, why did I wait so long?! (The pandemic, I guess.) I love a good grocery store — it was "the family business," after all. And this one is the best I've ever shopped in. 4) I bought a waffle-maker. Consider it "research" for the upcoming project (which now has a logo and a URL, and soon a newsletter.)