Yesterday was the Bronx Ten Miler. It was a gorgeous morning — sunny but cool. 13000 runners descended on Yankee Stadium to run up Grand Concourse and back. The vibes — damn, Bronx! — were, as the kids say (maybe, I dunno what the kids say) were poppin’. I was determined to simply run this as my regularly scheduled long run, but with a pickup for the last push. But I felt great, and I ran the whole thing at a pretty good clip — a very good clip considering last week was my highest mileage week ever, so I’m not rested or tapered and I wasn’t carb-loaded and I wasn’t wearing my racing shoes. It felt great — the most important part — and I have a lot more confidence going into my half marathon now (just a couple of weeks away!). Although I will say: getting to a race, relying on the Sunday morning subway along with tens of thousands of other runners is not really how I want to spend my pre-race time. Didn’t make it to Yankee Stadium in time to pee, for example.
In other athlete news, there were ups and downs in the week’s training. I did yoga — that was fine. I rode the Citibike to and from the gym on Wednesday and Friday — that was annoying. I lifted on those days — that went well, with the exception of the bench which is currently giving me the yips. I swam on Friday — that went okay, although I’m quite slow. (I am having lunch with Coach KB today, and although we’ll talk about lifting for sure, she used to swim competitively in college, so I have a lot of questions for her about how to design a training program for swimming.) It was Thursday’s run — 7.8 miles outdoors — that was particularly frustrating as it felt hotter than I expected, and I just didn’t have the energy to run as much as I was supposed to. I know I’m at the peak of my training, so that’s partly it; and while the temperatures were cooler, the direct sun beating down on me — no shade on the upper part of the west side highway — took it out of me. I also wore some new shoes that were just wildly uncomfortable once I went beyond 5 miles. (I need to write about shoe technology for Second Breakfast, as there’s a lot that’s super fascinating about how shoes are designed and sized.) My other runs were fine though, and again, the race yesterday was amazing. So much of physical training is actually a mental game, isn’t it.
In other fitness news, I finished Greg Lehmann’s Running Resiliency course. I learned a lot from it — he definitely has a very different approach to physical therapy than a lot of fitness-influencers (licensed PTs or not). I need to write an essay about the latter.
We’re reading Naomi Klein’s new book Doppelgänger, which also me thinking a ton about the presentation of identity and expertise online. (It’s in part about her doppelgänger, the other Naomi.) I started reading Momfluenced, about “mommy influencers,” which isn’t as smart or as well written as Klein’s book, but is a good companion thought exercise. We finished Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, which is on the list of my favorites of the year so far; I also started and finished R. F. Kuang’s latest, Yellowface, which is quite unlike her other novels (which I’ve loved). Interesting, as with the other books I’m reading, it was very much about identity, manipulation, and online "performance."" I also read The Baking Powder Wars, which was pretty eye-opening. Other media: episodes of Physical; Only Murders in the Building; Reservation Dogs; the documentary Citizen Jane; and the latest Barbell Medicine and Burnt Toast episodes.
Work: I published the usual three Second Breakfast pieces — a coffee muffin recipe (with a preamble on instant coffee); a look at hydration and the history of Gatorade; and the week-in-review. I recorded a podcast with Neil Selwyn, and I’m preparing to start a Second Breakfast — well, sort of — I’m going to record some audio and send the transcripts out in the newsletter but probably also publish the audio too. I need to locate the mic (etc) from the move and get the office set up for this.
There were some wins and some fails in the kitchen this week: I made an “autumn chicken” with garlic couscous (the former: meh; the latter: good); I made a beans with rice casserole (from NYT Cooking); crispy chickpeas and beef (also from NYT Cooking, but disappointing as the chickpeas were decidedly not crispy); peanut butter cookies (from Sally’s Baking Addiction, who never misses); a chicken Reuben skillet item from Simply Julia that is always delicious along with baked potatoes; a savory bread pudding (also from NYT Cooking and also truly underwhelming, but it used up the big bag I had in the freezer of leftover bread so hooray).
Dining out: Breakfast burritos at Los Tacos No. 1. I bought conches at the local bakery, El Mil Sabores, on Saturday but sadly they were not good. We went to the UWS for Absolute Bagels post-race. Wow. These truly are the best NYC bagels. (We walked back to the subway past our old apartment, pictured above.) We ate at Rice x Beans last night — the best Brazilian meal I’ve ever had (but admittedly only, like, the third time I've eaten Brazilian food as I just don't love the meat sweats), although dessert was underwhelming.
And I'd be remiss if I didn't make note of the passing of my friend David Golumbia. His book The Cultural Logic of Computation absolutely shaped my thinking on digital computing. He invited me to speak at VCU, where I presented one of my favorite talks — The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Issue a Press Release. I'm terribly sad about his loss — loss of a friend but of a really brilliant thinker who was not taken seriously by academia's fans of The Digital. I think he's been proven to be right about everything: the fascism in bitcoin, in social media, in "computational thinking." He will be missed, and I'll continue to hold his fire and fury in my heart when I write about tech.