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Showing posts from August 21, 2017

2017 Falmouth Road Race – It Was Hot

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Hi, guys! I ran my 5th Falmouth Road Race yesterday, and it was a total blast! I know I’ve said this in previous blog posts, but the Falmouth Road Race is truly the best race ever. The course is absolutely gorgeous, it’s well-organized, and the crowd can’t be beat – it’s basically like running through a party for the entire 7 miles! If you’re a runner, I highly recommend that you put this race on your bucket list! Race morning started bright and early with coffee and breakfast. I ate my usual go-to, pre-race breakfast of toast with peanut butter and banana. This meal never lets me down! After breakfast, Marisa and I got ourselves ready for the race and then headed out to battle traffic and find a place to park. Falmouth is crazy the morning of the race, so we gave ourselves plenty of time to get ourselves to the buses to take us to Woods Hole. (The race is point-to-point, so the buses shuttle you to the start line.) We arrived at Woods Hole at about 45 minutes before the sta

Dear Mark: Obesity as “First World Problem”?

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For today’s edition of Dear Mark , I’m not so much answering a direct question as I am riffing on an offhand comment. In the comments from last week’s post on weight loss culture , someone mentioned obesity being a “first world problem.” It made me think more deeply about the issue. In a literal sense, yes. Obesity is often a first-world problem. If your primary concern is figuring out how to stop yourself from eating too much food, you’ve got the kind of problems starving kids in developing countries would love to have. Yet, industrial food has a long reach. The island nations of Nauru, Micronesia, Tonga, Cook Islands, and Niue are the top 5 fattest countries in the world—even though they aren’t “first world”—because they rely almost entirely on imported, industrial food. And if you take a look at the global fat rankings , the picture gets even murkier. The top 7 are island nations in the South Pacific. After that it’s Kuwait, whose Kuwaiti dinar is the highest valued currency i

The Day Before the Race

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Good morning, friends! I’m happy to report that I finished the Falmouth Road Race in one piece. Full recap coming later today, but, first, I wanted to share some adventures (some smart, some not-so-smart ) from the day before the race. My morning started at 7:01 AM with a tiny human coming into our bedroom to wake us up and let us know that his alarm clock was glowing green. Once we had all eaten breakfast and were ready to go, Mal, Quinn, and I got into the car and drove to CrossFit. The workout was a lonnnng one. Because I was running Falmouth the next day, I went light on the deadlift weight, but, holy cow, it seemed the longest 30-minute workout I’ve ever done.  By the end, I had a completed 20 rounds, which calculated to 100 deadlifts, 260 push-up (although, I did most of them on my knees), and 180 box jumps. Oops. After CrossFit, we headed straight home. No Coffee Shack for us because we have been dining out a ton, living it up this summer, and we needed to reign it in a

Virginia Is For Love

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Hope you all had a nice weekend. We are still very much reminded of what happened the week prior here in Cville, but there are signs of love, unity, and community everywhere. T and I went downtown for dinner on Friday night. There were tons of people out and about, but the air did have a bit of a different vibe. 4th Street is closed and filled with flowers and tributes to Heather Heyer and the others injured during the attack. We settled on  Brasserie Saison for dinner. We shared small plates, oysters, and a yummy whole branzino. These scallops were incredible! The sesame fried crust was slightly sweet, almost like a donut? Loved them. Pickled cucumbers and crab meat in a sweet curry sauce! The branzino was light and smokey, and I loved the brightness of the tomatoes and parsley. We left a little room for dessert — salted caramel + jasmine at Splendora’s. On Saturday morning we had toast and yogurt and met about 100 other people at ACAC for an outdoor workout. It wa