columbus marathon training update - 20 miles and an ugly cry

As of today, there are 55 days left until the Columbus Marathon. I am in week 17 of my extended 24 week training plan, I believe. To be honest, these are the dog days of training, and it's only because of my type A, meticulous spreadsheet habit that I even have any idea what's going on right now.

Last weekend was a big one for fitness at Next Gen House. Not only did Mark become a triathlete, but I had my first 20 mile run. The illusive 20 miles that everyone says is where the "wall" resides. I had always thought I'd run into walls running before, and I had somehow managed to Kool-Aid man through them and push. 

But I think those previous walls were only piles of rocks to step over, because for the first time this weekend, I ran straight into a concrete wall that knocked me over and made me ugly cry for the first time in the two years I've considered myself a runner. 

So that's what a wall feels like.

I actually considered waiting to write my next training update until after I completed another 20(+) miler, you know, to make it seem easier than it actually is. But that's not real. It doesn't let you know how hard this is. Sometimes I like to think that if something is possible, it's not really hard. I am admitting to myself that this marathon is an Everest for me. 

The run was from the North Side to the Waterfront and back. It was just a dream last year - it seemed like the impossible journey - so many miles. But we did it. First 10 miles were great. Miles 10-12 sucked all available energy out of me, and from that point on it was, well, awful. I was fighting tears for 12-14, desperately trying to talk myself out of a panic that would make my asthmatic lungs clench up. At 15, I asked my friend to please talk to me, if she had any available breath, because I couldn't pull my mind out of its self-destruct sequence. (And to her eternal credit she did.) The voice that says "I can't breathe, I can't do this, I have come so far and am about to fail, 26.2 is impossible, I am a joke."

For the last few successful long runs, I've been doing a 60 second walk break at each 2 mile increment. It's done wonders for my heart rate. On this run, by mile 16 I had to go down to one-mile increments, and I finished 18 and 19 by walking at half-mile increments. 

When my GPS read 20, I slowed to a staggering walk and started weeping. Not just a few tears, but that ugly cry with noises that you didn't know you could make. I don't even really know why I was crying in particular. It was a huge release, probably of tension I had been holding in for, literally, hours. Probably days. Probably this whole training cycle.

I read a lot of articles and essays about bad runs - like the ones that make you physically drained or pukey. But I rarely hear about people who just weep when they are done with a bad run.

But after a few days have passed, I am ready to rise up and get those shoes back on and hit the miles this week. I actually have two step-back weeks in a row, each 13 miles, one with the Montour Half Marathon, which was my first half marathon ever last year. I have two more 20(+) milers to get that confidence back that I was flying on after a really good 18 miler. 

After all, one does not simply stroll up Everest (or Mordor). I've finally realized that it's okay that this is really hard for me - the hardest thing physically I've ever done, and probably with the exception of grieving, the hardest mentally as well. While I watch a lot of really inspirational runners chasing their 8:30 or 9:30 averages for the Columbus Marathon, I'm chasing a 13:00 average. Yes, a lot slower, but it also means that I'm giving the run the best I can do for 4+ hours. I'll be happy to finish Columbus in 6 hours - to finish at all. And that's okay. 

This summer, I've run farther than I've ever run before, all over my beautiful, wonderful city. I'm wearing out shoes and burning through rolls of K-tape. I'm pushing my body and my mind and I know it will be worth it if I stick with it. The hard things always are.

a triathlete lives at Next Gen House

The better half of Next Gen House is now a triathlete. You know I'm not talking about me.

Saturday morning, earlier than the crack of dawn, we headed up to Erie for Mark to participate in his first triathlon - the Presque Isle Triathlon at Presque Isle State Park.

It's a sprint tri - you swim 0.35 miles, bike 13 miles and run 3.5 miles. This particular tri draws everyone from elite Ironman competitors to first time triathletes, and from what we gathered it was very well organized and ran like a well-oiled machine.

You know who else was a well-oiled machine? This guy.

He did awesome, and beat the time he was aiming for by more than 15 minutes. That's just crazy.

I enjoyed cheering so much, particularly because I'm usually competing in most of the events I've ever gone to like this. So it was great to look people in the eye, especially during the run portion where they weren't going by in a blur and were tired, and cheer and clap and encourage. 

I spotted this sign, the best one of the day. I bet it made whoever John is smile.

The weather held out and it wasn't more than two hours after the tri was over that the sun came out and started baking everyone, so thankfully he didn't have to do this in full sun. The conditions were ideal, except for maybe a stronger current than anticipated in the bay where they were swimming. 

All in all, it was a great event to spectate at and so fun to watch people give it their all. 

I was so proud of Mark, my heart almost burst out of my chest. I know how it feels to be dedicated to a training regimen and to be in the dog days of it toward the end where you're not sure the event will ever come and you're just plain tired. He stuck with it through the humidity this summer, in the rain and the heat and just completely knocked it out of the park this weekend. 

Real Life CSA: week 19

Another haul this week, with tons of staples, a for real baby carrot and my current vegetable arch nemesis.

Beets are going to a good home, since they are the one vegetable whose train we cannot get on. But at least we know people who like them, so they don't go to waste and we get to share. 

The potatoes will hang out in our basement with other potatoes, as we're still eating up previous stashes. Thankfully potatoes have a relatively long storage life in the right conditions.

The carrots will be eaten in salad and probably raw with pizza. (Mark likes to eat carrots as a side with pizza. We go with it.) This tiny actual for real baby carrot is my favorite thing this week. Look how stinking cute that thing is. 

I was thinking of making a corn and poblano chowder with this corn, though it's also tempting to just eat it on the cob since after all, it's still summer.

After the weekend of swiss chard harvesting, we don't have any ready to eat in our garden, so this lovely, delicate chard will probably be a side dish.

Peaches will be eaten straight up. I love how peaches straight from a farm still have their perfect peach smell. I swear grocery store peaches usually have no smell at all, or they smell so sickly sweet you know they're two seconds from rot. 

And as for the lovely tomatoes, I'm thinking fresh salsa, also incorporating the red onion and my arch nemesis: hot peppers.

It took more than 2 days and a super sweaty krav maga class for all of the pepper oil to leech out of my hands after Sunday's pepper freezing adventure. So I kept these in the bag and need to get to the store to get some sort of hazmat suit to deal with them. (OK, probably nitrile or plastic dish gloves, but humor me.)

But I do want to make crockpot chalupas this week (the idea brought on by a Taco Bell craving, and since you won't get me within 10 feet of a Taco Bell, I satisfy the craving at home). So a fresh salsa might go nicely with that.

We also have about 7 very large red tomatoes from our own garden (one of which you can see peeking out in the camera frame in the first photo). Mark will likely make those into fresh tomato sauce.

Lots going on here at the end of summer - how about you? What are you making? How are you keeping up on your shares?

something that's not about vegetables or gardens

I started this blog about 18 months ago to have an outlet to write about the things I'm passionate about - the things that I wish filled my days instead of only just whatever free time I can manage to devote to it. So most of the time, it's gardens and urban farming, CSAs and food justice. Backyard chickens and canning jars - the stuff that's in my profile.

But I've tried this week to think about what the next thing was I should write about. And every time I try to find the words, I keep coming back to Ferguson. It's a hurdle my mind can't leap over right now. I don't want to hide behind "but I just write about vegetables."

So if you're here for vegetables and gardens, check in with me Thursday. Today I just need to write something else.

I watch as people across the country film themselves dumping ice on their heads to "raise awareness" for ALS, learning really only about what people look like when they dump a bucket of ice water on their heads. Yes, yes, they've raised some money for research, and it's a horrendous disease and a good cause. But while the nation distracts itself with a viral video craze, Ferguson is self-destructing. 

Maybe we can't bear to look at what's happening in Ferguson because it shines too much of a spotlight on our own fear and ignorance. It's easy to support things like research for diseases. It's much harder to look at the photos and videos of what's happening in Ferguson and have to face the fact that racism is a cancer that has had a grip on America since before it was America. Where are the ice bucket videos for that disease?

How many more black men and women must die at the hands of militant law enforcement officers who shoot first and ask questions later? Do you remember the story of Renisha McBride, who was shot and killed for walking up onto someone's porch? If I walked onto a neighbor's porch, someone would assume I was bringing zucchini or asking if they'd move their car. Surely in a country founded on the principles of freedom and justice for all, the freedom to walk up to a door, unarmed and knock, should be upheld.

There are many studies that support the fact that black people are disproportionately targeted by the justice system and law enforcement. Better and more qualified voices than mine have spoken those words. Lots of data, lots of facts. 

But beyond the hard numbers, we know in our hearts that if Michael Brown had been a white woman like me, he would still be alive. He died in a street in Missouri that could be any street. Mine, for instance. Yours. 

There are so many things to say. About freedom of the press and freedom to gather in peaceful protect. About the militarization of police and the danger of focusing on a handful of looters. It's easy to feel like I shouldn't have a voice in this because I'm white and would honestly answer no, if asked if I was racist. 

But that just won't do. If you're an American and a human, you should have something to say about this. Some examining to do. I'm not convinced that any one of us has the right to say "I'm not racist" because racist assumptions are ingrained in our culture so deeply that we don't even realize we're part of them and that we perpetuate them. 

I work in a predominantly black neighborhood and I've heard many people make jokes about the surroundings - you know, "those" people always hanging out in the park. With the unspoken wink. Why have I let those comments have a voice and kept my own silent? Just using the phrase "those people" means we've crossed the line. And that's just one example. We let so much go by us without saying a word.

We can tweet about Ferguson and pass around links to the news, and that's a good thing. We need to be reading and understanding what's going on and thinking about the concept of systemic racism and how we got to this place. We need to hold our leaders accountable. We need to support the journalists there and press for the truth - not cable news spin. After all, knowledge dispels ignorance.

Think about how your words contribute to a larger dialogue in this country. When you hear someone making office cooler commentary, turn inward and reach for your empathy. Don't hide behind your skin color - find your voice in those moments and speak. For the people in Ferguson and for all of us. 

canning and preserving: freezing swiss chard

Our garden's swiss chard has thrived so much this year that it actually got away from us. We eat a lot of vegetables, but two people can only eat so much in a given week. We hadn't picked any chard in probably three weeks, and in that time the plants got huge, to the point where they were starting to be attacked by pests. 

I decided to harvest it all, in the hopes that we'll get another round later. But this is what I picked from the 5 or 6 plants we have. (OK, plus the peppers, few tomatoes and bag of green beans.) Knowing that you can obviously buy frozen spinach, I decided to try something new and freeze greens at home.

After I took out some chard to make tacos, this is what was left. I separated the leaves and the stems for ease of chopping. Those are decent sized bowls, too.

And then I chopped and I chopped and I chopped.

While I was chopping, I was bringing a large pot of water to boil. Once it was up to temp, I would take batches of leaves and stems and blanch them for about 3 minutes.

Blanching is a quick dunk in boiling water - you can do it with beans and tomatoes, too. It kills the enzymes that make vegetables decay, so they will stop "going bad" in the freezer and retain their color and flavor. I hear you can buy blanchers that are strainer type things that go inside the pots for ease of removal. That would probably be helpful if you're blanching greens like I was, because man those stems and leaves were hard to fish out.

Once they were out, they were dunked straight into a bowl of ice cold water, to bring down the temperature and abruptly stop the blanching process.

Then it was time to squeeze. The soggy chard hung out in a colander until I added another batch and then another, and so on.

After all of the chard was blanched, rinsed and cooled, I picked up handfuls at a time and squeezed as much moisture out as possible. Each ball was placed on a cookie sheet with parchment paper, for the freezer. 

After about 4 hours, the balls were solid and frosty.

Just like the peppers, the swiss chard balls went in a Ziploc bag, with the date as well as a reminder that each ball is about a serving.

Now they'll be ready to defrost and saute when we need them. I'm not sure how well other greens freeze, like collards or kale. But I know that for the recipes and side dishes where we need chard, the frozen balls will be sufficient. 

Theoretically you could remove the stems and only freeze the leaves. I've seen recipes for pickled chard stems, but since I'm not interested in pickling every single vegetable on the planet, and because I love the stems of chard just as much as the leaves, I included them. I just chopped off the most fibrous portions from the bottom and threw them in the compost.

What's going gangbusters in your garden right now? Any preservation plans?

canning and preserving: freezing peppers

This weekend, our backyard harvest was so big that I had to face facts - the peppers were not going to fit in the fridge. So it was time to get to chopping.

I had sweet bell, poblano, hot wax and jalapeno peppers, so I started with the sweet and worked my way up to hot. I cut them into wide pieces - 4 for the larger peppers, and 2 for the small hot peppers.

After pulling out the seeds and pith, I laid them out, skin side up on a cookie sheet with foil.

After a few minutes under the broiler, the skins start to blister and blacken.

I didn't do a great job of capturing the next step on video because my hands were covered in skins, but once the peppers come out of the oven, you can peel off the blistered skin to reveal the roasted pepper flesh underneath. 

I will note that I did use gloves while cutting the hot wax and jalapeno peppers, though they must have had Scoville units off the charts, because I have major hot pepper fingers today. I've had pepper in my eyes before, or on a finger or two, but nothing like this. I am not sure if the peppers being really hot made some of the gloves' protection break down, but all 10 of my fingers - not just the tips - are suffering. Remember that hot peppers can vary in their strength - it's not just habaneros that will burn you. 

*Edit* I did some research and apparently capsaicin can burn through latex gloves, which is why I got hot pepper hands. The safer kinds of gloves are nitrile or rubber dish gloves, though thinking of peeling the skins off of pepper pieces wearing rubber dish gloves is just not at all appealing. 

I laid them on another cookie sheet with a piece of parchment paper on it, making sure that they didn't touch each other, if possible.

Next, the tray goes in the freezer until the pieces are individually frozen. It's the same technique that you use when you want to freeze berries or tomatoes individually, instead of having them be frozen in one massive block. This allows you to pick out individual peppers when you need them, instead of having to defrost the entire batch at once.

After they were completely frozen, I put them in Ziploc freezer bags, marked with the type of pepper.

Now when I need them, I can take a piece out and basically rinse it under hot water to "wake it back up."

This is a great way to preserve peppers, since they are now roasted and ready for sandwiches or other recipes that call for roasted peppers. You can do as many or as few as you have, too, so it doesn't require you to have the right quantity as many canning recipes do.

Real Life CSA: week 18

Another haul this week, with some of my favorites - and nature's sugar everywhere.

We're holding our own right now, keeping up with the produce coming in and trying to incorporate it into as many meals as possible, and preserve it when necessary. 

It's easy to get frustrated when you're dealing with an onslaught of produce, but I try to remind myself that it won't be too long before the ground is frozen and I'm both grateful for the time spent canning and longing for the spring to come again.

I love getting garlic and onions in the CSA, since they always taste so good and store well. Though to be honest, they don't last long in our house anyway because we cook so much and they are staple ingredients in most dishes.

This watermelon and the nectarines will just be eaten straight up. Typically in the summers I like to make things with fruit - like berry muffins and stone fruit crisps and jams. But this year, I've just wanted to eat it plain. I don't want to mask the flavors with extra sugar and grains. 

I'm thinking maybe a bolognese sauce of some type with the celery this time. I've been wanting some hearty red sauce for pasta and bolognese is one of my favorites. I saw parsley and thought I'll use up some previous weeks' red potatoes and do a standard boiled parsley potatoes side dish.

This kohlrabi looks awesome, and I love the colors and shapes. I get a kick out of the endless variety of nature, if you hadn't noticed. I think Kohlrabi would also be an awesome band name. Someone get on that. As for these two, I think we'll likely roast them.

Cucumbers will probably go on salads - we've certainly seen enough of them around our house this year. Same goes for green beans. I'm on green bean overload at the moment, but hopefully these will stay fine for a few more days so I can develop a desire to eat them again. 

Last but not least are these sun gold tomatoes, which I lovingly refer to as crack. I impulse bought them at my last Penn's Corner Farm Stand pickup, and am excited to get this pint. (Plus I ordered two more from the farm stand. Gotta feed the habit.) They are so sweet - they taste like candy. I eat them like candy, too. Makes me realize how much more fulfilling it is to satisfy a sweet tooth with nature's sugar instead of a candy bar. 

What's in your CSA this week? What are you cooking? Do tell!