6

Town Baby

I didn’t need to think too hard about this week’s prompt of Town & Country for Sunday Scribblings. I wouldn’t have spent the last five years living in NYC if I wasn’t in love with big cities. This place will push your boundaries and comfort levels in so many ways that you better really love it here if you want to stick around.

Aside from access to unbelievable restaurants, theater, art and everything else, here are a few examples of why I love living in a place with 8 million people:

What else can I say? What about you? Town or country? You can read more here.

0

Infections and Inequalities

Unbelievable. Extremely drug-resistant TB isn’t very infectious, huh? Sure, travel through Europe and North America on your honeymoon, no problem. Never mind that XDR TB is resistant to almost all drugs used to treat TB (including the two first-line drugs and the best second-line ones too). Never mind that becoming infected could mean a death sentence if you (unlike this American injury lawyer) do not have access to the expensive and intensive treatment and medical care necessary to try to treat the infection.

Paul Farmer writes in his book Infections and Inequalities that “inequality itself constitutes our modern plague,” and this privileged man’s careless actions demonstrate this, with his clear disregard for the possibility of infecting others that may not be so “lucky” as him to have access to treatment. There is no excuse, no matter what you tape record your doctors saying. You simply can not equate legal liability with social responsibility.

1

Early Rising

This week has marked my re-entry into the world of morning running. Yes, it may be hard to believe, but there was a year or two of a.m. running during grad school (thanks, Cari!), when I could fit naps in between work and classes. But it’s been a struggle to work it into my M-F 9-5 routine — with morning phone calls to Germany and late evenings at work or class or with friends — and so I gave up trying (sorry, Cari!) and ran in the evenings or not at all.

But when I developed my training plan for the NYC Half, and decided to really go for it, I realized that I could not fit all of that running into my evenings (at least, not without giving up my social life). Nor do I enjoy running in the heat and humidity at the end of the day. Apparently an August half-marathon was all the motivation I needed to make the switch, because, here I am, having run at 6:30am twice so far this week.

I can hardly believe it myself. I’m a little extra tired at the end of the day, but I think that will settle down in the next week or so (it might not have been the smartest to embark on this early journey after a long weekend of late nights). So I’ll keep doing what I’m doing and see how it goes.

Next week I try my first tempo run, and will definitely report back on how that goes. All of my past training has just been about getting out there and getting the mileage done, so I’m curious to see what I can get out of doing some speed work.

On on!

0

Starting Simple

Simple. That is not a word I use to describe my life. But it can be applied to my run today. My training for the NYC Half began this week, and as I’ve mentioned, I’m going to step it up a bit from previous half marathons. It’ll require a little more schedule coordination and rearranging to make sure I can fit in the long runs, the speed workouts, and the strength training — I’ve even got the Excel spreadsheet to prove it.

But today was an easy 4 mile run, up to Prospect Park and back, with no other goals than to get myself out of bed, acclimate myself to the heat and humidity, and enjoy the festive feeling of a three-day weekend. Plain and simple. And I’d say those goals were easily met. As much as I complain about running in the humidity, it felt good today — almost cleansing. So here’s to starting out simple!

Find more simplicity here.