rheinsberg | Member Posts

No running this weekend, I still need to sort out the shoe thing. Furthermore, I slacked off on coddling my knee, thinking it was all better because it had been asymptomatic for so long, and now it's back to occasional symptoms. So now I'm back to trying to coddle it...except...

I am revising my year-long hypothesis that my hamstring is overstretched and replacing it with a hypothesis that it is in fact tight. I thought this wasn't the case because I had tried stretching it and it had gotten much worse, but I'm now thinking that I positioned my leg wrong and was in fact tightening all or part of the hamstring.

It has been mildly responsive to stretching and massage in the last 24 hours. Not of the "I stretched it once and it will never give me problems again," which is my favorite kind of tight muscle, but even partial, temporary pain relief is better than nothing. At least it points in the direction of a treatment.

Though I knew that the bottoms of my feet were tight for 10 years, and it still took me 10 years to (accidentally) figure out how to fix them, since stretching only got me partial relief and massage none. OTOH, I do at least know of the existence of sleep posture as a factor, so hopefully this doesn't take me another 10 years.

However, stretching my hamstring does irritate my knee, so, sigh. As my partner says, why can't the leg parts all be on the same team? Why do they have to fight each other?

In happier news, I also acquired some equipment, such as a running vest, at the local REI store, so hopefully that helps. If not--say it chafes--I have 1 year to return it.

Hopefully I can get new shoes soon and break them in and go running again next weekend!

selenak

The first three episodes of The Testaments have been dropped in my part of the world on Disney +. It's an adapatation of Margaret Atwood's novel of the same name, which is a decades later written sequel to her famous dystopian classic The Handmaid's Tale; when it was published, I reviewed it here. Just to make their lives more complicated, though, the show is also a sequel to the tv series The Handmaid's Tale. The first (very good) season of which I watched, but not the later ones, as word of mouth about diminishing quality and lack of time have detained me, but I did osmose this presents a problem because not only is the backstory the showin its later seasons developed for one of the central characters (Aunt Lydia) very different from her backstory in the novel, but the timeline of another central character is different as well. With this in mind, my spoilery reaction to the first three episodes is beneath the cut. Above cut: those first three episodes are well acted and produced and make some interesting choices re: adapting the source material - and I don't mean "interesting" as a euphemism for bad -, but haven't revealed yet how they'll solve the Lydia problem.

( The perils of being a female teenager in Gilead )

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Munich

cahn

5/5. I am having SO many feelings about this book that I am not sure I can actually articulate them all. But also I am very aware that my feelings are entangled partially in, uh, currently being obsessed with a fanon ship that maps super easily on to this one, so you know, as usual, I am not to be trusted about my feelings and I'm very willing to believe that it might not hit quite right if one doesn't happen to be exactly in that situation? Anyway... it's about these two eighteen-year-old boys who start the book at boarding school together in 1914. Sidney Ellwood is half-Jewish, social, charismatic, demonstrative, loves and writes poetry. Henry Gaunt is half-German, intense, introverted, anxious, loves ancient Greek. (...I also have Feelings about characters who quote poetry. And, as it turns out, ancient Greek.) The two of them have strong and more-or-less repressed feelings for each other. (Gaunt's feelings are particularly repressed.)

But. It being 1914, it rapidly starts being about something else than boarding school.

I should probably also mention a huge, extremely gigantic content note for trench warfare and historical levels of wounds and death.

( no spoilers, perhaps mild meta-spoilers, but at least I am more-or-less coherent )

Major spoilers, starts reasonably coherent but rapidly devolves into word-vomiting

I was so sure that one or both of Elly and Gaunt would die because it struck me as That Kind of heartbreaking book plus which I guess I've been socialized to understand that Teh Gays Always Die (and Carruthers and Sandys died so early on!! :( :( ), and I really REALLY wanted them to have a happy ending, I can't actually think of the last time I've wanted that so much for a couple, and when they got together I felt like, okay, at least they got one happy time before one of them died! All I wanted was for someone somewhere to get some happiness in the end.

The only thing that surprised me was that Gaunt died when the book was only half over. (BURGOYNE.) I was sure then that the next half would be Ellwood writing poetry about him, like Tennyson, or like Sassoon. I was SO surprised when he turned out to have survived! And then my reaction was that the book was now going to find new and exciting ways to break me (true, but not in the way I thought), and I spent most of the second half of the book worried Gaunt would die in some other way, and expressed that I was never going to forgive Winn if Gaunt died, or Ellwood did, without Ellwood finding out that Gaunt was still alive.

I absolutely absolutely adored Hayes and his friendship with Gaunt and his more prickly friendship with Ellwood and the contrast between him and the public schoolboys (who always get promoted over him, the poor guy), and him looking after Ellwood (both physically and e.g. warning him away from Watts) even though he thought Ellwood was looking down on him. I was also convinced he was going to die because I loved him so much (I actually said that I thought he would make it to the end of the war and then die, just to spite me. I actually said this!) And he didn't die but he ended up with BOTH LEGS (or at least 1 1/2) gone! I was like. Winn. Could you not have left him ONE leg?! COME ON. I would rather Gaunt or Ellwood had lost their legs. HAYES.

(Also Hayes panicking to Ellwood and Ellwood trying very very badly to reassure him (no wonder Hayes doesn't want to write him), then Ellwood having that exact panic after he's invalided out, omg)

I absolutely loved that Elly was into poetry and used poetry to basically articulate his emotions (I do the same kind of thing -- a lot of how I understand the world is made up of quotations from novels and poems and songs; my head has been full of Sassoon and Owen writing this post) and that moment when he declaimed Keats at Gaunt and Gaunt had to accept that he was in love with him, except that was when Gaunt knew he was going to die, auuuuugh. And also when Elly lost his poetry and then -- that little glimpse of how he might be getting it back at the end -- auuuuuugh

And also Gaunt and his ancient Greek and how sometimes he just quotes in Greek and I love it

And also I love that Winn doesn't just give us the one side, when Gaunt gets captured by the Germans it's a very stark reminder that although we've been POV English, the English aren't the only ones dying in this war and that even if it's easy for the English soldiers not to see the German soldiers as people and vice versa, they both are. And Gaunt being half-German of course knew this from the beginning, which adds another layer. This line, augh: Had it not been for his khaki uniform, no one should have known he was the enemy.

(And that shattering German POV, for just a minute.)

And also the prisoner-of-war scenes which are almost comic, we needed some of that at that point in the book, and ALSO Pritchard and Devi totally being like oh, yeah, no big deal at all about Gaunt being an "invert," and making ordinary jokes about it like they would about anything else and being totally accepting, instead of all the rejection and awfulness Gaunt's been fearing (and might have gotten from someone else), and that healing something in Gaunt so that he can face his love for Elly and actually tell him that, and be okay with it even if Ellwood can't love him back, I LOVE THIS and I know it's absolutely wish-fulfillment, but we already saw the part where Caruthers basically committed suicide so he didn't have to deal with the terrible consequences of being homosexual (augh!), so yeeeeeah I didn't need that to happen again, that was quite all right.

And then I read the bit where Maud says she's not going to marry Elly and I was cheering for her and also thinking that okay, even if everyone else's life is messed up (I still worried that Ellwood and Gaunt wouldn't find each other again, at this point) maybe Maud is the one character things will work out for, because it would be awful if she married Ellwood

AND THEN THEY DID MEET AGAIN
And they were both so damaged! Except that Gaunt, having been in the POW camp instead of fighting for a while, had recovered a bit mentally if not physically, and Ellwood was completely broken, augh. I had not thought that they would have to deal with shell shock instead of death, but of course they did

And Maud and Gaunt making up, and Maud being supportive and Gaunt apologizing (he really has been awful to her) and them speaking in Greek to each other <3

This bit: "Sometimes I think the War is harder on parents than on soldiers," said Pritchard. Gaunt could tell he was lying, but Gaunt would have lied too, if he had thought of it. And then, having learned from Pritchard, he says it to Mrs. Ellwood AUUUUUGH

(I said this before, but, now that I have the spoilers to back me up: all the little moments of kindness between characters that didn't have to happen, but did anyway, are I think what make me so hopelessly a fan of this book)

I think as we get close to the ending my thoughts just get more and more incoherent as Winn breaks my heart over and over again and I hadn't at all thought it would be because things were more-or-less going to be okay except that they can't exactly be okay but they can be as okay as possible:
Devi being ALIVE
CYRIL ROSEVEARE giving them the Brazil out!

"You don't have to give me your answer now, of course," said Roseveare. "I've already written to my uncle about you, just in case--"
He didn't finish. They both knew what he meant: in case I'm killed before I can help you.

Also: KEATS
Gaunt giving Hayes a JOB (and not a job as his freaking valet, either, not that I don't love Lord Peter but... like, let's let Hayes have a little class mobility here, that's the LEAST we can do)
"I'm not playing, either."

I mean, the rational part of my brain knows that the book is doing a few backflips to give them an ending where they can be alive and together ~~and not be Alan Turing~~ (although hi I found while writing this post that Robert Graves actually had the experience of almost dying of a lung wound and being reported dead, like Gaunt, though not because he was a pow, so it's not like she's completely making UP backflips, either) but the rest of my brain does not really care -- I think because we saw all the ways in which things could go wrong, it's a little like Carruthers and Sandys ( :(((((( ) and Aldworth and the Roseveare brothers and Lantham and -- and everyone else -- are the other stories that didn't work, that ended tragically, so in a sense my brain thinks of it like survivor bias; not everyone did die in WWI, or even most of everyone; someone had to survive; it might as well be them.
And also because they didn't survive unscathed. At all. Either physically or mentally. Which also seems -- reasonable, statistically speaking.
Also because no one should be Alan Turing (including especially Alan Turing) and I don't at all mind a universe where my characters ARE NOT (now, can I have a fix-it AU for Turing)

Physically speaking: Sassoon (who admittedly did not get his face shot off) lived until age 81 and Graves lived until age 90 after getting shot in the lung, so my headcanon is that Ellwood and Gaunt lived a very long time together :P

And then that last, awful twist of the knife. OH COME ON, the book was DONE and we were all going to live happily (or at least hopefully) EVER AFTER and now the third Roseveare brother is dead (as he dreamed back in the beginning, that was a shoe I had been bracing to drop for forever and when I finally let my guard down...). (While I was reading about WWII poets... I guess this happened to Wilfred Owen. Augh!)

And the LAST PARAGRAPH which didn't even register for me the first time -- I might not have actually read it properly then, because I was too busy trying not to throw the book across the room because Cyril was dead: Let us, like the soldiers of Waterloo, have our century of peace and prosperity, for we have paid for it in blood.

:(
Well, I'm thinking about that a lot this week.

( Here, have the Sassoon poem 'They', because it's been rattling around in my head for days now )

And I suppose reading this book, now, is: well: I think this should be required reading for anyone who tells the old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

cahn

Happy day-after-Easter!

Last week: Eyeliner shows that the Zealot faction is really bad! (No, really!) The Year of the Four Emperors, and those emperors discussed. Nero and his end. Lord Hervey of Frederician salon makes a surprise appearance!

This week: Titus attacks Jerusalem, but the factions have already done a lot of the work for him...

Next week: Rest of book 5!

mildred_of_midgard

Update re previous post: While I still think having soreness in very different places on both legs is a red flag, and I definitely noticed myself coming down harder on the left toes than the right, I do still have soreness on the right toes, aaaannndddd...

Google thinks I need different shoes. Which I suppose makes sense, as I optimized these shoes for "doesn't cause the ball of my right foot to pop," not for distance running. Since the ball of my right foot is mostly better, it's probably time to hit some shoe review websites and shoe stores and find a pair best suited for us crazy people known as aspiring ultrarunners.

While I hate shoes and hate shoe shopping, it seems safer than adjusting my stride.

Concern: I had to buy a shoe with a ton of space in the toebox to avoid compressing the ball of my right foot and causing numbness in my right middle toes. Now I apparently need less room in my toebox to avoid slamming my toes into the front of the shoe on every step. Maybe I can get away with keeping the width and going down half a size? We shall see. Wish me luck; I don't have good luck with shoes, feet, and legs.

mildred_of_midgard

Ugh, I'm going to have to solve this problem: I think my stride has me coming down too hard on my toes, especially on the left side (probably because of the hamstring?). I've been noticing some toe soreness toward the ends of runs and afterwards, and more or or less ignoring it. But yesterday's got to the point where my battered left toes were the most painful part.

They were sore for most of the day afterward, but I was able to put on my shoes and go to the store for food, so I didn't think anything of it. But by the evening, I was barely able to put on my shoes, and every step was so painful I was limping. I ended up taking ibuprofen (something I largely avoid doing) and icing (something that never works and, again, didn't work). The ibuprofen eventually kicked in and I was able to go to sleep, which is good, because even lying still, I could feel every beat of my pulse throb painfully in my swollen toes.

Woke up with a "normal" amount of soreness, so I should be able to walk around again, but I obviously need to fix this.

Am nervous about adjusting my stride, as that's how I got my hamstring injury. We'll see how this goes! Fingers crossed.

ETA: I should note that I *definitely* have different strides on the left and right; I get sore in very different places afterwards. That's presumably a sign something is off.

mildred_of_midgard

I've discovered that a pep talk that works one day doesn't work the next. Last time I tried to reuse the previous run's oh-so-effective pep talk, and it didn't work; I wimped out early.

This time I found one!!

It was based on the conversation I had with my roommate after my last run, discussing my regrets at having quit too soon, and which I summarized in my post here: "All the stamina-building happens in the last 20-40 minutes. In order to get to the last 20-40 minutes, you have to go through the first 2 hours. That's 2 hours I could be spending working on Peter Keith, Old Irish pedagogy, geology, German, Russian Duolingo, cleaning our vertical blinds and recaulking our bathtub, etc. So it really makes sense to do those last 20-40 minutes of pure exhaustion to get the most out of the first 2 hours."

These were my pep talks:

"The next 20 minutes are the only 20 minutes that matter." (Knowing full well that I was aiming for 40 minutes, but 20 minutes was a good manageable number my brain was willing to work with.)

"There's no point to having put yourself through the last 2.5 hours unless you do the next 20 minutes."

"You have a golden window of opportunity right now to do the strength- and stamina-building you came here for. You will not have that window of opportunity again, unless you invest the 2.5 hours into it, and it will be just as hard as this. So in a very real sense, it's now or never."

The phrase "golden window of opportunity" kept pounding through my head, and it *worked*. Like, it really worked.

The other pep talk was "You're going for distance, not speed."

I had really wanted to compare my half-marathon time to last time, then take a refueling break, but my knee messed it up. So I gave up timing anything. But I could tell I was going slower. And so my pep talk was that a 10-minute mile wasn't important, building muscle strength *now*, even slowly, means *next time* my time will be better.

My overall time for the 18.5 miles was 3:18:30, which included walking half a mile, refueling breaks, etc. Plus the initial slow run. If you do the math, that's a 10.7 minute mile, with the understanding that some of it was standing still and some of it was walking. It puts me on track for a 4h40m marathon. Which is...not my goal, but faster than some other people (men) I know have done it, and I'm still early in my training days! 2 months ago I wasn't running at all. 7 weeks ago I was starting at 1.5 miles.

mildred_of_midgard

Almost 3 quarters of a marathon!

I don't have a real time, because my knee messed things up. It hurt a bit when I set off, for the first two blocks, so I had to run super slowly to warm it up, and that slowed down my time in a very obvious way. Then at around 11-11.5 miles, another runner was coming toward me. We were in a very tight spot between bushes, and he was moving much faster than I was, so I gave him right of way, and I had to make a sudden lateral move to get out of his way.

My knee did not like the sudden lateral move, and it erupted into acute pain. I had to stop immediately. Then I walked a few steps, tried running, and--nope. So I walked half a mile to the end of the loop, drank some water, and tried running again. My knee made ominous twinges, but I was very slow and tentative, just trying to do something that was not a walk, adjusting my stride to this and that angle...and after about two blocks, my knee went back to normal and was 100% for the rest of the run.

Btw, I solved my food and water logistics problem, at least for now. I don't want to carry anything with me, because I don't yet have a bag that doesn't chafe--the CamelBak is useless--and I don't want to walk all the way up the walkway and the stairs and unlock my door and go inside my apartment to get food and water, because if I do that, I'm never leaving it again.

What I really wanted was an aid station, but in this neighborhood, I don't think I can leave food and water lying around--I assume it will disappear. And then it occurred to me: my mailbox is an aid station! It's near the gate, so I don't have to go all the way up the walkway nor any stairs, nor do I get comfortable. I just stand at the mailbox refueling, and then I'm off again.

The mandarin slices worked amazingly well *during* the run, but I think I should have had just a bit more food, or at least, as soon as the run ended, I should have refueled immediately. I took a shower instead, and my body/brain did the lightheaded thing where I go from "not hungry" to "dying" in the space of about 5 seconds and I have to lie down because I'm so woozy. This happens a *lot* if I postpone a meal, which is why I generally don't postpone meals. No, I don't know how I'm going to fast for my future colonoscopies and such, I have enough problems with NPO after midnight. Anyway, I managed not to lie down in the shower through sheer willpower, but I didn't finish the shower. I was toweling off soap that hadn't been rinsed away yet while sitting down in the tub, and then I recovered enough to put on clothes and go to the kitchen. Where I immediately ate 2 Greek yogurts.

So I definitely need more food in the aid station. But the aid station approach was very effective for what it was! I actually got a second wind after getting a brief rest that allowed me to go out again. Then after another 2.6 miles (2 loops), I drank water and ate the 1.5 mandarins I had left in a bag in the mailbox, then I was able to do 3 and a bit more loops (4.2 miles), bringing my total to what I calculate to be 18 miles.

Aside from briefly almost dying, I wasn't as tired afterwards as I expected. I did, after my shower and yogurt, lie down melodramatically on the couch to recover for the next 2.5 hours, before I felt like getting up and doing anything. But I also was able to walk home more easily than I expected, and my legs aren't super killing me. I also have runner's high already! I had told myself not to expect it until Wednesday, 'cause that's how long it's been taking. I think the 2.5 hours of doing nothing (but chatting with my wife on the phone for part of the time) helped. Normally I've been pushing through my day, doing work or running errands or going hiking or whatever.

I do think that I need to keep doing this on a weekend. For a while, a workday worked better, but if it's going to take me until noon to recover, and that's 2 pm at company headquarters...Anyway, it worked today because I told myself I didn't get enough sleep to do Old Irish and Peter Keith and geology, and I was just going to have to do some work anyway. And that if I did 18 miles, I didn't have to do *anything* other than lie around melodramatically, but that if I didn't do 18 miles, I had to finish up this work project.

So here I am at 18 miles, enjoying my runner's high. For more details on my pep talk, see my next post.

selenak

Mind you, the non-fannish world feels like one long Good Friday for humanity these days, but still: time to share the annual joy of our Franconian Easter Wells. (And bridges.)

( Lots more eggs and wells beneath the cut )

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Bamberg

selenak

In which Boyd becomes even more my favourite among the new characters, Kelly gets herself a mission, and Ed.... but that would be telling.

( Spoilers are on the case )

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: Bamberg

mildred_of_midgard

Also of note: I definitely learned something from last time about the mental aspects of running. I was so convinced I didn't want to do a long run today that I actually took off my socks and decided not to run at all. Then I realized I would be super disappointed if I didn't get to run at all. So I agreed with myself that I would run 1 mile. Then of course I did the longest run of my life. ;)

I spent the first 10 or so miles thinking about non-running stuff, academia and whatnot, and actually some of the next 4 miles. I think part of the problem was I was a little *too* successful at distracting myself. It worked great while it lasted, but when I needed a pep talk, I wasn't in pep talk mode. I tried the same tricks I did last time, but they just weren't as effective. I think I need to get deeper into that mode and really adopt my endurance athlete persona, get out of my "running is easy and fun and you can do it while you do other things" mode in time to be mentally strong when I need to be. I've had this happen once before, and I kind of knew it might happen this time.

I'll try again with the thirst problem solved (god I hope my CamelBak works on the first try and doesn't chafe like crazy), but I may have to find the sweet spot between starting my pep talks too early and starting them too late.

mildred_of_midgard

14 miles! Not as much as I'd hoped, and I deeefinitely didn't push myself anywhere close to last time. I'm barely sore.

I quasi regret my life choices yet again*, but I guess the good news is I can run 14 miles without getting super tired?

* As I explained to my roommate, all the stamina-building happens in the last 20-40 minutes. In order to get to the last 20-40 minutes, you have to go through the first 2 hours. That's 2 hours I could be spending working on Peter Keith, Old Irish pedagogy, geology, German, Russian Duolingo, cleaning our vertical blinds and recaulking our bathtub, etc. So it really makes sense to do those last 20-40 minutes of pure exhaustion to get the most out of the first 2 hours. That way, you don't have to do another 2-hour run for several days, and you've bumped your stamina up by multiple miles in one go. Like, if I had done 16 today, I'd be putting myself in a position to do 20 next week. Now I need to do another long run sooner rather than later, and I'm probably only looking at 16-17 max.

But somehow when the 20 minutes is *now* and the 2 hours is sometime in the vague *future*, the trade-off always seems worth it. Until about 30 minutes later, when I've recovered enough to go, "Dammit!"

Details: I actually finished the first 13 miles (half-marathon) slightly faster than last time. 2:09:03 instead of ~2:09:40. I could tell I was stronger and moving faster; I didn't even start to feel tired until 11 or 12 miles.

I actually stopped at 13.5 miles, gave up, walked half a mile, felt better, then ran another half a mile. Could have done more, buuut...

I was super thirsty. I think that actually played a role in giving up at 13.5 miles, and it definitely played a role in giving up at 14 miles.

Next time I'm bringing my CamelBak. My runs have finally gotten too long to go without water.

I also got hungry around 11 miles, and I slowed down to a cooldown speed briefly and took a few bites of dried meat. Turns out my mouth was too dry for dried meat, surprise surprise. I think next time I'm bringing mandarin slices. Also probably drinking slightly more before I leave (I didn't wake up as thirsty as I normally do). Anyway, that also slowed down my half-marathon time. Hopefully I either don't get hungry next time, or the mandarins work better than dried meat. It was so frustrating, because the bout of hunger hit right as I was thinking, "Wow, I'm running faster, I can't wait to check my time at 13 miles and compare it to last time! Dammit, now I have to slow down just when I was feeling like going faster."

Anyway, a somewhat anticlimactic 14 miles when I was hoping for 16+, but it'll do. Next time: CamelBak!

selenak

In which season 2 comes to an end with a bang and a whimper both.

( Spoilers have just heard there will be a third and final season, which is good )

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Munich

cahn

Last week: Mass suicide (canonical), Constantinople (not present in canon), pro-surrender factions, the translation of "bandits/terrorists/troublemakers" (apparently "lestes" in Greek). Anyone familiar with the Talmud want to weigh in about the question of marrying a raped-by-a-Roman woman in Jewish society?

This week: Jerusalem continues to be torn apart by various factions. Simon son of Gioras makes his appearance. The Year of the Four Emperors happens, with Vespasian finally making his bid for emperor.

Next week: Half of book 5? To where? From

selenak: until the tale of Kastor duping Titus has concluded: “…for they believed nothing but that their opponents had thrown themselves into the fire."

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rheinsberg

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1740 and All That

Member Posts

Update

The Testaments (1.01 - 1.03

In Memoriam (Winn)

The Jewish War: First half of Book 5

Shoes

Toes

Pep talks

Eighteen miles

Easter Wells of 2026

For All Mankind (5.02)

14 miles, addendum

14 miles

Paradise 2.08 (Season finale)

The Jewish War: Second half of Book 4

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January 2026

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