Off Season

What have I done since wrapping up the Onion Slam? Not much in the way of running.

I rode a brakeless fixed gear bike around a velodrome for the first time. Skinny teens were way faster than me, as expected.


I went to a conference in Washington. The setting was beautiful.




I caught a cold on the plane, however, so the next weekend I did not participate in my favorite race of the year, the Euchre Bar Massacre. My friend Caveman completed the 50-mile version of the race (only the second finisher in three years) despite suffering a nasty arm wound in a fall. Read his report here. (Scott Martin, "Massacring the Massacre?!")

Then I went to Florida and suffered in the field with gf. I'm the only unpaid person who has been willing to go to her research site more than once. Don't be fooled by the pretty photos. The camera only comes out when you're in a good mood; it's actually quite hellish.


The only way in which Florida is better than California is that you can build your campfire however large you want and not worry about starting a forest fire.

Mangrove propagules for the experiment.

Trolling

Turtle Creek from Rosie's Pointe

Pull hard if you want that PhD
Oh, and remember to tie your canoe up, people. Don't just drag it all the way out of the water, even at high tide. Oops.

I'm not signed up for any more races for the rest of the year. I looked into a few more races, but The North Face 50 in December is full (and too much of a scene) as is CIM in Sac in December, and I'm traveling the weekend of Chimera in November in SoCal. I like to take an off season of a month or two every year, and I had this planned, but I wish it would have started a mere four days later so I could have done Euchre Bar. Oh well, next year. Instead maybe I'll actually get some research done. The White House Council of Economic Advisers reached out to ask about my food stamps research, so that feels awesome that I maybe came up with an idea that's actually relevant to poverty policy. Still in very early stages, though, so I don't know what I'll find, if anything.




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