Welcome back to Breakfast Club, stories about life in motion and the ideas that shape our movement through the world. For our monthly digest, here are eight stories to start your week.
1. One partner runs the marathon; the other does everything else (NY Times)
An article about the burdens of being a runner’s partner sparked zesty chatter in the Breakfast Club WhatsApp.
“He wanted to talk about his run, to show me the stats, how far he ran, what was his pace, all the splits, his heart rate through the splits, and the elevation and how that impacted the heart rate,” said Ms. Khan-Malik, laughing. “I was doing something a bit more important,” she added. “Like work.”
Folks, one piece of advice: if you’re gonna take up sport, keep your biometrics to yourself. Ain’t nobody got time to hear about your heart-rate data. 😜
2. The case against travel (New Yorker)
Oh, what joy this contrarian piece brought me. It pinned down something that’s rolled around in my mind, not quite formed into a coherent thought: travel isn’t good for you.
Agnes Collard explores critiques of travel in a pithy rejoinder to the belief that exploring new places and people makes you a better person:
Pessoa, Emerson, and Chesterton believed that travel, far from putting us in touch with humanity, divorced us from it. Travel turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we're at our best. Call this the traveller's delusion.
Highly recommend for anyone planning their next long vacation. Hat tip to Brian Gillis for sharing this with me.
3. Stephanie Bruce runs while pregnant, Internet acts predictably (NY Times)
In a video from NY Times Opinion, pro runner Bruce unpacks how social media polices the bodies of pregnant women through shame and trolling.
“Everyone watches NFL, right? Are you guys concerned that NFL players are getting concussions? Nope. Yet a woman who is just going on a run, you’re saying that I’m inflicting a concussion on my baby in the womb?”
Five more stories I loved
8 most-durable running shoes ranked (LetsRun)
“In practice, how quickly a shoe breaks down depends on a host of things including a runner’s stride, weight, and the surfaces they train on. Moreover, runners may have different expectations on how long they expect a shoe to last.”
Footlocker Northeast regional meet moves after 40 years at Van Cortland Park (DyeStat)
New director Jorge Torres: "It felt right to find a new home at the historic Franklin Park. I'm certain that the City of Boston and the running community will provide an A+ experience to all runners today and well into the future!"
Running store lets you steal their shoes (YouTube)
Distance, a running shop in Paris, lets customers swipe their wares. But there’s a catch: shoplifters have to outrun the “security guard” to keep the items. And the guard is 9.99 100m sprinter Meba-Mickael Zeze.
Embrace the fallow season of running (iRunFar)
“It is easy to conceive of rest as negative space, or the absence of work. But this is not quite right. Rest is not negative space. It consists of the body’s reckoning with, and adaptation in response to, training. It is part of the rhythm of work, rather than a break from it.”
Hokas: high cushion . . . high fashion? (NY Times)
“I live here in Miami, and I see people in Hokas in restaurants and bars,” Mr. Haines said. “It’s a comfort thing but also a form thing. People are wearing them because it’s stylish and trendy.”
Weekly run
Breakfast Club meets every Thursday for an 8-mile run:
When and Where: 6:30am at Lake Temescal in Oakland, CA
Pace: ~7:00 to 7:40 pace with some hills
For updates, email Katie Klymko at katieklymko at gmail.com to join Breakfast Club’s WhatsApp chat. More info
For more local events, join our Strava club, East Bay Strava Runners
Tweets of the week
Parting thought
“Nothing is permanent. Everything changes. That’s the one thing we know for sure in this world . . . But I’m still going to gripe about it.”
- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson
That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading. Follow me on Notes, Strava, and what’s left of Twitter.
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these”. Mark Twain
I believe that it is therapeutic for us all to experience the stress of a travel in a country where you don’t speak the language….just a slice of the immigrant experience.
There are three phases to a trip.
1. Planning the experience
2. The experience
3. The memories good and bad from the trip.
Some of our most hilarious family gatherings have centered around remembering the things that went sideways on family vacations. Emptying the septic tank of our RV rental comes to mind.😂
Best advice: go with low expectations and you will ever be disappointed.
I've largely not found that with the travel/tourism thing, and I hate to position myself as an outlier from the norm.
I traveled to Finland 20 years ago (to do a thing I live - go to a music festival) and noticed an incredulity among Finns when I didn't have earplugs. I've worn them ever since.
I went to Paris and stumbled into a night of art across the city and it opened my eyes to what art could be. Not the Mona Lisa/Louvre, admittedly, but I've sought out that kind of art since.
And I always look forward to seeing how other cities are constructed in a way we cannot do remotely, so that I can return and appreciate my home in a new, different way.
Anyway.