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This is going to be a positive post to offer distraction to myself and others.

I met with my therapist last week and despite EVERYTHING going on domestically and internationally, the general doldrums of January, and dealing with the memorial session for my colleague who passed away shortly before Christmas, we discussed how much I am feeling okay. I mean I feel emotions, but I am not overwhelmed by my feelings to the point that I can't do anything all day. I think this is the birth control pill (what I am taking for hormone replacement during perimenopause) doing its work at stabilizing my estrogen so I can regulate my emotions.

My husband has also observed that I don't need to keep adjusting the temperature to be colder, so this is a sign of better temperature regulation. I didn't have a lot of hot flashes, but I was generally much more sensitive to heat and really needed to adjust the temperature down so I could sleep. I am not doing this at all and sometimes even crank up the heat a little if I am cold.

Speaking of sleep, I am not waking in the middle of the night. And I am not waking up to sour-smelling, sweaty pajamas and t-shirts so the nigh sweats have disappeared. That is huge and important because disrupted sleep is terrible for dealing with fascism and life in general.

I also don't smell as bad when I sweat when I work out. After my runs, I had noticed my crotch giving off a really sour/foul smell that is just gone now.

All this is to say, using the birth control pill for the past 7 weeks is working for addressing my perimenopause symptoms. I note absolutely no negative side-effects. No weight gain, no digestive issues, no breast tenderness, no weird moods.

Ever since my mother in law had a stroke in autumn 2024, she's lost the ability to plan, make decisions, and even write full coherent sentences. She is ripe for being exploited by those who try to financially rip off the elderly. My husband and his sister were able to convince her to agree to the equivalent of a conservator in Sweden, who helps protect her financially and can advocate for her. The Swedish word for this is gudman. My MIL's gudman is a woman of similar age named Jeanette who is originally from France. I really like her and she is a staunch advocate for my mother in law.

She visited my MIL's apartment yesterday for a regular appointment and told my husband that she really appreciates how sweet and kind he and his sister are to actually be looking out for their mother. Some of her elderly clients have children who are abusive or who are trying to swindle their own parents to take their money.

Chalk this up to another reason why having children is not a guarantee you won't die alone in old age.

This is a story about how getting married and having children does not guarantee you won't end up alone and lonely at the end of your life.

I spent the past few days with my mother in law in southern Sweden while my husband went to visit his father in central Sweden. I have not seen his father since fall 2022, when I learned he had beat my mother in law. She hasn't seen him since about the same time either when she finally decided to flee him and move to the region of Sweden where she grew up. As of summer 2025, she is now divorced from him - this was facilitated by the fact that divorcing in Sweden when there are no minor children or shared assets and people live apart for a while is really pro-forma. My husband and sister-in-law got her to sign the paperwork to divorce this summer, and at 76 years old, she is a free woman. Her life is not all sunshine and roses and in many ways, watching her age is encouraging me to make different life choices so I don't wind up like her. However, she is doing so MUCH better than my father in law.

He is a narcissist with a lot of mental health issues and an overwhelming fear and mistrust of medicine and doctors. Since the summer, he has been in decline and is clearly depressed. But he refuses all medication and any physical therapy. He lives in an assisted living facility and is deathly afraid of falling so he spends most of his day in bed and is too afraid to walk to the toilet so he pees in one of those pee bottles. He did have a stumble on his way to the bathroom earlier this year that exacerbated this fear. He also has his own personal wheelchair which my sister in law bought as a way to bring him from the US to Sweden in early 2023 when he was really ailing. He spends most of his days in bed in the dark - not even watching TV. He does text a sort of girlfriend (someone my age) on a daily basis with his grandiose ideas about escaping to France where he will live in a mansion and have servants waiting on him. His lying in bed and terrible diet means he is losing strength and cannot get up by himself to pee in the bottle and needs the homecare workers to come help him to his feet.

His mental illness means he is deluded into thinking he has a lot of money coming to him from the sale of his home in Connecticut and that he is a millionaire. In truth, the house was foreclosed upon a few years ago, and resold by the bank. All his items were thrown out with only a little that his children rescued and put in storage, that is now costing them $300 a month. I know this because I helped my husband downsize the storage unit just before Christmas where we threw away 12 trash bags of absolute garbage (old magazines, used napkins and cups, trade show schwag from 10-30 years ago) that my father in law had boxed up and kept in the house. He cannot accept this is true and continues to live in his own imagined reality that he is a rich man being thwarted by the system. He cannot understand why his wife left him and absolutely refuses to see that he did anything wrong by hitting her because, after all, she was annoying him and not doing what he wanted her to do. He entertains himself sometimes by making the healthcare workers move things around for them and telling bullshit stories about his life. He can be very charming when he wants to be, but his charm has faded along with his strength and he instead spends his days in a kind of sensory deprivation so he can avoid his reality. This thinking is a lifetime of untreated mental illness and the indulgence of his narcissism.

When my husband visited, it took a while for my father in law to warm up, but he did eventually and they were able to reminisce about old times. I am glad for my husband for this - this man is his father and there is love. One thing my husband likes to do is to take his dad out to restaurants to eat since he cannot do this on his own in his wheelchair. But my father in law has become too weak to sit in a wheelchair. He has an arm that was affected by a stroke a few years ago that is tight and painful and has only gotten weaker and worse due to lack of movement and a refusal to do physical therapy. As a result, sitting in the wheelchair is painful for him, so instead of going out, my husband ordered food and had it delivered. Bad snow hitting parts of Sweden this weekend meant my husband's return train was cancelled, so he had to cut his trip short to return home.

I think my husband visiting may have been good for my father in law for a little while, but it will not change the state of things. The healthcare workers have said that he is making his own health worse, but under Swedish law, they cannot force medication or treatment on him. I really do wonder if my father in law will make it through this year. He is 75 and will be 76 in February. I have been thinking of how I will support my husband because I know this will devastate him. My deeper worry is that my mother in law will also pass soon. (I will deal with that when and if it happens, but I have started to prepare.)

The part of me that feels anger and injustice for my father in law's treatment of my mother in law and the many other things he has done to hurt people throughout his life is watching this man's decay with a sense of detachment and curiosity. Aside from the once or twice a year visit from his son who lives in another country, my father in law is dying alone. This is the manifestation of the threat I see being shouted at younger straight women on social media who are not married or who divorce - that they will regret their choice to not lower their standards and tether themself to a man and have children with him. Except here is a man who did marry and did have children, but because of how he treated them and the choices he made through his entire life (and the choices he continues to make to reject all medical care and treatment), he is the one actively dying alone.

I want to reassure those women not to lower their standards and not to force themselves to endure a lifetime of mistreatment and injustice and disrespect and abuse from a partner just to avoid dying alone because there is no guarantee they won't also die alone anyway.

Hello from Sweden. We flew on Christmas night and arrived yesterday to a bit of chaos at my MIL's home. She'd had an accident and we needed to call the home care team to help - there's an emergency number for that, but she refuses to call it out of pride or self-consciousness. My husband called it and the team cam swiftly and helped clean up in a professional and respectful (to my perspective) way.

Our arrival yesterday came on the heels of a really busy week or so. I returned from Spain on 14 December, my friend and vice president of the organization I am president of, passed away on Monday, 15 December and the next several days were a whirlwind of condolences, me getting sick, and logistics. My husband and I were meant to travel to Connecticut on the morning of the 19th for a few days but with pivoted to driving up on the night of the 18th to miss the storms expected the next day. We then spent through the 22nd (with a day trip to NYC) dealing with his family's storage locker in Connecticut. We were able to get rid of enough stuff to downsize to a smaller locker. He did most of the work, but I did plenty as well - it was tedious and hard and boring. We arrived back home shortly before midnight on the 22nd and spent the 23-24th preparing for travel and Christmas. Among the items we rescued from storage was my mother-in-law's spinning wheel.

We had decided to disassemble it and bring it with us to Sweden as a surprise for my mother in law. It's awkwardly sized, but it turned out that when booking our tickets to fly on Christmas Day, the premiere seats (which come with two checked bags per passenger) was only slightly more than the regular economy tickets. My husband got his mother's spinning wheel and a few other small items for dealing with wool, boxed professionally by the UPS store and we checked it at no extra charge. It arrived just fine and my MIL had tears in her eyes opening it. We are now on a quest to get her more wool so she will have it to spin with through the winter.

We're here through the 8th and while I will be running and visiting with friends, I have plans to get back to work on my book, which I have not touched these past few weeks. It's peaceful here - perhaps too quiet (aside from my husband and MIL arguing with each other), so I am hoping to use the lack of meetings and urgent emails these next few days to do the thinking and planning I need to. I am looking forward to a little bit of quiet.

This post has to do with perimenopause, HRT, and dealing with life in midlife. In my last post I wrote about being in Spain last week. I returned to the US Sunday night. On Monday afternoon, I received messages and a call informing me that the past-president and current vice president of the European organization I am president of died. She had been in the ICU the previous week and those of us who knew expected this, but it was still hard. She was just 53 and had been dealing with difficult physical and mental health issues for years.

My thoughts on death mean I am relieved for her that she is at peace now. But I know that she touched many people and there will be a lot of grieving. As mutual friend put it, I need to lead the institution in mourning her. The past two days therefore have been a flurry of emails, drafting of statements, eulogies, messages of condolence. There has also been a lot of coordination and managing people. Another mutual friend was texting me to hurry up and get our message out first - I told him to chill and reminded him that we are not wikipedia. We don't need to be first - we need to offer comfort and respect and that is hard when people are grieving.

I ended up sick on Tuesday and spent a good chuck of the day in bed in between drafting condolences.

One of our members suggested a memorial session held on zoom - because of timezone and work differences, we had to pick a time that worked for those of us leading it. Other people in organizations our VP was on the board of also want to take part so I am reaching out with personal invites - many want us to change the time, but this would then exclude our members who are hosting it and have to teach. We created a form where people could RSVP for the zoom session or leave a message for the memory wall (pallet). Some have contacted me about the ability to change the form to upload photos. There are a number of logistical issues around this that led me to eliminate this option while we were drafting our announcement (e.g. we cannot host images on our google drive from people with external accounts due to our security settings; people would have to add links to photos already online somewhere which would require us to hunt them down to add; I don't know how much manpower we have for this and people are grieving). I had to explain kindly that we appreciated the suggestion and considered it but I/we could not guarantee we could keep on top of the images and did not want things to get lost.

In other words, I am engaging in a lot of diplomacy right now around people who are also grieving.

What does this have to do with perimenopause? One of my symptoms has been absolute pure rage when I am frustrated or stressed by unjust or unreasonable requests and pushy people. A few weeks ago, I met with my doctor and based on bloodwork and my symptoms, she decided to try me on birth control pills, which deliver a steady and regular does of estrogen and then progesterone on a cycle. I wasn't sure if it was having an effect, but the fact that I have not felt extreme rage or anxiety during what logically could be called a crisis in my organization suggests that this may be working.

Despite the upheaval, the jet lag, being sick on Tuesday, I am holding steady.

Last week, I had the opportunity to actually do something that felt good, meaningful, and empowering - I (and two other US-based university professors) had the opportunity to share our experiences under the current US administration and to share stories of challenge and resistance with nearly 100 European student teachers and teacher educators.

This was a last minute panel discussion that was added to the weeklong in-person portion of a Blended Intensive Program (groups of students from different European countries collaborate virtually for weeks and then come together in person to finalize a product). This panel discussion was the inspiration of the Spain-based co-organizer of the Blended Intensive Program (BIP) who follows US politics closely and was immensely grateful that three of us traveled from the US to take part as content experts that week. He thought it would be powerful for the teacher candidates (all undergraduates) and other teacher educators to hear firsthand what it has been like under this administration and what this means for teacher education, research, etc. We three US-based participants agreed and then generated the questions we would like to be used in the panel to make sure our discussions were focused and kept us from wandering down emotional paths. We joked that we needed this to make sure we didn't cry (none of us cried) but I was especially worried I might go off on a rant or wander into doomerism, which is no good for anyone.

We began the panel by highlighting that we each came from a different institution from a different entity in the country and that this really mediated our experiences. This included a red state, a blue state (Maryland), and a non-state entity with no congressional representation. Our universities included a flagship state university, a regional state university (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), and a private university. We were also involved in different aspects of teacher education including foreign language education (Spanish), linguistics education for both education and non-education students, and pre- and provisionally licensed teachers for teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) which predominantly serves immigrants and refugees (this is me).

Some examples of what was shared: my red state colleagues explained how her university had to change the name of it office for diversity and inclusion to the office for belonging. Both of my colleagues had had recently awarded grants (one on open access materials development and another on K-12 teacher education) completely shut down while in progress or cancelled before the projects could begin. I shared that my blue state was resisting like hell and that included going through the courts on the issue of whether universities had to get rid of diversity and inclusion in the mission and materials. I have not had to remove diversity and inclusion from my courses yet and we are still doing as much diversity and inclusion work as possible.

My examples of how this has affected my teaching and my students was more grim. My students' pupils are the ones who are being targeted by ICE and I shared examples my students and former students have brought to me: disappearing students from classes as families leave communities or pull children from school and the resulting sadness, fear and trauma of those left behind not knowing. An alumni from Nebraska who works in adult ESL education shared with me that they incorporated new teaching activities to help their students generate a plan for for their children if they (the parents) are abducted by ICE - in other words, who will pick the children up from school, who will feed them, and take them in. I also shared what I am trying to do - it is not much - but it is more than nothing. This includes attending training (offered by my university) on how to support undocumented students and sharing those resources in my classes, also attending a bystander intervention training workshop on ways to intervene to support immigrant communities and individuals. I also shared increase focus on trauma-informed teaching in some of my classes too.

We were asked several questions by students and colleagues including why we though this was happening and how long we though this would last. This is where I didn't want to spread my deepest fears - I worry a lot but I also know that my worry can be too extreme and unhelpful. I also thought a lot about what I have read by African-American and Queer activists in online spaces who are often frustrated by the panic of white people or the newly aware. So I channeled their thoughts: authoritarianism has happened before and it will happen again. I don't know how long it will last but as long as it does there will be resistance. That the US has a history of horrific mistreatment of people but also an equal history of resistance. I specifically mentioned slavery and the resistance of the enslaved,

Afterward and for the remainder of the week, different people came up to us to express appreciation for our stories and talking to them about this. Some had been to the US before and felt connected to it, others had family there (like on woman from Finland whose family was originally from the Philippines, half of whom had moved to the US), still others only knew what they saw or read online and in the news which often presents a superficial or sensational overview of the state of the US. They are not hearing the stories of resistance or how people are surviving this or what this might mean or the future of education in the US.

I'm making much of this because it was a really validating experience and because I know I am not doing enough. This was something though - it felt like an act of resistance to speak out and to share our stories and to share some hope too. I don't know what the coming year will bring regarding the ability to travel to Europe or my ability to afford travel, so I am glad I had the opportunity to travel and to share my experiences this year.

A year ago, a dear friend escaped from a fire. She survived due to her own resourcefulness and strength and spent a long time in recovery and rehabilitation, but she is alive and creatively kicking ass. I have a lot of things to be thankful for, but this is at the top of my list.

I am really thankful for my body and what it does for me. I'm struggling with aging, which is just a part of life. Aging and death happens to all of us no matter how amazing our bodies are. But my body is doing a wonderful job. It is a middle aged body, but that just means it's been holding me together for more than half a century while I have my adventures and nourish or don't nourish it well.

On Tuesday, I have my annual and will be having my bloodwork done. In anticipation, I've been concentrating on upping my fiber these past three weeks while also trying to eat enough protein and not overeat. It's hard to be so conscious of what I put in my mouth while also trying to manage my other life obligations and needs. It probably won't make a difference - I anticipate high cholesterol and maybe even blood sugar issues common with perimenopause. I need to schedule in time on Monday to plan my argument for HRT because I think that will help my body during this time of transition. It's something I've been thinking about for a while to help with things that lots of women experience when estrogen drops:

-Cholesterol levels (I recently learned why - cholesterol is a building block for estrogen so when the body makes less estrogen, cholesterol levels naturally rise, leading to a host of cholesterol related issues.)
-Tendon and joint issues
-Memory issues
-Sleep issues
-Temperature regulation issues which feed into sleep issues
-Emotional regulation including rage and anxiety
-Increased inflammation (which makes recovery from exercise harder and prolongs tendon and joint issues also affecting exercise)
-Increased rate of muscle and bone loss (we all go through this as we age but during perimenopause, the rate increases)

Despite all this chaos, I am grateful for my body. It still lets me run. It still protects me from diseases and heals when I do too much and injure myself.

First, I got a lot more writing done on my book. The difficult chapter is not done yet but I am getting closer. I had to put in an interlibrary loan request for a book and an article I need to cite for the final portion and the book has now come in. First I have to read part of the book that's relevant. There's another book I was considering putting in a request for, but I think this will be enough.

I slept better this week though there were still a few middle of the night wakings with dread and anxiety. One of them was the thought that those of us with degrees and training and years of experience are going to find ourselves as a new servant class. AI will be used to replace our white collar and thought work and we will be left with the physical tasks. Door-dash and Uber still rely on humans to do the driving.

What made this week even better was the chaos around the Epstein files and the knowledge that as a result, Donald was definitely having a much worse week than me. I have enjoyed the hell out of the memes and jokes. And yes, there is fanfiction on Ao3 - a veritiable explosion of Political RPF. The tags and titles are hilarious. The nickname Megyn "R." Kelly is also giving me a good chuckle.

There are a few on Bluesky wringing their hands over this, worried that this kind of circus will overshadow or take away from a moral reckoning. This is a naive position. There is not going to be some judicious moral reckoning that is pure and above reproach. There might not ever be a moral reckoning. But this hilarity and mocking serves the function of building fear in the hearts of such actors who think they are all powerful and above reproach. They look foolish and silly and the more they protest, the more absurd the response is going to be.

Anyway, I love how so much how Donalds' Big Beautiful Bill has been reappropriated into something else that is always going to make a lot of people laugh at him.

Last week was a hard week that included an 8 hour morning workshop split across two mornings on Monday and Wednesday, grading, feedback on a student MA thesis, advising students for spring registration which entailed a lot of problem-solving, a Friday late morning-early afternoon workshop I volunteered for to be a good citizen at my uni, the state conference which we hosted all day Saturday (from 7:00-5:00) and my husband's 50th birthday on Sunday which required a lot of extra logistics to arrange due to it being on a Sunday and us being occupied all day Saturday. This was on top of my regular teaching and meeting workload.

Not a lot of writing got done on my book at all. I think I managed to squeeze in an hour on Monday.

I had trouble sleeping most nights last week and even had nightmares the Saturday before it all kicked off. I awoke several times with a crushing ball of anxiety and dread in my stomach based on the fear of dropping balls and absolute guilt over my book. I haven't had that degree of anxiety in a while and my period ended up starting at the end of the week suggestion that some of the awful crushing anxiety was being exacerbated by hormones.

But I made it through the week and I did not really drop balls. The main casualties were grading, which is not fully finished, zero strength training, which I put aside because I could not fit in time for the extra exercise (I did do my running because I absolutely needed to get outside and off my computer), less feedback for my MA student than she needed, and of course my book.

There were moments of high stress where I really was not my best self. I was talking to my therapist about that. I also recognize that my anxiety is heavily driven by this fear of failure and perfectionism and all sorts of false beliefs. We talked about it yesterday - I believe things will fall or succeed because of me and that it's my responsibility. We're going to try some EMDR to reprogram this core belief because it really does hold me back and slow me down.

I woke up at 5:00 today to begin working on advising stuff. There are a handful of tricky student issues that I have to deal with and I was too tired after I finished teaching and meeting with a failing student afterward to work on this at 20:00 last night. I had my tasks planned out but after a stressful outburst from my husband regarding the upcoming state teaching conference our department is hosting and yet another task he realized hadn't gotten done yet, my to-do list got longer. I'm moving through most of my tasks to get done by 18.00 so we can drive up to PA for a Halloween party hosted by a new friend of his from the Ren Faire. This means of course, I will not get to my book today.

I am glad to have moved through some of these big tasks, but when I went for an easy run today my heart rate was pushing into the high numbers. That is either a sign that I am getting sick or that the stress is getting to me. I think the latter. Next week is going to be a shitshow and I just have to make it through Sunday the 9th, which is my husband's birthday. I am not sure what we will do that day. When he is not happy with his weight, he does not want to eat out and he is extremely unhappy with his weight today. I think we'll try to see a movie because that does not involve food and it is fun to go out on his birthday.

The think I am using to distract me between all the tasks is the latest political conspiracy nonsense my instagram algorithm has been feeding me. There is speculation that something is going on between VP Vance and Erika Kirk, the dead Charlie Kirk's widow. Speculation is based upon things Vance has said in interviews about hoping his wife will become Christian/come over to his beliefs as well as public behavior between Kirk and Vance at a recent event. She effusively compared him to her late husband and gave him an overly familiar hug that did involve her having her hands in his hair briefly. It did look EXTREMELY friendly. Right now it's just lots of speculation based on nothing but photo assumptions and soundbites, but I'm curious to see where this (the speculation and their friendship) goes. I am also wondering/worried about Usha Vance. I don't understand her relationship with her husband or her position on the many things her husband's political party stands for. Maybe she's a grifter like Melania and she'll be fine.

I am stressed to the point that worry about my book and deadlines are keeping me awake at night. Nevertheless, I did not let that get in the way of me enjoying a little Halloween fun. I still managed to find time to assemble a quick and dirty (and cheap) costume for the pub run Halloween contest last night. AND I WON! The prize - a free pair of running shoes.

Sorry to my French friends and anyone who was deeply upset by the Louvre heist, but I could not help myself. In light of other things in the news, it made me laugh. The Mona Lisa was just the touch I needed to make sure people knew what was up. And to make things even better, there just so happened to be a traffic cop last night when the run started who was willing to pose with me for a photo.

I should be writing but I am procrastinating to write here. I just finished a therapy session and feel overwhelmed with how overwhelmed I feel. There are several problems merging at the same time and only one of them has to do with the state of the world. That, however, is indeed making things worse.

1. I feel such fear of failure that I am procrastinating instead of working on my book.
2. My husband's way of dealing with life right now (including the impending gloom of winter) is to deep dive into escapism like spending whole weekends at the Red Faire. We took a trip to PA this weekend so he could go to the Penn Ren Faire for the first time (the one in Maryland ended last week) and then also go to a pumpkin patch and do autumn things. I was able to get a little writing on my book yesterday morning since the places we were going to did not open until lunch, but he now wants to go to the Red Faire in NC (8 hour drive from here) which will consume another weekend and we already lose another weekend to hosting a conference on campus. I cannot get my book done and keep up with the other things in my life and I just need to stay home. I need to get better and saying no. His constant need for escape is not meeting my needs.
3. The crashing Maryland state budget has led to meetings and more meetings in which we have to find ways to cut $60,000 from our department budget this year. More cuts expected next year. Another emergency department meeting has been scheduled on Wednesday at a time when I would have been working on my fucking book to discuss this. As a senior faculty member, I am sort of expected to be there, but the rest of the day is peppered with meetings and teaching and so this was going to be my time. I feel like I am shirking my responsibilities if I don't go. At the same time, several major things have happened over the past year that suggest that whatever we decide as a department will be overridden by the upper administration. So I am not inclined to donate my time this way and sitting in on a budget meeting (even virtually) is not something I can do while trying to work on my book.

I feel so frustrated with myself for not managing my time better but some of these things are not of my doing. Should I go to this meeting and be a good citizen and face of the department (and fuck my writing for another day)? Should I let my husband down by telling him a firm no to these escapades in November because I just don't have time - even though one of these weekends is his 50th birthday and I did in fact want to do something nice for him and I am feeling guilty for not doing enough for this big age.

Okay, enough moaning. I have to finish working on article revisions (not my book) that I am co-authoring with my PhD student since that is part of my job - guiding her in the research process. This is yet another thing taking me away from my own writing!

Tomorrow is the Chicago Marathon and I am not running that. My marathon season is over and instead I am focusing on 5k races to work on speed (the marathon is 42.2k so one runs that a lot slower). As part of my kickoff in my 5k training, I ran a 5k race today which was one of my university's homecoming events. This race is meant to serve as a time trial to gauge what my current speed is so I can build upon it and get faster for my next race, the Thanksgiving Turkey Trot!

The course is a bit hilly and I'm not as fast as I was a few years ago, which is a little hard for me to handle. I'm always worried about the effects of aging on my ability to do things and the specter of perimenopause and the dramatic changes it inflicts on the body (e.g., accelerated muscle loss) is eating into my confidence. On Thursday, I walked most of the course to get a feel for where the hills would be so I could adjust my pacing and expectations. I didn't sleep well last night due to a number of factors but I arrived 50 minutes before the start of the race with something of a plan. My goal was to run under or as close to 25.00 for 5k which is 5:00/kilometer or 8:03/mile. A part of me was worried I was overestimating myself and that I'd end up coming in well over that, but I tried to put that out of my mind and just focus on running smart. Running smart also means adapting to the course (e.g. not getting down when my pace drops on the uphill) and also not starting too fast and blowing all my energy on the first kilometer.

I'm not going to lie - it was hard and I doubted myself along the way. I made the decision to look at my watch minimally and to focus on distance and only on pace at certain times (mainly to check I wasn't going too fast the beginning and to also check my speed once on each hill). The big hill did hurt and I found myself gasping a lot as a way to tighten my stomach so I would not vomit. I've never gotten sick while running but today might have been the closest I came.

Early on, I was passed by a boy who was supposedly 13 but looked 8 years old and then a man pushing a double stroller with two children in it. That was humbling. There were not a lot of women near the front of the race, but there was one that I took turns passing and being passed by until about halfway through when I passed her on the ugly hill. The final kilometer was both downhill and flat, but I was feeling tired and anticipated that I would be passed by other women. I let go of my goal of sub 25 minutes and focused on running sub 26. No other woman passed me and based on the time between cheers behind me by race volunteers, I was well ahead of whomever was behind me. I pushed until the finish line, feeling shock to see the time read 24:18 because I knew my pace was nowhere near that fast. When I stop my watch, I saw that the course was short (4.84km) explaining the surprisingly fast finishing time. My actual pace for a 5km was a 5:02 meaning I would have finished in around 25:10 which was still pretty close to my goal considering the long ass hill.

What was shocking but gratifying was being approached after I finished to be notified that I was the first place woman overall. The woman I had been jockeying places with in the first half of the course finished 40 seconds behind me in second place. I thought I'd have a good chance of winning my age group (Women 50-59) but in no way did I think I'd be I the top 5 for this race. Here's me crossing the finish line looking super exhausted and clueless that I was first.

This was a bit of a morale booster and it gives me a nice starting point for my 5k training. And I also got a ridiculously giant trophy.

Berlin was an interesting place to be for several days during this present administration It is a city full of memorial to victims of fascism and Naziism. One of the memorials that I didn't see on this trip but did the first time I was in Berlin in 1993 was to the resistance movement in Germany, and in particular in honor of a failed assassination attempt against Hitler led by members of the Wehrmacht. This later became the subject of a Tom Cruise movie called Valkyrie (the attempt was named Operation Valkyrie or Unternehmen Walküre in German).

There were quite a few attempts on HItler's life, several led by members of the German military. Obviously, none succeeded. But Hitler was just middle aged (in his 40s and 50s) and fairly vigorous. He was not a 79-year-old with chronic venous insufficiency. Trump should be more careful, especially when provoking the military.

Initially posted to my FB page with pictures but posting here to add it to my collection of race reports.

Finishing Time: 4:27:52 (my third slowest time but over an hour faster than the Athens Marathon last year that I ran/walked injured)

Registered: 55,000 (This race was HUGE).

Thank you everyone for the well wishes this weekend. It was not the race I hoped for, but it was still an epic experience! The organizers do a terrific job of hyping each starting wave, and I cried a little before the gun went off because I was full of excitement and gratitude to be running this cool marathon. There were moments in the race where we ran by major sights like the Victory Column and the Gedachnis Kirche that reminded me that I was running in an interesting city. Running through the Brandenberg Gate to the finish line was as cool as I had dreamed it would be. Afterwards, as I trundled back to my hotel wearing my medal and race poncho, random Berliners kept congratulating me (in German) on finishing the marathon. I found that really unexpected and touching. 

Below is an exhaustive and someone TMI list of the things that stand out from this marathon – good and bad.

1. Pacing: I started out strong and on pace but by around 13km, I began to feel a heaviness in my legs that suggested I was tiring – this surprised me as this was the sort of tiredness I would expect around 28km. By 15km, I had stopped racing and focused on just running to finish. This was due to both the heat and the water stations. I also am wondering if I really overestimated myself in training and was not as strong or as fit as I thought I was. This is where I have to do some thinking to plan for what to do next in training. I think that with my hamstring injury, I was cautious about not doing too much strength training on my posterior chain so as not to overload it while ramping up my running. The biggest triumph of this marathon build is the fact that I didn’t get injured and I’m not injured after the marathon either. This means after a bit of recovery, I can get back into running without having to focus on rehab and recovery.

2. The Blue Racing Lines: this turned out to be the most efficient marathon I have ever raced because I was able to see and stay somewhat close to the race lines marking the course. I didn’t always run directly on them, but I made the decision to stay close to them where possible and in the end, I only ran around .5 km more than 42.2! In contrast, when I ran Philly two years ago, I ran 42.99km! I really enjoyed having them as a guide because it took away some of the thinking and looking around whenever the racecourse began to turn this way and that.

3. The weather: I know this also had an impact on how I felt and on my overall pace. I have run 8 marathons, and this was the hottest. Things began warming up noticeably during the second hour of my run as the temps climbed, and big portions of the race were on segments of broad unshaded avenues, which makes things feel even hotter. The ideal temperature for a marathon is typically between 35-55F (2-12C) but the temperature when I started was 72F (22F) rising to 76F (24F) before beginning to gradually drop again after 14.00. Just as comparison, I ran my personal best 2 years ago in Philly and the temperature at race start was 3C (high 30sF). Since Sunday, I’ve seen lots of race reports and videos on YouTube and Instagram from other runners, 100% of whom struggled with the heat in some way. Almost no one reported a personal record and those who did were far off their goal time. Many people like me had that dead legs feeling at some point in the race and switched from racing to just finishing. This included a runner gunning for a 2:39 and finishing in 2:59 (still sub 3 but 20 minutes slower), runners aiming for sub 3 hours and finishing in 3:15 or 3:20 and runners like me, aiming for sub 4 hours and finishing in 4:20 to 4:40. All this data is reassuring to me because it means it wasn’t just in my head and I wasn’t mentally tough enough and gave up too early.

4. Water Stations: I actually missed one of the early water stations because I did not realize the water came first and what followed was fruit, Marten (a sports drink) and warm tea. (Berlin is notorious for its tea situation – this might be a German thing because I’ve never encountered tea in a marathon or half marathon in any other country I’ve run in.) None of these were good for dumping on my head to cool off either. Fortunately, I ran most of the way with my handheld, so I had water on me at all times, but it made me extra cautious to get over quickly to the water stations when I approached them. It wasn’t as hot and as humid as Maryland in the summer, but with it feeling warmer, the water stations became extra important, and I started drinking water and dumping water on my head. I think this helped me to finish the run but it’s also another big reason why I slowed down so much. The water stations were chaos and there was no way to keep running through them safely, so I made the early decision to walk the water stations. Part of what made them treacherous was not only the wet ground, but the heaps of discarded crunchy plastic cups on the ground. In some places there were piles of them you had to wade through just to get to the water tables and they extended for a good long while beyond the end of the water stations. These were tripping hazards and it was just easier and safer to walk through these than to trip and fall. By the second half of the course, water stations came every 2 kilometers, and I made sure I got water and walked through every single one except the final one. The walking was good for keeping me going but it also meant my pace was very up and down and that my shoes were soaking wet for the entire second half of the race.

5. Toilets: TMI – but it’s part of endurance sports and can really affect your race time. Berlin has a reputation for long queues for the toilets before the race start, and therefore a high number of people shitting in the woods/Tiergarten on the way to the starting gates. The good news is that I saw NONE of that, mostly just dudes pissing behind trees, but you get that in any race. I managed to get into a toilet after standing in line for 20 minutes that was still pretty clean about an hour before my race and then when I got to the starting area, I saw a whole bunch of toilets lining the course with almost no wait and was able to go once more 15 minutes before the race began, which was perfect. I suspect most of the shitting in the woods was happening in the first starting group with the fastest runners. In race recap videos, I saw a lot of them struggled to get into their starting gates in time because of the long lines and very narrow entry point, meaning a lot of them wouldn’t have seen the toilets along the starting line unless they got in an hour early. This was less of an issue with my starting group much further back since we began a whole hour later. Toilets on the course were plentiful, but much like the water stations, they were chaos for people further back because no one is cleaning them during the race. Around 28km, I made the calculated decision to use the toilet. I had been drinking a lot of water and although I didn’t need to go urgently, I figured I would by the end of the race, and I didn’t know how long it would take me to get to toilets AFTER the finish line. (I was right to plan for this because it was a long walk and there were long lines there.) Unfortunately, all the toilets were full, so I found myself waiting a minute or more and just as the one in front of me opened, a man ran off the course and ran into my toilet and slammed the door, not even looking at me. This had never happened to me in a race before, and I was just thankful I did not need to go urgently. The next stall opened but the man stepping out told me it was a mess, and I didn’t want to use it. I looked over his shoulder and immediately got back on the course with plans to use a toilet at the next water stop. This next stop was successful, and I was able to find a vacant non-disastrous toilet right away.

6. The Brandenburg Gate and Finish: Was epic! I tossed my handheld water bottle around 40km and just focused on picking up my legs faster to finish and look strong. Turning the corner onto Unter den Linden where I could see the Gate up ahead gave me energy and I started smiling. It was so cool to run between the columns and then finally only the finishing blue carpet and under the finish line. I had no idea what my time was but I was so glad to be finished. My legs were TIRED and I just wanted to stop and sit down, but we needed to keep walking through the chute to get our finisher medals (with the famous German flag ribbon) then further on to get water and a bag of snacks including apple, banana, a Kinder snack, a cup of Erdinger alcohol free beer, then an additional 300 meters to get the post-race poncho I had ordered before exiting the finisher area so I could sit down, enjoy my “beer” and take some selfies.

7. Small Things that Went Wrong but I Managed Anyway: The night before a big race, I like to eat pasta as part of my carbo loading and I had scouted out a restaurant that I had eaten at the night before really close to my hotel. However, the night before the marathon, they had had an emergency and shut down their kitchen, so I was left looking for another place to eat. By this time other nearby Italian restaurants were packed. Fortunately, there was an Indian restaurant just around the corner from my hotel and I loaded up on rice, naan and chana masala. I’m not sure if this made a difference in my run the next day because it was not part of the routine, but it’s a new lesson for me to make sure I have a backup restaurant just in case. A second small glitch concerned my music. I have a running playlist I listen to on my long runs but it stopped playing for some reason relatively early in the race. This might have coincided with when I started dumping water on myself. My phone was in a pocket between my shoulder blades in my bra and I didn’t bother investigating what was going on. There was enough noise on the course that I often couldn’t hear my own music anyway.

8. Running a Marathon Solo: For every marathon I have run in the past, I have had at least one person cheering me on or supporting me. This was great for pre and post race photos and moral support. But it also meant that if I collapsed or injured myself during the marathon, there was someone I could turn to for a little extra help getting me home from the race or (in the worst possible scenario) hospital. This is the first marathon I ran completely solo, and I did it in a country I don’t live in. My ability to get back from the racecourse to my hotel afterwards was also a consideration in how I paced myself to finish. The last thing I wanted was to collapse from heat exhaustion and to then have to navigate health decisions in a new medical system in that condition. That didn’t happen. I ran a tough but smart race, and I managed everything on my own. Even though my feet were tired after 42km, I was still able to walk the further 3 kilometers (2 miles) to get to the S-bahn and get back to my hotel.

A week from today I'll be running the Berlin Marathon. I have to get out to do my final sort of long run and also begin packing and stuff. There is also other work stuff I need to do (a three year report on our program is due to the Dean on Tuesday) and there's also my book to work on and a dissertation to begin reading before the October 8 defense.

Right now I am obsessing over the weather in Berlin on race day. It looks like it is going to be warmer than it normally, but we'll have a better idea the closer we get to the actual day. The race begins relatively late for these sorts of things and because it's so big and I'm at the slower end (non Elite, not sub 3 hour) I actually have an even later race start at 10.10. Since I run about 4 hours, this means I will be running until 14.00, which is usually a pretty hot part of the day. If it ends up being a sunny day, this will be even harder because the course has lots of unshaded areas and direct sun heats me up a lot.

There is nothing I can do about the weather, and if it is hot, I have to run slower. This means no new personal record. My other worry is not slowing down enough so that I end up hitting the wall or crashing out of the course and not finishing. That would be really discouraging. So I am sitting here doing calculations and reading up on race reports and estimates of how much to slow down in different conditions. I've also been comparing it to what I've been doing here in Maryland, which is hotter, sunnier, more humid and has a higher UV-index than Berlin.

I realize this is a tiny thing to focus on, but I also know that having this marathon on my mind is a helpful distraction as it is giving me something else to focus on other than the state of the country. Marathon training means I have to schedule my runs, warm-up, cooldown, figuring out where toilets are on my routes, plan my meals (not just what I eat but when), plan recovery and post run measures, figure out what days to wash my hair, keep track of extra loads of sweaty laundry, rotate my running shoes, make sure I am drinking enough water and electrolytes, etc.

This marathon noise has brought a kind of relief from other types of worry. I wonder what my brain will be like when the marathon is over.

The organization I am president of just had its first monthly board meeting of the new academic year this morning. It was good seeing everyone again. Lots of decisions to be made and plans for next steps including our spring elections. I am not planning to run as president again, unless no one steps into the role. I intended to be vice president so I could offer continuity and support to our new president.

Anyway, one of the non perks of being a president is being responsible for more than the average member and also having my choices reflect the valuations of the organization and not just my own. This is about Israel.

In the spring, we had a long discussion and voted that the board would need to approve the organization partnering with entities that did or did not meet the organization's values. By democratic vote, it was decided that individual members could affiliate or partner with whomever they want but if they were doing it on behalf of the organization or as a representative of the organization, then this would need to be agreed to by the board. Such a situation has come up. There is a sort of European grant application going in that requires inclusion of a network. Last fall, I joined the network and listed my affiliation as UNICollaboration based in Belgium. The application did not get funded but it being resubmitted.

The challenge is that the grant application is being headed by two colleagues, one from a Spanish university, and one from an Israeli university. The board voted that I could not join the network as a representative of UNICollaboration because the Israeli university is one that is not aligned with our organization's values. In other words, I can join the network but I will need to list my US university as my affiliation. I am not sure if I can be a member with a non-European (or European adjacent) affiliation.

I now obviously have to tell my two colleagues this, both of whom are members of the organization I am president of. I don't feel good about this and I am not looking forward letting these colleagues down and also probably alienating the Israeli colleague from the organization. My friendship with the Spanish colleague has already been tested by other decisions made by the majority vote of the leadership of this organization and I think he will be leaving this organization and no longer supporting it, even though he was its founding president.

I am writing this to process. I feel icky and spineless and also sad. Like I said, this does not reflect my all of my values. I guess it reflects some of my values. Unlike the asshole in the White House, I am not an autocrat and I do believe in the democratic values of the organization I am a part of. I'm not interested in throwing down and doing what I want and waiting for a court order or something to force me to stop (like being voted out for violating the statutes). So I am in fact acting within some of my values.

In almost exactly a month (21 September), I will be running my next marathon in Berlin. The Berlin Marathon is one of the world majors (sort of a marketing ploy) of large international marathons that draw a lot of runners. The others are Boston, New York, Chicago, Tokyo, London, and now Sydney. Of these, Berlin is perhaps the biggest with over 50,000 runners - which is a lot! Some of the other majors are much smaller and therefore much harder to get into (like Boston). The course is known for being flat and fast (unlike Boston and New York which are hilly and hard) and is one of those courses where world records get made.

I'm super excited about this because it's my first major and it's fast and it's Berlin, a city I have a history with. Part of my marathon training includes practicing my German as I will be spending almost 2 weeks in Germany and giving a few talks and attending a conference after the race. I will be arriving in Berlin on the 17th, so I have a few days to acclimate before the marathon (time zones are killer), but while I'm there, I do want to do some sightseeing.

The challenge is that I have to not do too much walking in the days before the race. It's a funny thing, but when you're going to blast your way through 26.2 miles on concrete on Sunday morning, you really do need fresh legs beforehand or things will not be fun. Not walking too much beforehand is really one of the challenges of doing a destination marathon like this. However, I will still be working so the good news is that I will have to spend a fair amount of time sitting and doing work on my laptop. This includes teaching a class from 22.00-1.30 on Thursday the 18th.

As for sightseeing, I have decided on the following: I willl take a boat tour through Berlin so I can enjoy seeing things on the water and NOT walking. The symphony is in session and it looks like there are tickets for a Friday evening performance. I would also really like to go on a tour of the Reichstag - that will entail walking but it's not too far from where I'm staying. And then I think I will try to find a cinema showing German films so I can practice my German! I'm getting excited for this.

Being able to travel and speak other languages is so fun. I think the world (and the US) would be a different place if more people had this opportunity.

I woke up to my alarm this morning and to crushing anxiety. This is a probably sign of anticipatory stress toward the start of the semester as I have not had this all summer because it was summer. The anxiety was not directly related to work. Instead it was a deep feely of dread and inadequacy around the fact that I am sleep-walking my way through this administration. It's a growing fear I have that living in the US is to be considered complicit with the current administration and all its inhumane policies. It's a little like how people don't spend time thinking about the Germans who lived in Nazi Germany and were not Nazis. There was indeed a resistance in Germany, but the average German was not part of that. There is resistance in the US, but I'm not really part of that. In essence, I lay in bed with a crippling feeling of dread due to my failure and fear to act.

The good news is that I know this anxiety is partly a menopause symptom so I waited it out. I also consciously thought that I have the power to act and I am not totally helpless. Even if it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, it can matter for my conscience and self-respect.

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Professor of Sherlockology and Advanced Snape Studies

Lover of snarky assholes, high-functioning sociopaths, and their loyal friends

Recent Entries

HRT Update - Evidence it's Helping

Wisdom from my mother in law's conservator

The Decline of a Narcissist

Christmas Whirlwind and Now Quiet in Sweden

Upheaval and Holding Steady

An Act of Resistance

Thanksgiving

Gratitude

This week was better than last

Made it Through Last Week

Stress, Running, and Online Conspiracy Nonsense

Halloween Costume Contest at the Pub Run

Procrastinating

A Surprising Victory

The rise of fascism in the US

Berlin Marathon 2025 Race Report

Offloading My Focus to the Marathon

The Constraints of Leadership

Looking Ahead to Berlin!

Morning Anxiety