Hi friends! How are you all doing with this whole quarantine/social-distancing situation?

Like most people, I'm having good days and crappy days.

On the good days, I can get up, feel productive working from home, squeeze in a workout and generally not be too bothered by the whole situation, which I realize is an incredible privilege.


On the good days, I can enjoy the flowers too!

On the crappy days, I can't sleep, I struggle to focus at work and I lack the motivation to do any sort of workout.

After a rough couple of early week of quarantine, I feel like I'd been having more good days than bad ones.

But the weather we've been having this past week and a half in DC has been killing me. It's been cold and rainy and incredibly windy, which has made it unpleasant to be outside. And when the only thing that breaks up a day is the ability to get outside for a walk or run, I really start to feel like a prisoner in my house when the weather is bad.

I've found that working out is pretty key to my mental well-being these days, even more so than in normal times. So when the weather is too gross, I've been doing some virtual strength training workouts with my mom. She found this app called HasFit that has a good variety of workouts that don't require more than some dumbbells. We pick a time of day, and we both fire up the same workout video at the same time. Then we talk about the best/worst parts of it when we're finished.

Having the extra accountability has been helpful, especially for the crappier days. I always feel better after I get some movement, no matter how much I'm dreading it before I start. So I've appreciated the extra little push a lot lately.

I also started working on a house project in our master bathroom. The floor in the bathroom was hand-painted with a stencil pattern by one of the previous owners, and the paint was old and had started to chip in places. At some point, we planned on dealing with it, but given all my new-found quarantine time, I've gotten started on it sooner than initially planned.


Hand painted bathroom floor. You can see where it's really started to chip up in the right corner of the shower.

Let me tell you, removing all that paint from the floor is a giant pain in the butt, but boy does it make me feel like I've done something productive, even if I only spend 30 minutes working on it here and there. I'll share some pictures when it's actually done. Right now, things look like a disaster, but it's at least something I can tackle little by little on these dreary and gross days.

But when I'm not feeling productive, I've spent plenty of time curled up on the sofa watching TV and reading. I've gotten over the hump of not being able to read that hit hard at the beginning of quarantine and I've read a ton lately. I'll have a pretty huge April book round up. I've also found myself watching the new Bachelor show, which initially I had sworn off because it looked ridiculous. It's as bad as you'd imagine, but it's perfect mindless entertainment.

So that's what I've been up to -- along with a healthy mix of virtual happy hours and Zoom game nights.

I'm really looking forward to when we can return to some semblance of normal life, so I'm over here cheering on all those medical researchers trying to find us a vaccine.

Like I said in my March running recap, March was a weird month for me -- the first half dominated by moving stress, the second half dominated by quarantine stress.

Quarantine stress made it especially hard to focus, so my time spent sitting down and reading took a hit in March. But March was also the month I really started embracing audio books to keep me company on my quarantine walks. The addition of the audio books helped bolster what would otherwise have been a pretty sad month of reading for me.

Aside from the two more serious books I read at the start of the month, a lot of my March reads were intentionally lighter, easier reads that would take my mind off everything going on the in world.



Here's a look at what I read/listened to in March:

Five Stars

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
Growing up in an Irish Catholic family, I heard stories about the Troubles and how it wasn't safe to visit Northern Ireland when my parents were growing up. When I visited Belfast a few years ago, it was eye opening to see what had changed and what hadn't since the cease-fire. This book added a level of depth and color to my understanding of the Troubles that I never had before. It tackles the subject of people who were "disappeared," the hunger strikes by famous IRA prisoners, the rise of Sinn Féin, and leaves you wondering about how things ended. The Troubles wasn't a "war" so the crimes committed during it are not considered war crimes. The book leaves you wondering who should be held accountable, how do families get any sort of justice, and since Northern Ireland is still part of the UK, was it even worth it?

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Five stars! What a great, creative, twisty-turny book. I listened to this book on all my social distancing walks around the neighborhood and every time I got back home, I hated turning it off because I just wanted to know what happens next. Aiden Bishop arrives at Blackheath for a celebration, but he finds himself continuing to live the same day over and over as he tries to solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle. The catch is, each time Aidan wakes up, he's in the body of a different person at the party. Seeing the same events play out over and over from different people's perspectives make it very unclear who you can and can't trust and hard to know what is true. A fun mystery that I highly recommend.

Four Stars

American Royals by Katharine McGee
This was a fun book to read. Like the title says, it tells the story of the American Royal family. But we don't have royalty here you might say. Well this book assumes that we do -- that when Washington beat the British he become a monarch instead of a president and his blood line has ruled ever since. This follows the story of the modern-day royal family and their non-royal friends and the antics they get up to trying to cope with their fame and responsibilities. If you need a light-hearted read for tough times, I highly recommend this.

Matchmaking for Beginners by Maddie Dawson
This was the book I didn't know I needed during the first weekend stuck at home during the coronavirus lockdown. It was light and fun and took my mind off all the nonsense going on in the world.

Anna K by Jenny Lee
I listened to this as an audio book on my long walks at the beginning of the covid-19 outbreak. It was the perfect audio book to take my mind off everything going on in the world and whisk me away to the troubles of high schoolers struggling with their relationship problems. This book is an updated take on Anna Karenina and I enjoyed it for it's fast paced take on modern high school drama.

The Jetsetters by Amanda Eyre Ward
I've been having a hard time concentrating on books lately, and this was the light and easy book I needed during all this social distancing. It follows the story of a mother, who enters an essay contest to win a luxury vacation, in an attempt to reunite her adult children. The children all have their own challenges and baggage and when trapped together on a cruise for a week, it all comes bubbling to the surface. I enjoyed this book immensely because it didn't make me think too hard.

Three Stars

A Woman Like Her: The Story Behind the Honor Killing of a Social Media Star by Sanam Maher
I learned a lot while I read this book about honor killings and how prevalent they still are in Pakistan. I found the parts of the book that focused on Qandeel and her life really interesting and also incredibly tragic. I didn't so much love some of the other parts of the book that I felt wandered too much away from her story. I found some of those chapters harder to get through. Overall a good book, but wish there had been more time spent on Qandeel's story.

Are you reading (or listening to) any good books during quarantine?

Through quarantine life, running has been one of the few things keeping me sane. It gives me an excuse to get outside, get some fresh air and get some endorphins flowing.



When I look back at the calendar, it's crazy to think the first half of March was actually not spent in quarantine. But the first two weeks of March were definitely a hectic time because we were getting ready to close on our house and move.

I still managed to stay fairly close to my goal of three runs per week leading up to the move. But many of those runs didn't feel great. With packing and the move hanging over my head, a lot of times I felt like I should be focusing my energy on that instead of running.

These notes from the week right before my move sum up the general feeling I had on most of my runs in the first half of the month.



Right after the move, the official quarantine stuff hit and after taking a couple of days to settle into the new neighborhood, I was itching to get outside for runs and walks.

I'd say in the second half of the month, I got out for a walk or run basically every day that the weather was nice. Most of my runs were along a nice three-mile loop I found in the neighborhood.

I've also started re-introducing long runs on the weekends. So far my long runs are only five (very hilly) miles, but I'm excited to be reintroducing the concept of the long run. And honestly, quarantine feels like the perfect time to do it. I have no other plans competing with hour+ runs these days, so I don't feel forced to push the pace too much. I can just take my time and enjoy the miles.


Flowers along my running route

The other big thing I'm doing is wearing my Garmin again on almost all of my runs. Sometimes having the real-time data is great, but sometimes it also reminds me how slow I'm moving.

Walking is also become a staple in my life these days. Several days I'll run over my lunch break and then go out for a walk around the neighborhood after finishing work for the day. It's been a nice opportunity to explore the neighborhood. The one downside is that all the time on my feet is starting to add up to some tired legs. I can definitely feel the fatigue in my legs on runs these days. So I might need to reassess just how much I'm running and walking in the coming weeks.

In April, I'm hoping to slowly start to increase the distance of my long runs. My plan is to do this gradually so that I don't increase my risk of injury.

In these crazy quarantine times, I'm really glad to have running.