GOATz 50K Race Recap

 I signed up for the GOATz 50K back in April, I think, on the day that my friend Carrie M. organized a forty-mile run as preparation for an upcoming 100-mile race she was training for.  I was in the midst of training for Grandma's Marathon at the time; I had fourteen or fifteen miles on the training schedule that day, I think, but wound up running seventeen, and signed up on the adrenaline of the day's run and the buzz of a few post-run beers.  In June, I ran a marathon PR at Grandma's and was a little dismayed to realize that training for GOATz needed to start pretty much immediately.  I took three days completely off from running and a full week off from any training plan, then went back to it.  As the fall race calendar started filling up with the Harvest Moon Hustle 10K and the Monument Half-Marathon in September, then the Market to Market relay and the Garmin Kansas City Half-Marathon in the weeks immediately leading up to GOATz, I started to wonder if I had bitten off more than I could chew.

This feeling came to a head at the GOATz preview run the weekend before Market to Market.  I already had one twenty-miler under my belt during this training cycle, but I had run it on pavement during my friend Karri's brewery run.  This time, I did two loops of the GOATz course (the 50K would be three loops) and was hit with how hard it was going to be and how long it was going to take.  Two loops (twenty-one miles) took me something like 4:35, which was slower than my most recent marathon time.  "I thought this would be okay since I've already run marathons, but those were all on flat roads!," I told my friends.  "This is on hilly trail!"  A couple of them chimed in to point out that you don't run a trail race as fast and that you hike up the hills.  "That makes it even worse!," I said.  "I'll be out there for like seven hours!" I was told that wasn't a bad time for a first 50K; I was like, "But I don't WANT to run for seven hours!"  I knew the GOATz course was a loop of 10.5 miles, and that there would also be 10.5 and 21 mile races going on at the same time.  If literally any one of my friends had been like, "Well, you know, you can always drop down to the 21," I would have been like "OKAY! YES! I'll do that!" None of them did.  

Market to Market came and went.  Garmin Kansas City came and went.  Next thing I knew, there was nothing to do but run a 50K.  The morning of the race, Jimmy Brown of Runner Church gave a short message where he quoted a Bible verse about finishing the race, and said something along the lines of, "You did not just sign up for this race to sign up, and you did not come here to just run part of the race.  You came here to finish the race, and unless you get sick or hurt, you will finish."  I looked at my friend Julia, who was also running her first 50K but was much more excited about it. I wish I could say that that's the moment where I was like "YES!," but I was still really nervous.

The race started, and everyone, except for the 50 milers, who had started at 3 a.m. (!!!) took off together.  A few of us had planned to run at least the first loop together, so during the first few miles I was mainly focused on staying with the group while everyone in the race was trying to settle into their paces.  Eventually, people spread out a little bit, and it started to feel a little more relaxed.  I had told myself I would eat something, whether the Skratch chews I had brought along or something from an aid station, every four miles, so I had six Skratch chews four miles in, then some peanut butter pretzels at the Runner Church aid station at mile eight.  The start/finish aid station at mile 10.5 marked the end of the first loop.  I used the Port-a-Potty, ate a few more pretzels, Amber refilled my water bottle for me, and then we were off again.  At that point, our group spread out a bit.  Karri was planning on pacing me for the whole thing, so she stuck with me; Anna and Julia went on ahead for awhile, then we caught them, then Julia took off at our next stop at the Runner Church aid station.  Anna was doing the 21 miler, so the end of the next loop was her last.  I made one more stop at the Port-a-Potty; Macy, who had won the 10.5 miler for the women earlier that day, refilled my water bottles; and Karri and I were off again.

Four miles into the loop, I tried to eat Skratch chews again, but after the second one I had a strong feeling that if I tried to eat any more, they would come back up.  Luckily, I was still at least able to drink water.  I think I got maybe one more Skratch chew down later down the road.  It got very windy.  At one point, where we were briefly on pavement on our way back into the woods, I felt like I was going to be blown over sideways.  Karri had been playing music for us, and at one point, "Jessie's Girl," one of my favorite songs of all time, came on.  "I'm going to do the hand-clappy part to see if I can still clap in rhythm," I told her.  I kind of could.  Running and clapping is hard, FYI.  At the Runner Church aid station, I tried to sip a little ginger ale, but since we were 2.5 miles from the end at that point, I didn't try to get anything else down.  Karri needed to put on sunscreen, so she told me to go on ahead and she would catch me.  After the Runner Church station, you ran up a grassy hill, crossed some pavement, and went back into the woods.  At that point, I tripped over a root.  I caught myself and didn't hit the ground.  Still, I shouted, "THIS SUCKS!" to the heavens.  Karri caught up with me again.  The next thing that stands out is that there was a big hill, and Karri was like, "What song can I play to get you up this hill?," and I was like, "Nothing."  Like, not in the mood for songs right now, let's just finish this thing.  (Later, I realized that "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" would have been the correct answer.)  We crossed the finish line in 6:58:34, so I was pretty right when I predicted that I would be out there for "like seven hours."  Our friends were there to cheer us in at the finish line.

I went and sat at a picnic bench.  Then I wanted to lie on the ground, so Carrie M. went and got a blanket.  Then I drank some ginger ale.  Then my stomach started to settle down.  I drank a Coke.  Eventually, we went our separate ways and made plans for dinner later.  I went home, took a shower, ate some Pringles, and by the time we were on our way to dinner, I said to Karri, "I reserve the right to change my mind on this, but I have felt worse after other races."  I threw up at the finish line of my first half-marathon.  I ran a 15K trail run in July heat back in 2012 that I still refer to as Death in the Woods.  Lying on a blanket feeling a little queasy didn't seem terrible by comparison.

We all went out for dinner, and Theresa asked me what the best and worst parts were.  I was quick to recount the queasiness as the worst part.  Then I said that the best part was the camaraderie, and I can't stress that enough.  Between getting to run the first loop with Karri, Ross, Anna, and Julia, Karri pacing me the whole way, Macy and Amber there at the aid stations, everyone there at the finish, and still more people there to congratulate all of us on Tuesday at run group, I felt so supported before, during, and after.  My friends are so great.

I drank a beer that was literally the size of my head that night.  That seems like an important detail.

I didn't sleep well that night and woke up sore the next day.  I got a really good night's sleep on Monday and woke up even more sore on Tuesday.  Tuesday night, I went to IRRC and walked with Julia and Theresa.  Afterwards, I talked to Carrie M. and said, "I feel like with races like this, it's you versus the course," and she said, "That's exactly right." I planned to take a full week off running and have stuck to that so far, but I am mostly not sore anymore and starting to feel a little antsy.  Still, with midterm grades due today and some fun social plans coming up this weekend, it should be easy enough to wait until Sunday.

Some takeaways:

1) The three weeks between the preview run and the race were very stressful and full of self-doubt.  However, I'm VERY glad that I did the preview run and kind of got real with myself about how things were going to be.  Up to that point, I think I thought it was going to be "not that much harder" than running a marathon.  It was a lot harder.  I'm glad I was prepared for that.  It's not good to be so scared that you talk yourself out of things, but it's also not good to kid yourself or not take things seriously enough.

2) That said, I actually was fairly physically prepared at that point, or I wouldn't have gotten through it.  I basically adapted the Hal Higdon Intermediate 1 plan that I did for Grandma's Marathon, doing more runs on trails and adjusting as I needed to for other races.  I totaled up and figured out that I did 88% of the workouts on the plan, giving me a B+ for preparedness.  Though I joked with my friends about the fact that I calculated all that and graded myself and all, I think it was actually a pretty good gauge, and think that in the A-/B+ range is a good place to be; I don't want to ever be so rigid that I can't ever miss a workout, but I also am not someone who "wings" things.  I would not have done it if I was not actually prepared.

3) I started my adult running career (I ran track and cross country in high school) in the year 2011.  I've run alone, with different small groups of friends, and with organized training groups, and I imagine that I will run as long as I am able and still liking it regardless of where I am or who I'm with.  However.  It's my friends who have consistently helped me level up and supported me.  In 2018, after finishing the Kentucky Derby Mini-Marathon, showering, and venturing back out for lunch, my friends and I passed people who were finishing the full.  While I was thinking, "Man, I'm so glad I didn't do the full! That looks terrible!," Carrie N. was like, "If they can do it, we can do it."  I was like, "FINE." So we registered for the Monumental Marathon in Indianapolis that fall, trained together, and my friends Alice and Shannon surprised me at the finish line with signs they had made.  At lunch, they gave me a decorated box full of cards and gifts from other friends who couldn't come but wanted to show their support.  The next year, Alice brought our friends Mel and Erin along.  I still remember (and have video somewhere) of running down the stretch before I made the last turn to the finish and seeing them cheering.  There was a woman holding a sign that said "Tap here to power up" with the mushroom from Super Mario Brothers, and Alice started shouting, "TAP THE SIGN! TAP THE SIGN!" I still giggle when I think about it.  Then I moved to Omaha, and was introduced to the Omaha running community through the Inner Rail Run Club; it was the friends I met there who introduced me to trail running.  I knew ultrarunning existed before meeting them, but I had never actually known anyone who had run further than a marathon.  I started thinking about it, but when I got into the Chicago Marathon in 2021, my focus all went toward training for that (though I did some shorter trail races throughout the year).  So, this was the year.  Thanks so much to Karri, Carrie M., Julia, Anna, Amber, Macy, Theresa, and the MANY other awesome people who did training runs with me, ran with me for all or part of the race itself, or were there at the finish line-- all while working toward their own goals.  Would I run on my own?  Yes, but definitely not as far, and it definitely wouldn't be as fun.

Monument Half-Marathon Race Recap

I used to be able to hit sub-two hours in the half-marathon consistently, with just the occasional exception on an especially hilly course or a really hot, humid day, until 2019, at which point it became much more hit or miss.  I hit it most recently in October 2019 at the Evansville Half with a time of 1:55:56.  Though I'm sure age has something to do with the difference, I will also say that nine of my top twelve half times (I've run twenty-three road half-marathons) were at the Evansville Half, which is held in early October; the weather tends to be cool, and the course is mostly flat.  There was bound to be more variation once I started branching out more frequently to different courses, running them at different times of year, training for longer distances, and doing the occasional not-that-smart thing like running halfs on back-to-back weekends.

This past Saturday I ran the Monument Half-Marathon in Gering, Nebraska, and I knew a sub-two time was probably not in the cards when miles two and three were both up the same, seemingly endless hill.  The first mile was downhill; when my watch chimed and I had an 8:31 pace, I wasn't sure whether to think, "Oooh, you went out too fast," or, "It's fine, you have some time banked now," or just, "Well, that was downhill, who cares?" A woman running near me, who I will refer to as My Musical Friend because she was playing music over her phone, and throughout the race I would speed up when I heard the music coming behind me, scolded her husband for pacing them too fast during the first mile.  During the second mile, when we all started uphill, he said something to her like, "Look, I will stay with you until it doesn't make sense anymore."  My watch chimed at the end of the second mile: 9:39.  "Oooohhh," I said aloud, in a tone like, "That's not good."  My Musical Friend said, "It's okay.  It'll even out with the downhills."  That made sense at that point, since my first mile was about thirty seconds too fast and the second was about thirty seconds too slow for the pace I was trying to hit...but then mile three continued uphill.  "Just go!" My Musical Friend said to her husband.  Up ahead, another woman urged her friend to go on ahead of her; the hills were breaking up duos left and right.  Mile three was another 9:39.  The hill finally started to descend at mile four, but not quite at the same degree; mile four was 9:07, which was better and back on pace, though not enough faster to make up tons of ground.

A few things happened relatively simultaneously at mile five: the course turned onto a gravel road; the half-marathon relay, which started thirty minutes after the half-marathon, had its first exchange point, so there was a "Why are there so many people just standing around?" moment; and the course became just BEAUTIFUL.  If you've ever been to the Scottsbluff/Gering area, you know that it is beautiful in general, but at this point there were some Badlands-like formations that you don't normally see.  We were running on a gravel road around the back side of the Scottsbluff National Monument, which you don't normally have a reason to go to.  Also at this point, us runners spread out a bit more.  I passed an older man who had started alternating between running and walking.  Occasionally, I would hear My Musical Friend's music behind me, then the music would fade again.  One thing with the early uphill miles was that you started to see people struggling earlier in the race than you normally would.  I wouldn't say I was struggling, but I did consciously adjust my goal from sub-two to "just try to keep all your miles under ten minutes."

Things kind of became a blur around mile seven or eight.  My Musical Friend disappeared somewhere behind me (I wish I knew her real name so I could look up how she finished).  We got back on pavement as the course turned onto the paved bike/running trails near the monument.  My parents were cheering two different places.  The first, my dad called out that I was twenty-fourth out of the women.  The second, my mom called out, "Molly! Look who's here!  It's Kaitlyn!"; my cousin's daughter was volunteering with some fellow nursing students.  The course kind of zig-zagged through some neighborhoods, with arrows on the ground pointing our way and volunteers in the confusing spots.  We switched back to gravel to head back to the start/finish at Five Rocks Amphitheater, running past a cemetery.  There was another downhill, and a volunteer kept calling out to us to watch ourselves on the gravel.  Next thing I knew I was crossing the finish.  My time was 2:07:55, far off the goal (hope?), but sometimes you adjust as you go when the course is more challenging than expected.  Final results were 24/125 women and 61/218 overall.

It was a great race.  I really enjoyed the mixture of pavement and gravel, and the scenery was beautiful.    Since it was a smaller race, you spread out a bit more than you typically would in a road half-marathon; the person who finished before me was forty seconds ahead, while the person behind was more than twenty seconds back.  I think I'm going to go back for the full next year.  For the full, they bus you out to the Wildcat Hills, and the first five miles are downhill.  Their second half overlaps with the half-marathon course.  I imagine pacing would be challenging since the second half is the more difficult half.  At any rate, I'd like to try it.  I think I love smaller races.  

One of the sponsors was the Flyover Brewery, and they offered a free beer if you brought your race bib in before six p.m.  My parents and I went sometime between five and six, and there were lots of people there wearing their race shirts, and the race director was coming around talking to everyone and thanking us for being there.  The proceeds go to scholarships at Western Nebraska Community College, so she emphasized how much they have raised since they started doing the race.  The whole community was really supportive of the race.  I would definitely recommend.

Grandma's Marathon Race Recap

Grandma's Marathon race day started with them shuttling us via school bus from hotels/dorms/various locations around Duluth to the starting line.  I noticed as soon as I got on the bus that my phone battery was already down to 52%, which I cursed myself for and knew would not end well.  Fortunately, that would be the worst thing that happened that day.

My previous marathon PR was 4:36:17, set at the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon in 2019.  Having bonked at all three of my previous marathons, I decided to start off with the 4:35 pace group.  During the fourth mile, I kept finding myself having to slow down and let the pace group catch back up to me, which eventually started to seem dumb, so I decided to just run my race.  I warned myself not to let myself get under 10:00 miles until at least mile sixteen.  I accidentally did once at mile thirteen, but it wasn't much under so I didn't worry about it.

Though I left the 4:35 group behind, I had a pace bracelet telling me what time I needed to be at at each mile to hit 4:35, which was SUPER helpful.  With two miles to go, I knew I had banked somewhere between two and three minutes and would hit my goal as long as I kept within the range of what I'd already been doing.  Then someone started playing "All I Do is Win," and a random stranger called out to no one in particular, "YOU'RE DOING IT!!!," and I was like, "I AM doing it!," and I took off.  Mile 25 pace was 9:39.  Mile 26 was 9:33.  After I crossed the finish line, I got the notification on my watch from the Grandma's app that said, "Molly Brost has crossed the finish line at 4:30:54," and I was like, "HOLY CRAP!" I managed to collect my medal and, with my phone now at 7%, shoot off a text to my family telling them my time.  Somehow, even after my phone died, I was still getting notifications on my watch, so even though I couldn't respond, I managed to get the gist of where my friends were and find them with only *a little* wandering around cursing myself for not making sure that I had started the day with a properly charged phone.

Some things that helped me reach my goal:

1) Nearly perfect conditions.  Temps were in the 50s, the course was nice and flat with some downhills and only really one big uphill.  I commented to more than one person, "Part of me wants to retire from marathon running right now, because I will never have this perfect of a race again."  A random stranger who struck up with a conversation with me at a water fountain was like, "Oh, wow, what a great thing to be able to say! You're not going to, though, right?" I was like, "Of course not."

2) The Hal Higdon Intermediate 1 training plan, pictured below:

For my previous three marathons I used the Novice 2 plan.  The main difference between that one and this one was this one included five weekly runs instead of four, which meant back-to-back runs on the weekends.  This sometimes led to things that I never would have considered possible before, such as, say, running the Early Bird 10 Miler one day and then waking up the next morning and doing fifteen miles.  I thought to myself multiple times throughout training, "I don't know if I'm actually getting faster, but I can DO MORE than I've ever been able to do before."  I didn't follow the plan perfectly, because life happens, but I calculated it and determined that I did 91% of the workouts on the plan.  I think it's good to choose a plan that is maybe just A LITTLE too hard, because even if you fall slightly short, you're still going to be doing more than you've done before.

3) Proper portions of Honey Stinger chews.  I always struggle with race day/long run nutrition.  I was worried because I felt like I'd been really fading on my long runs.  Then I looked on the back and saw that the serving size was six Honey Stinger chews.  I'd been eating four every four miles.  I upped it to six, and I swear to God it made a huge difference.

4) Last, but CERTAINLY not least, awesome running friends! Omaha has a fantastic running community.  There are running groups most nights of the week, and through those groups you can meet awesome friends to also do your weekend long runs with 👍. Thanks so much to everyone who did training runs with me, shared the race weekend experience, or offered support from afar!

After the disappointment of last fall's hot AF Chicago Marathon, it was nice to have a race go really well.  I feel like this is the first full marathon that I've actually raced and not just tried to survive.

Reflections on the Chicago Marathon almost a week later

My training for the Chicago Marathon officially began the week of June 7th. I was still pretty trained up after back-to-back spring halfs: the Kentucky Derby Mini-Marathon, held in a staggered format over four days (I believe), mostly on running paths over the Indiana border; and the Lincoln Half, held in a more normal format with some Covid restrictions. I wasn't overly happy with my performance in either; I'm really motivated by competition, and the staggered format for Derby had us so spread out that I found it hard to keep up a good race pace. Not only was the Lincoln Half fairly hot and humid, but it was literally a week and a day after Derby, so I really hadn't had time to recover. I was pretty proud of myself that I was in good enough shape to do halfs two weekends in a row, though.

The training plan that I followed was the Hal Higdon Marathon Novice 2, which, according to the web site, is designed for runners who may have already finished their first marathon and are looking to build mileage and improve speed for their second or third. I actually used the exact same plan when I ran my first two marathons. I like it, but while looking at the web site just now I saw the Intermediate 1 plan and am preemptively excited to use it for my next full. It has runs five days a week instead of four, which I sometimes did anyway even when I was doing Novice 2, so I think I'm ready. The Novice 2 only included one race in the build-up to the marathon, a half-marathon. I did A BUNCH more than that, including the Don Childs 5 Mile Run; the Cornfield Cornfield, Boonville Backroads, and Harvest Moon Hustle 10Ks; the Dizzy Goat endurance trail run, which for me wound up being 12.4 miles; the What the Hill?! trail half-marathon; and the Market to Market relay, where my legs added up to around 14 miles. I know this doesn't sound ideal, but I think it worked out okay, because I was still able to keep up with my long runs even on 10K weeks, and the 10Ks basically wound up being my pace/tempo runs on those weeks. Also, most of them were so much fun; there were only one or two that I can even imagine NOT doing next year, so that's just going to be how it goes in the summer/fall racing season, I guess.

My first two fulls were the 2018 and 2019 Indianapolis Monumental Marathons. I ran the first in 4:37:35 and the second in 4:36:17. I figured I would shoot for 4:30 in Chicago and drove my Omaha running friends and my Indiana friend, Carrie, who was also going to be doing Chicago, absolutely INSANE trying to determine whether I would start with the 4:30 pace group, the 4:20 pace group, or just not run with a pace group and try to keep my pace under 10:17/mile, which is what I needed for 4:30. In the end, I went with the third option, only I hadn't counted on it being SO FREAKING HOT.


The Chicago Marathon has an alert system where green means ideal running conditions, yellow means proceed with caution, red means potentially dangerous, and black means so dangerous that they would have to shut down the race. The alert level was at yellow when we started the race; I don't even remember which mile I was at when I saw that it had changed to red. I DO remember thinking, "If they change it to black and I don't get to finish this race, I am going to lose it." Luckily, that didn't happen.

My first four miles were sub-10 minutes, which was a little fast but not alarmingly fast. When I fell back into the 10-11 minute mile range at mile five, I thought that was good; I was settling into a pace. A few miles were slower than the 10:17 pace I needed, but I figured it would probably all work out since the first four were a little faster than I needed, and I had it in my head that as long as I stayed at a net pace of 10:30 or under, I would still PR. At maybe mile twelve or thirteen, the 4:30 pace group caught me, and I ran with them for two or three miles. One pacer was going real crazy waving her sign around; I was already kind of fading and in a bad mood at that point, and all I could think was, "Take it easy with the sign! You're going to hit someone!" Or maybe something meaner. You know. Then at mile fifteen I was like, "Whoa! Why are they taking off at a dead sprint?" They were NOT taking off at a dead sprint. Friends, The Wall is real, and I hit it hard at mile fifteen, and harder at mile nineteen. At some point I basically abandoned all time goals and just focused on keeping going. Also, I drank A LOT of water. I carried my own water bottle; at some water stops, in addition to the paper cups, they had people just standing there with jugs who would fill your bottles for you, which was nice. I also ate, over the course of the race, some Skratch chews, two mini Honey Stinger waffles, and part of a banana that a volunteer gave me at some point in the last ten miles. They gave me I think half of a banana; I couldn't eat all of it, and as I threw the rest on the ground, I was like, "Oh, no, what if someone slips on my banana peel?!"

Another thing is that my watch didn't quite line up with the mile markers. I had been warned beforehand that the tall buildings and tunnels would throw off my GPS, so I knew that was going to happen, but it was a little demoralizing to hear the beep signaling a mile and then not see the mile marker for like a quarter mile. (My watch wound up measuring the course at 26.59, so less than half a mile off, which doesn't seem terrible given the distance, the buildings, etc.) At some point I thought to myself, "Well, I think I can still finish in under five hours, but who the heck even knows at this point?" That's right: I fell pretty far off goal pace. I ultimately finished in 4:56:24, which obviously wasn't what I wanted, but given that the temps were literally thirty-five to forty degrees higher than they were when I set my PR at Monumental in 2019, I didn't think it was that bad. The difference made sense to me.

Even though I ate more/better during this race and drank a lot more water than I did at Indy in 2019, I still don't feel like I have race nutrition totally figured out. As I mentioned, I am going to the next step up in training plans the next time, so that should also help. However, I was pretty happy with the training season as a whole. Also, wow, what an experience race weekend was! Everywhere had long lines, but everything was run very quickly and efficiently. It was also great that basically the whole city seemed excited about the race; a banner greeted us at the airport, and even flying out the next day, people were still wearing their shirts and medals at the airport, which was neat.

It was also, of course, super fun spending time with my friend Carrie, who I hadn't seen in six months, and her family. All in all, the whole weekend was a great experience. My next full will probably be a considerably smaller one, but it was great to have the World Major Marathon experience.

Thoughts on The Baby-Sitters Club Season Two (spoilers)

 

Don't you love that I haven't written on this thing in more than a year and The Baby-Sitters Club is what brings me back 😅?  I just unabashedly love this show.   Just in general-- and this was true of Season One, as well-- I love how the series is faithful to the spirit of the books and uses individual books as the inspiration for specific episodes, but doesn't treat the books as gospel.  With that in mind, we get roommate problems between Mary Anne and Dawn, but they happen when Mary Anne and her dad are just staying with the Shafers for a week instead of after they become stepsisters, and we get Derek Masters, the child star who gets Jessi thinking about giving up ballet, as an online sensation rather than as a TV actor, among other changes.  

 One especially well-done episode was the one where Mimi dies.  As a kid, I remember putting reading off that book for a really long time because I knew it would be sad.  The episode was obviously also sad, but really well-done.  Claudia spends most of the episode trying to distract herself from her grief.  Mary Anne is the one who finally gets through to her, reminding her of a time when she broke a bone, and how if she had just ignored it, it would have only gotten worse, but since she dealt with it and got help, it healed correctly.  She says that grief is the same, and she has to face and deal with her pain in order to get through it.  I thought that was a really good way of putting it.  Also, how weird was it when Karen told Claudia that Mimi and Old Ben Brewer were together in the afterlife like literally the day after Mimi dies?  And literally no one tells Karen that was inappropriate.  To an extent, I think it's great that the Thomas/Brewer family lets Karen be weird, but wow.  Finally, when Janine announced that she was in love with Ashley, I literally blurted out, "Oh, shit!" I did NOT see that coming, I guess because it didn't happen in the books (Ashley Wyeth was a character, but she was an artist who briefly distracts Claudia from the Baby-Sitters Club).  But it was pretty awesome.  

I also was fairly impressed with Watson's little speech about how the Thomas kids' dad is a piece of shit (obviously he didn't use that kind of language, but you know) and that they all needed to just stop letting him disappoint them and let him (Watson) be their real dad.  I also liked how Dawn and Mary Anne jumped in to back him up, with Dawn saying that even though her parents are divorced and she doesn't get to see her dad much, he is NOT absent in the way that Kristy's dad is.  I don't really remember having strong opinions on Watson one way or another in the series, but I appreciate that the show is portraying him as a big dork who tries too hard but a really, really good guy.  

I also really appreciate Kristy on the show, and I like that the other girls seem to really appreciate Kristy, too.  There is one episode where Kristy is sick and Dawn, as Alternate Officer, takes over; Dawn has a lot of good ideas, but no real plan to execute them.  Kristy comes back and is very quickly and efficiently like, "Great ideas, Dawn.  Here's how we're going to implement them."  I appreciate that she didn't take glee in the fact that things were kind of chaotic without her or shoot down Dawn's ideas, but actually saw the good in them and figured out how to make them work.  Along with that, I also like how even though sometimes the girls disagree or get annoyed with each other, they are fundamentally good friends who accept each other for who they are.  Their families, for the most part, are like that, too.  There is one episode where Stacey asks them to help with a fundraiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and Kristy firmly says she'll participate, but will NOT wear a dress; they're all just like, "Yeah, cool."  In the Valentine's Day episode, Karen asks Kristy if anyone gave her a flower for Valentine's Day, and Kristy's just like, "No, thank God"; Karen's just like, "Hmm. Cool, now let's talk about how our house is haunted," or whatever.  They all know when to call each other out or challenge each other, but they don't make A Thing out of every little thing.  

The stuff with Mary Anne and Logan's relationship was kind of weird.  The two become a couple and Mary Anne is overwhelmed with how much things change; they get invited to sit in the "couples lounge" at lunch, Logan gets kind of peer pressured into taking Mary Anne on a really fancy date for Valentine's Day, and Mary Anne's friends stop inviting her to some things because they assume she'd rather hang out with him.  Mary Anne's dad eventually has a talk with her and tells her that she and Logan don't have to be a couple, they can just be friends who like each other, which is good advice, I guess, but I feel like another option was that they could still be a couple, just not LIKE THAT.  That's basically what they wind up doing, but junior high relationships weren't really like that anyway, were they?  Hmm.

I also really appreciated how Jessi's mom was just like, "Oh, you are NOT giving up ballet just because you didn't get the lead in one show."  I think what happened there was Jessi went from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a big pond, which happens to everyone sooner or later, and it's probably good that Jessi got that experience out of the way so young.

Finally, I'm sure I mentioned this in my first season review, but how brilliant was it of them to cast Alicia Silverstone as Kristy's mom? She was like ICONIC to us 90s teens.

Anyway, can't wait for season three! Great job, show!

thoughts on The Affair (spoilers)

 So I watched all five seasons of this show in about a month, and even though I have some mixed feelings about various storylines, even before I was completely finished, I was thinking that I want to go back and rewatch it from the beginning right away and experience it again knowing what's going to happen.  I'm not sure if I've ever felt that way with a show before, especially one like this that is sometimes hard to watch.

Dominic West stars as Noah Solloway, an English teacher and novelist who spends his summers in Montauk, New York with his wife, Helen (Maura Tierney); their four children, Whitney (Julia Goldani Telles), Martin (Jake Siciliano), Trevor (Jason Sand), and Stacey (Leya Catlett/Abigail Dylan Harrison); and his wealthy in-laws, Margaret (Kathleen Chalfant) and Bruce (John Doman).  They seem like a happy family, though Noah's in-laws aren't particularly nice to him; he isn't rich like them, nor is he as successful of a novelist as his father-in-law.  On their way into town the summer our story begins, the Solloways stop for lunch at a restaurant called the Lobster Roll, where Stacey starts to choke on her food; she is saved by a waitress named Alison Lockhart (Ruth Wilson).  Noah and Alison keep crossing paths, develop an attraction to each other, and eventually embark on an affair.  The show shifts back and forth between Noah and Alison's perspectives as they tell their stories to a police detective for reasons that aren't made clear until later; to hear Noah tell it, she practically threw herself at him.  From Alison's point of view, she met Noah at a low point in her life when she was recovering from a personal tragedy and when her own marriage (to Cole Lockhart, played by Joshua Jackson) was in trouble, and Noah made her feel something other than pain for the first time in years.  Eventually, we learn why Noah and Alison are talking to the police; the affair is revealed to/found out by Noah and Alison's spouses; and we move past the affair to its aftermath.  The show expands beyond Noah and Alison's perspectives to include those of Helen, Cole, Whitney, and other characters that we don't meet until later seasons.

One thing that surprised me about this show is how much happens; the affair is revealed before the end of the first season, and Helen kicks Noah out almost immediately.  Still we have more than four seasons of the show to go.  The main thing that I took away is that though a love affair can be all-consuming enough to make you prioritize it above everything else and essentially blow up your life, that doesn't make the relationship forged from it fated or permanent; once it's out in the open, you still have to move on with your day-to-day lives, and those lives don't always fit the way you want them to.  Another major theme is how far-reaching the effects of an affair are; to the two people involved, it feels so private and intimate, yet it affects the lives of so many other people for so many years to come.

I had mixed feelings about the show's treatment of women.  Many times, when a woman who has been through a lot finally finds happiness or learns to stand up for herself, the show, for lack of a better phrase, shits on her.  For example, after Helen and Noah divorce, she falls in love with Vik Ullah (Omar Metwally), a surgeon who operates on Helen and Noah's son, Martin, who is diagnosed with Crohn's disease fairly early in the series.  Though Helen initially holds Vik at arm's length and she never truly seems to get over Noah, they forge a happy life together; he treats her kids well; and they all move to Los Angeles.  No sooner does this happen than Vik is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which he refuses treatment for and ultimately dies from-- though not before Vik, who basically seems to be a nice guy, has a one-night stand with and impregnates his and Helen's twenty-nine year old neighbor, Sierra (Emily Browning), and not before Vik's mother, Priya (Zenobia Shroff), berates Helen every chance she gets, largely simply for being at the tail end of childbearing age, for being divorced, and for already having children of her own.  This continues after Vik's death.  Helen begins dating an actor named Sasha Mann (Claes Bang), and one night Helen refuses Priya's last-minute request to bring Vik and Sierra's baby, Eddie, to meet Priya's brother, who is in town for one night only, and to pretend that the baby is hers.  Helen's refusal seems reasonable; she already has plans, and she doesn't want to lie.  However, Priya shows up at Helen's doorstep to inform her that her own parents and brother disowned her for marrying a Muslim; that this was the first time she was seeing her brother in decades; and that all she wanted was to give him a chance to see his great-nephew without dishonoring her late son's memory.  She tells Helen that Vik was always telling her what a selfless person Helen was, but she obviously had him fooled.  It's like any time Helen starts to be happy or stands up for herself, the show has to beat her down.  

The most egregious example of the show punishing women is, of course, the way Alison's story ends (HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD).  To make a long, complicated story short, after Alison's marriages to both Cole and Noah end, she begins a relationship with a veteran named Ben Cruz (Ramon Rodriguez).  Ben initially holds back from starting a relationship with her, supposedly because he is a recovering alcoholic and he has been advised against dating early in his recovery.  We, the audience, and eventually Alison, learn that the real reason is that he is married.  When Alison confronts him about this, he becomes enraged, calling her a seductress, saying that it is her fault that he has started drinking again, and telling her that he will only leave her alone if she admits that this is all her fault.  She refuses to do so, stating that he is a grown man who is responsible for his own decisions.  We are proud of her for standing up for herself.  Her reward is to be murdered, thrown into the ocean, and have her death ruled as a suicide.  From a storytelling perspective, this has a tragic, "full circle" quality, as the major cause for the tension in Alison and Cole's marriage was the accidental drowning death of their son, Gabriel.  You can't help but wish the show had done better by Alison, though, than to have her head literally bashed in seconds after she finally tells a man to grow up and stop blaming her for his own mistakes and shortcomings.

There is also a "#metoo" storyline that adds to this pattern, and that I had mixed feelings about.  Descent, the fictionalized account that Noah writes about his and Alison's affair, is ultimately made into a movie.  In the lead-up to its release, Vanity Fair publishes an article about Noah in which a former publicist states that he tried to coerce her into sex while they were on a book tour; a former student-teacher states the she did have sex with him when she was working at the same school as him; and a former student states that he verbally abused her in class (an event she chronicled in a book).  We, the audience, saw all of these events happen over the course of the series; none of them seemed particularly significant at the time, and the incidents with the publicist and the student-teacher came across as consensual (though problematic because of the uneven power dynamics at play).  The point seems to be that while each incident individually takes place in the grey area of "problematic, but not necessarily sexual harassment," taken together they show a pattern of disrespect towards women that Noah should be held accountable for.  I was fine with the point they eventually got to, but because it does seem that at least one of the women is lying; because one of the women is depicted as fairly unlikable; and because Helen (at least from Whitney's perspective) makes excuses for Noah, it initially seemed like they were sending a weird message about #metoo as a whole.  They got to a fairly interesting and nuanced discussion of the issue, but they took a weird path there.

I will also say-- and I'm not sure if this was intentional or not-- that I felt an emotional distance from the characters that kept me from being as moved/affected by some of the events as I might expect.  This is a series in which one of the core four characters is freaking murdered unexpectedly, whose murderer is never held accountable, and whose daughter and ex-husbands spend years thinking she committed suicide.  This is a series in which we learn that two of the main characters lost a young son in a drowning accident and that their marriage has never been the same since.  This is a series in which a main character's romantic partner, who is a major part of the show for two seasons, dies of cancer.  I felt bad for these characters insofar in that I felt that these events were unfair, or tragic, or unfortunate.  However, I was not emotionally wrecked in the way that I have been by series such as, say, Parenthood or Six Feet Under.  I wonder if this is because the shifting perspectives lead you not to empathize with any one character, but rather to view the events as studies in how different people perceive/react to upsetting circumstances?  I'm not sure; I was just surprised that I wasn't more emotionally affected by certain events.

The performances are all top-notch, especially Maura Tierney as Helen, who had a fairly thankless role that wound up having a lot of depth.  Again, I think it would be a good show to watch again now that I know what happens so that I wouldn't just be watching to see how the plot unfolds.

thoughts on The Baby-Sitters Club Netflix series (spoilers)

A quick Internet search tells me that the original Baby-Sitters Club book series ran from 1986-2000; I'm guessing that I picked them up in, say, 1988 or 1989, at age nine or ten, and read them until I was maybe fourteen or fifteen.  A quick Internet search also tells me that there was a very short-lived HBO series in 1990; I remember seeing a few episodes and thinking it was fine.  The episodes weren't based on any particular books, but were new stories featuring the Baby-Sitters Club characters.  The Baby-Sitters Club movie came out in 1995, which maybe explains why, while I don't remember it that well, I remember not caring for it; I would have been sixteen then, so I had probably finished reading them relatively recently.  I probably was still familiar enough with the series to be overly critical of any detail that wasn't just so while simultaneously thinking I was too old for it.

Now, in 2020, we get the Baby-Sitters Club Netflix series, a series where individual episodes are based on the actual first eight books in the series, plus there are two episodes that take place at camp, which the baby-sitters attended in a Super Edition.  The Netflix series reminded me of how much the original series always did right, while making some smart updates in the spirit of the original series.  In the original series, the sitters baby-sat for a deaf child and an autistic child at different times.  Some of the sitters' parents were divorced or widowed.  Once character was diabetic.  Two books that I can recall dealt directly with racism.  The girls dealt with real problems and weren't just different from each other in surface-level ways.  Though the books were quick reads-- I would buy mine in a town about an hour away from where I lived and usually read the whole thing on the ride home-- there was much to be admired about the realistic, socially engaged, imperfect baby-sitters.

Since it's 2020, some of the original details about the logistics of the club are brought up as smart throwbacks; when Kristy's (Sophie Grace) mother (Alicia Silverstone) has trouble finding a sitter for Kristy's younger brother, she bemoans the days when you could just call a girl in your neighborhood and she'd actually answer the phone.  Thus, the Baby-Sitters Club is formed with the simple yet brilliant idea that the actual baby-sitters will get together three times a week at a pre-appointed time, and parents will know that they can call during that time to get a sitter.  They use a landline that club Vice-President Claudia Kishi (Momona Tamada) buys online; to get around having to network with adults on social media, they print up old-school fliers.  The ten episodes deal with the girls getting the business off the ground; revealing secrets (Stacey (Shay Rudolph) has diabetes); making new friends (California transplant Dawn Schafer (Xochitl Gomez) joins the club in the fifth episode); experiencing personal milestones (Kristy gets her period; Stacey and Mary Anne (Malia Baker) both have their first kisses); and encountering family issues (Kristy's mother gets remarried; Claudia's grandmother has a stroke).  Along the way, we're reminded what good people the girls always were: Kristy can be controlling, but is an amazing leader and go-getter; Claudia doesn't do well in school, but is artistic and fashionable; Mary Anne is shy, but knows when to stand up for herself and others (as when she advocates for a transgender child in the fourth episode); Stacey is boy-crazy but a math genius; Dawn is free-spirited but knows when to ask for help (as when the scatterbrained mother of a child forgets to tell her that the child's father will be picking him up).  They all show that young girls are complicated, and can do and be more than one thing at once.  As a whole, I loved it.

A few random thoughts:

1) I'd forgotten how weird Kristy's eventual stepsister, Karen Brewer (Sophia Reid-Gantzert) was, thinking her next-door neighbor was a witch but kind of enjoying it. 

2) They did a great job with how they portrayed the adults.  Particular shout-outs to Marc Evan Jackson (Agent Coulson!) as Mary Anne's father, Richard Spier, who is clearly still grieving his late wife and struggling as a single father but not a bad guy, and Mark Feuerstein as Kristy's eventual stepfather Watson Brewer, who is kind of a huge dork and tries too hard, but again: good guy.  No real bad eggs among the baby-sitters and their parents, save for Kristy's (unseen) deadbeat father.

3) The actors playing Claudia and Dawn had some real charisma.  Claudia and Dawn were always among my favorite characters, and Momona Tamada and Xochitl Gomez were great.

4) Reading the books as a child, I always thought Claudia and Stacey were just so cool.  Watching the series as an adult, I stand by that impression.

5) Even though I sometimes was frustrated with things that Kristy did, I liked that the series let her be really awful at times-- being stubbornly unaccepting of Watson for way too long; getting into a fight with her own mother on her mother's wedding day; being pretty awful to Dawn because she's jealous that Mary Anne has made a friend independent of her.  I don't recall many shows where you get to see a teen girl be real petty, stubborn, and jealous, yet you still get to like her at the end of the day.

6) Oh, Stacey.  Openly flirting with Kristy's teen brother and the Sea City lifeguard.  Headed for trouble, that girl.  I do love that Mary Anne kind of had a girl crush on her until they went to Sea City together and then she's like, "Yeah, you're just as much of a dork as the rest of us."

I think that's it! Hope there's a season two!