Summer Run Streak, Day #72 and #73

Quite busy at work the last couple of days - managed two and something miles yesterday at the beach, and then nine and something miles tonight.

I ran barefoot at the beach, which is always fun, and then tonight I ran in the new KSOs this time with some toe socks and bandages over the areas I rubbed raw on Monday. It didn't help entirely, but once I eased into my form things worked out.

Back in black.

I'm not entirely sure I have mentioned it on the blog before, but back in 2008/2009 I got very interested in bread making. I decided I wanted to learn how to make real artisan bread because I needed a hobby other than music, which is really my career. I picked up a copy of Reinhart's the Bread Baker's Apprentice, created an account at the Fresh Loaf and set about reading and practicing all I could. I got decent at it, but I wouldn't say I perfected it.

I was also reading a lot of the Russian realist authors then, and I felt like my hobbies were intersecting in a big way reading passages like the following: 

"What you call social position consists in the privilege of capital and education. Unwealthy and uneducated people earn their crust of bread by physical labor, and I see why I should be an exception,"

--Anton Chekov, My Life

I had just finished college, into the height of the depression and there were no real jobs. I had a hard time even getting a minimum wage job. I really wanted to do something where I created a real product, because I felt like that was lacking in my academic life. Other people I knew went through similar crises, and became carpenters.

There were themes in what I was reading that reflected hard work. Bread making seemed to be all about hard work, patience, technique. Music was the same basic thing. Years later, after I had given up making bread and started running, I found the same common themes: 

You practice the scales slowly, placing the notes, and then work them faster until the rhythm and articulation gel. Everything is about hard work and technique.

You knead the bread until it passes the window test, if you over knead it you hurt the gluten development and it doesn't rise as expected. 

You lift your leg, focus on not over striding, and you get faster with less impact on your hips. 

I am working on a loaf of sourdough bread at the moment. I milled down some wheat berries a couple of weeks ago, and then used a common fruit juice/flour method to cultivate some wild yeast starter. This is the first loaf I'm making with it, so we will see how it does. I'm not expecting perfection, right now, but hopefully something good enough. I have used the starter before to make sourdough pancakes and I was really impressed with the flavor I got out of it feeding it rye flour.