Books Read:
10. The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil — George Saunders
Kilometres Ran:
week eleven — 12
To date: 575 km
If I was going to make it to 95 books in 2017 I would need to be currently read my twenty-first right now to be on pace. I am not going to make it to 95 books. I realize that there are still forty-one weeks to go and there are a lot of poetry books out there that really deserve to be read. I have a couple that still are on the to-read. I’ve been reading a lot about running (duh) and one thing that came up a few times is that training plans should be written in pencil. I think that extends to life in general. Set goals in pen. Make plans in pencil. Phil kept bringing to mind the guy with the flowers in the banned Appetite for Destruction album cover art. So thanks for that George.
And then I got really sick, which really sucks. A chest cold like nothing that I’ve ever experienced before and hope to never experience again. I spend a while trying to appease my confirmation bias searching fruitlessly on Google for a reputable-sounding article that said that it was fine for me to run with the kind of sick symptoms that I had and I couldn’t find anything. And I really tried. But everything just said don’t be an idiot just rest and recover or you’re going to make it worse. So I did. And hence I ran 12 kilometres this week. My training plan called for 80-something. I’m concerned about missing a whole week with only six weeks to go until BMO.
Pacing is the issue. Thus ends week one of marathon training. SC introduced me to Hal Higdon (no not actually introduced me jeeze) while I was looking for training plans. The appeal of the one I chose is that all the technical mumbo-jumbo is nadda. It’s an 18 week plan, but week nine was pretty close to the same as what I’d done last week so it seemed reasonable to jump in. Plus I wouldn’t need to learn WTF a tempo and a fartek is. Maybe one day. Today was long run day, and until probably yesterday I did not know that LSD means something far different to people that run. And I’m not very good at it. Following Hal’s advice I tried to stick to a pace of around 5:30/km but ended up being quite a bit quicker: 5:16/km over 30.6 km (19 miles), which on one hand I was rather pleased about since I’d never run more than 25 km before today, but on the other hand I’m really trying to follow the training plan…something that I am not very good at in any situation, running or otherwise. Next week I’m staring down 80 km with a 32 km run on Sunday and already there’s a part of me that wants to do the 32 at 5:10.