I keep going missing.
I have an excuse. I'm training. And when I'm not training I'm thinking about training, or planning someone's else training, or re-planning my own training, or questioning my coach about my training, or reading about training.
I'm an extremely interesting person, don't you think?
I remember a long, long time ago I thought it was an amazing achievement to run 20 miles in one week. This really was a long time ago... like when I was still in college. I remember I kept a log of my running, and I distinctly remember hitting 20 miles one week and being in total awe. I had run 20 miles IN ONE WEEK. ME! 20 MILES! ONE WEEK!
And now, at 40, I think I'm lame if I only run 20 miles, swim only 7500 yards, and bike only 120 miles in one week... which is what I did last week when recovering from Mooseman. I was glad for a recovery week. But I still feel lame.
The next three weeks constitute the big push toward IMLP. Putting in big hours and big miles make me tired, but it also make me feel safe. What else can I do but log the time and distance? It's the only control I have over my performance in this game. I must do the work and I can do the work. I can't control anything else.
I have thoughts in my brain, but I'm simply not sure they are worth putting to paper. (or computer screen.)
Here are some anyway:
I've been thinking about how it's crazy that they assign The Sun Also Rises to high schoolers. I'm quite sure it's been awhile since you read it, and I'm quite sure you don't remember what it is about, because, well, you read it in high school. I will just mention, then, that it is a novel thematically appropriate to those older than 16. Most of the characters spend the novel wasted. Seriously, it seems that living as an expatriate post World War I in Paris was about -- drinking. Drinking and searching for passion in a world in which ultimately you are nothing more than a speck in the scheme of things. So you should get drunk. Then Drunker.
I've also been thinking about freedom and control, mostly because I am reading Franzen's Freedom, which is both good and depressing, though not as depressing as The Corrections. We both want control and to be controlled, and then we feel suffocated by it and can't escape it.
Maybe Hem was right and we should just drink...
Except, well, he shot himself in the end.
You can tell I've been spending long hours on the bike, eh? I'm so far into my head I can't find my way out.
4.5 hours on Mrs. Z tomorrow! ueueueu!
12 comments:
Just finished "Once a Runner." If you haven't get it. Great book.
Our book club tried reading freedom, and nobody finished it, not even the person that suggested it. I got part way through and bailed out. Current book club is House Rules by Picoult.
Yeah, when doing IM training it seems like all you do is sleep, train, do laundry, and eat, in order of time spent. I'm not missing it this year.
I was thinking about you this weekend and wondering, with this crappy weather how you got you long bike in?
If you want to read some interesting books on freedom and fate, read Asimov's Foundation trilogy. The whole premise is that individual actions are meaningless and that the future of mankind is determined by the mathematics governing the actions of billions. Except that if not for the actions of a few, the actions of the billions wouldn't matter.
We don't teach The Sun Also Rises at our schol, and I first read it when I was 20 and loved it so much I savored every page.
That is a lot of time on the bike, a lot of time to think! Too bad you can't read while you ride, huh?
Happy training!
Loved Freedom!
not sure 4.5 hrs on Mrs. Z = ueueu.....
just sayin'
we are in the big push aren't we...
see ya next week.
Hi. I've been going through my stats, and my readership went up dramatically a little while a go. And most of it came from here. Thank you, who ever is visiting! Feel free to leave a comment, I don't bite. Really!
I read "The Sun..." again last year. I read Hemingway as some sort of self torture.
I do like to re-read or read the classics or so-called classics much more than modern stuff.
I did not like "Once a runner." It effected me as simple and gratuitous, but everyone is effected differently.
I do all of my blog-hopping and link finding from this site. No wonder Keith gets some hits. You have an eclectic and large collection.
mike
You are going missing! Please come back regularly. Honestly, nothing you write is boring to me:)
I know it is a crazy busy time for you now with IM training and am SO EXCITED to vicariously do IM Lake Placid through you:) I think you are stronger than ever coming into this race!
I'm thinking that most of the stuff we read in school was wasted on our still-too-young brains. I just re-read Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut and got a million times more out of it than I did in high school.
I thought Once A Runner was okay, I was a bit underwhelmed after all the hype I'd heard, but I think if it was just a book I'd come across I would've liked it better.
my 11 year old found my copy of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and started reading it under the bedcovers. Her school teacher had a fit when she brought it in and yes it is HUGELY inappropriate but when I discussed it with her I realise she just didn't "get" all the inappropriate stuff. I think she just liked the fact that it had lots of swearing in it.. And it felt illicit. I agree that you get not so much out of these often great books when you're that young, but on the other hand some stuff seems to stick - Hemingway was HUGE to me as a teenager and I don't think I realised the drinking bit...
Full kudos on getting through Freedom - I found it TOO depressing.
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