I had to cancel my race, ugh - a great disappointment, but I will survive, it is not the end of the world. Glumness-inducing, though! I believe I am now on the mend, but still feeling pretty much under the weather, with a bad cough and low energy levels.
It would be seriously misrepresenting things if I implied that I had not been without New York consolations in the meantime. L. successfully defended her dissertation yesterday, and her parents took us out for duck lunch; I saw friend Jason Grote's Civilization (all you can eat) (it is a good production, but the power of cough drops was strained to the uttermost limit!) and had a drink afterwards at Lucky Strike with some folks I admire.
Kio Stark's Follow Me Down is a beautiful little novel, following in a vein I think of as having been very profitably mined by Sara Gran, with every word absolutely perfectly positioned in the right place; I thoroughly enjoyed it (it is also the first I've read from Richard Nash's new venture Red Lemonade. Hmmm, it might be that this would be a good home down the road for BOMH (initial copy-edit is complete, and I am slightly daunted by the scale of the new writing and plotting required, but will undertake it as soon as I have wriggled through next set of geographical transitions)...
Other light reading: Stuart MacBride's Cold Granite (slightly cartoonish but appealing and readable); Steve Mosby's Cry for Help (implausible but suspenseful); S. J. Bolton's Now You See Me (ditto).
Two good and quite different-from-each-other books about endurance sport (tormenting myself while I can't do anything much myself): Chris McCormack's I'm Here to Win (worthwhile, interesting) and Amy Snyder's Hell on Two Wheels: An Astonishing Story of Suffering, Triumph, and the Most Extreme Endurance Race in the World. It is rare for me to read a book of this sort without having a fairly strong urge to undertake the event myself, but in this case I can truly say I would not harbor even the least little desire to do such a thing!
Showing posts with label marathon training. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marathon training. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Sunday, May 01, 2011
"Nothing can come of nothing"
King Lear at BAM was excellent - not, perhaps, transcendent, but the production as a whole is impeccable and Derek Jacobi is extraordinary. This is my favorite Shakespeare play - my favorite Shakespeare tragedy, anyway (The Winter's Tale and Midsummer Night's Dream are two others that are particularly close to my heart); I've taught it half a dozen times and must have read it at least a dozen more, I know it very well indeed. Very, very lovely...
Only one more day of classes! A couple additional days of insanity and then on Thursday I am going to go and see Brent for a few days before coming home and finishing up grading and the other bits and bobs of end-of-semester business.
In other news, I'm just finishing up week 6 of training for Ironman Coeur d'Alene. Last week's big weekend training was a bit of a bust, so I am happy to report that this week's seems to be going much better - I did my long run and long swim on Friday (bookending a dissertation defense for which I wore comically different garb), and Triathlete Lauren is picking me up in her car shortly and we are going to go and do a five-hour bike ride in New Jersey. It is finally beautiful weather for bike-riding; I have had to do almost all of my training in preceding weeks indoors, and am still feeling a little nervous about riding in the real world instead, though it should be very nice...
Only one more day of classes! A couple additional days of insanity and then on Thursday I am going to go and see Brent for a few days before coming home and finishing up grading and the other bits and bobs of end-of-semester business.
In other news, I'm just finishing up week 6 of training for Ironman Coeur d'Alene. Last week's big weekend training was a bit of a bust, so I am happy to report that this week's seems to be going much better - I did my long run and long swim on Friday (bookending a dissertation defense for which I wore comically different garb), and Triathlete Lauren is picking me up in her car shortly and we are going to go and do a five-hour bike ride in New Jersey. It is finally beautiful weather for bike-riding; I have had to do almost all of my training in preceding weeks indoors, and am still feeling a little nervous about riding in the real world instead, though it should be very nice...
Friday, April 08, 2011
Friday night lights
The play was utterly dreadful; the best thing that can be said for it that it was a 7:30 curtain and only an hour and ten minutes running time. (Obstreperous gentleman behind us, to his wife, as others clapped at the end: "Seventy minutes of bullshit!") And we struck out at Esca and the restaurant across the street, it was too early and too crowded, we did not have the patience for a twenty-minute wait; but ended up having a very good dinner anyway at Rachel's. I had the chef's salad, as I had already had small dinner #1 at home after installments one and two of massive ironman weekend training; but I tasted my dinner companion's meat loaf and mashed potatoes, and they were fairly divinely good!
Friday, November 20, 2009
Like minds
The latest xkcd echoes the opening of Charlie Stross's The Family Trade!
I spent the later part of the evening soliciting the soothing effects of the Jeeves Omnibus.
What I wish I were doing right now?
Things to look forward to in 2010!
I am tempted to link to the very gruesome stories about Peruvian murders for human fat, but will instead end on a happier note: pet duck rescued from overflow pipe by team of firefighters.
I spent the later part of the evening soliciting the soothing effects of the Jeeves Omnibus.
What I wish I were doing right now?
Things to look forward to in 2010!
I am tempted to link to the very gruesome stories about Peruvian murders for human fat, but will instead end on a happier note: pet duck rescued from overflow pipe by team of firefighters.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Speed reading
When I first got an invitation to participate in this event, I knew I had to be a part of it!
Sponsored by Cabinet Magazine, it's part of the Performa festival. Event description: "A 90-minute relay race of sorts, featuring 25-35 writers and artists who will take turns reading aloud short texts related to the theme of speed while running on three treadmills positioned side-by-side. The velocity of the treadmills will be controlled by the Speed Demon, the somewhat sadistic MC who will oversee the performance."
Saturday, Nov. 14 at 6pm at Definitions Gym, 19 Union Square West (at 15th St.) - note corrected time
Sponsored by Cabinet Magazine, it's part of the Performa festival. Event description: "A 90-minute relay race of sorts, featuring 25-35 writers and artists who will take turns reading aloud short texts related to the theme of speed while running on three treadmills positioned side-by-side. The velocity of the treadmills will be controlled by the Speed Demon, the somewhat sadistic MC who will oversee the performance."
Saturday, Nov. 14 at 6pm at Definitions Gym, 19 Union Square West (at 15th St.) - note corrected time
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Indecision
Regretfully I observe that the dictates of novel-writing, work, marathon training, etc. will prevent me from going to see a show I'd really been hoping to get to this Wednesday, Thomas Bartlett's Footloose at Joe's Pub.
Ugh, it pains me to miss this one - maybe I should just take the plunge and get a ticket? But the show doesn't start till 9:30, and I have a 9am run scheduled the next morning, and a novel to hand in to the publisher in a week's time...
(OK, that is insane, the pang of regret was so strong that I bought a ticket anyway - it is only $15, even with the service charge - and will see how tired I am that night & whether it can be managed!)
Anyway, here's a link to one of my favorite songs of Thomas's, "Dancing" ("My life reads like a book now, a Harlequin romance").
Ugh, it pains me to miss this one - maybe I should just take the plunge and get a ticket? But the show doesn't start till 9:30, and I have a 9am run scheduled the next morning, and a novel to hand in to the publisher in a week's time...
(OK, that is insane, the pang of regret was so strong that I bought a ticket anyway - it is only $15, even with the service charge - and will see how tired I am that night & whether it can be managed!)
Anyway, here's a link to one of my favorite songs of Thomas's, "Dancing" ("My life reads like a book now, a Harlequin romance").
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Streak!
I have just had a blissful thirteen-day writing streak....
Starting on Jan. 6, which was the first day I could really and properly sit down to write new pages rather than still typing and cleaning up the chunk of draft I wrote in August, I have met my quota every day.
(It has more to do with pages covered than with word count, since I'm writing in a notebook rather than on a computer, but I suppose quota falls in the region of 1500 words a day - I have found that if I do more than that, the quality plummets and it becomes significantly less likely that I will write again the next day.)
The first half of the pages were written here and the rest were written here. (Crepes!)
(It is important for me to go somewhere I can't be distracted by the internet. I prefer doing first drafts in longhand, but I also have an excellent and slightly hilarious anti-procrastination device for typing - the Alphasmart! I last used it extensively before I had a laptop, while transcribing sources for the breeding book in the Rare Books and Manuscripts room at the British Library. It is a very loud and clattery keyboard, and I regret to observe that several gentlemen contemplated its effects with absolute dismay - I do not blame them, I feel certain it was very annoying!)
And now I both superstitiously and pragmatically feel that I will only be able to meet my Feb. 2 deadline for The Snow Queen if I continue to write new pages every single day without exception until I am finished. I was toying with the idea of taking this coming Tuesday off, so that I could redirect my attention to the first day of classes, but I think it would be a fatal error!
So I've written the hours into my appointment book....
I am not at all complaining, things are good with me right now and it will be the best of all possible things if I can acquit myself honorably and make this deadline and actually for the first time in many years not have a book submission deadline hanging over me, but it is not helpful to the novel-writing cause that the next two weeks are pretty much the busiest of the whole school year and that I am running a marathon in seven weeks which will be utterly horrible if I do not get on track with my long runs!
For those with an interest in the eighteenth-century novel, here's the list of books I'm asking my spring seminar students to buy (there are other readings also, including excerpts from Clarissa and Tristram Shandy and quite a bit of criticism).
I need to post a catch-up account of various light reading round here, only it is more pressing right now to get out of the house for my 12-miler before it gets too much later!
I might try and have a second writing session this evening, though usually I do not, because I am excited to report that the European Federation is as we speak invading Denmark, and within twelve hours Sophie and Mikael will be evacuating on their bicycles (Sophie's has been customized with a basket for carrying the cat who appeared at the end of The Explosionist under the name Blackie but whose real name turns out to be Trismegistus) via Elsinore (Hamlet!) and a ferry to Stockholm, where they will stay in Mr. Petersen's dreary rented lodgings for a few days - at least until Mikael vanishes and Sophie has to track him up north into Swedish Lapland and to the Snow Queen's Spitzbergen lair....
I am very, very excited that I am almost at the part where I finally get to write about reindeer!
Starting on Jan. 6, which was the first day I could really and properly sit down to write new pages rather than still typing and cleaning up the chunk of draft I wrote in August, I have met my quota every day.
(It has more to do with pages covered than with word count, since I'm writing in a notebook rather than on a computer, but I suppose quota falls in the region of 1500 words a day - I have found that if I do more than that, the quality plummets and it becomes significantly less likely that I will write again the next day.)
The first half of the pages were written here and the rest were written here. (Crepes!)
(It is important for me to go somewhere I can't be distracted by the internet. I prefer doing first drafts in longhand, but I also have an excellent and slightly hilarious anti-procrastination device for typing - the Alphasmart! I last used it extensively before I had a laptop, while transcribing sources for the breeding book in the Rare Books and Manuscripts room at the British Library. It is a very loud and clattery keyboard, and I regret to observe that several gentlemen contemplated its effects with absolute dismay - I do not blame them, I feel certain it was very annoying!)
And now I both superstitiously and pragmatically feel that I will only be able to meet my Feb. 2 deadline for The Snow Queen if I continue to write new pages every single day without exception until I am finished. I was toying with the idea of taking this coming Tuesday off, so that I could redirect my attention to the first day of classes, but I think it would be a fatal error!
So I've written the hours into my appointment book....
I am not at all complaining, things are good with me right now and it will be the best of all possible things if I can acquit myself honorably and make this deadline and actually for the first time in many years not have a book submission deadline hanging over me, but it is not helpful to the novel-writing cause that the next two weeks are pretty much the busiest of the whole school year and that I am running a marathon in seven weeks which will be utterly horrible if I do not get on track with my long runs!
For those with an interest in the eighteenth-century novel, here's the list of books I'm asking my spring seminar students to buy (there are other readings also, including excerpts from Clarissa and Tristram Shandy and quite a bit of criticism).
I need to post a catch-up account of various light reading round here, only it is more pressing right now to get out of the house for my 12-miler before it gets too much later!
I might try and have a second writing session this evening, though usually I do not, because I am excited to report that the European Federation is as we speak invading Denmark, and within twelve hours Sophie and Mikael will be evacuating on their bicycles (Sophie's has been customized with a basket for carrying the cat who appeared at the end of The Explosionist under the name Blackie but whose real name turns out to be Trismegistus) via Elsinore (Hamlet!) and a ferry to Stockholm, where they will stay in Mr. Petersen's dreary rented lodgings for a few days - at least until Mikael vanishes and Sophie has to track him up north into Swedish Lapland and to the Snow Queen's Spitzbergen lair....
I am very, very excited that I am almost at the part where I finally get to write about reindeer!
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
