What We Know

Woo hoo, another short week! Almost makes up for this constant stream of crappy weather. This is the worst month of June in terms of weather in recent memory. Somebody told me today that it has rained 25 of the 29 days this month. Damn.

So I was supposed to run 15 miles on Saturday as my week 2 long run in my 16-week marathon training plan. Last week, I was supposed to do 13 and only did 10. This weekend, once again I just didn't have the energy or the desire to do 15; my body felt fine, but the will wasn't there. I ended up doing 10 miles in very humid weather and struggled to get through it. As I was trudging along, I came to the conclusion that I just didn't want to fight this fight for the rest of the summer. If I can't get fired up to do my long runs in the first two weeks, how am I going to be eight or 10 weeks in? As a result, I've decided not to run a fall marathon. Fortunately, I hadn't signed up for Maine yet. The seeds of this were planted during last week's run when I thought that maybe I'd train for a month and see how I felt, but now I think I don't even want to get that far into it. My right IT band is still pretty tight from running Boston and there's no sense making it worse. I still have Reach the Beach to train for in September, and I'll probably run a half-marathon or two in addition to that. And I'll do some shorter races this summer and recharge the batteries. I still enjoy running, but I wasn't enjoying the long runs. I can shoot for a marathon again next spring.

I've begun an endurance event of another kind: Infinite Summer. Participants are endeavoring this summer to read the late David Foster Wallace's 1996 magnum opus Infinite Jest. It's sort of the War and Peace of modern times in that it is an intimidatingly long (1100 pages), critically praised novel that many folks may have purchased back when it came out but never made it all the way through. I never picked it up back then, but I've always wanted to tackle it, so I figured why not now? Infinite Summer runs from June 21 to September 21, just like the real summer, but I was unable to procure a copy of the book until Saturday. I had hoped to buy a copy but the local Barnes and Noble was all out, so I got it from the library. It's the hardcover edition and is a beast to carry around; I might pick up the paperback at some point just for convenience sake. At any rate, I'm about 50 pages in and I'm diggin' it. The contest calls for you to read about 75 pages per week, and the Infinite Summer blog features interesting essays from particpants. I've been struggling to make time for reading lately, so this will force me to do it.