Got Some

Just catching my breath a little from a busy day of soccer-related activities. I actually need to hit the hay around 10 tonight because I'm getting up at 5 a.m. tomorrow. Every year I volunteer to help out at the Nahant 30K. Last year, I got totally soaked because it poured the whole time and it looks like it'll be that way again tomorrow. Lovely.

So as much I felt pretty good running Reach the Beach last weekend, I was pretty sore for a few days afterward. Ended running Tuesday, skipping hockey Wednesday because my legs were really tight, and running Thursday, Friday and today. I'm still toying with the idea of running a half marathon this fall. One possibility is the Manchester Half on November 1. We'll see.

I finally finished Infinite Jest this week, only two days after the Infinite Summer deadline. Not bad: 1079 pages in three months. Given everything I had going on and the usual glacial pace of my reading, it was more than I could have hoped for. Even better, I really enjoyed the book. David Foster Wallace wrote it in 1996 and foresaw a lot of stuff, including the corporatization of America, our increased dependence on pharmaceuticals and the use of entertainment to calm and distract the masses. An amazing read. The group has already planned its next group read: Bram Stoker's Dracula for the month of October. I'm going to skip that because I have a stack of books on my nightstand I need to get to, but I expect to join them to read the next book, Roberto Bolano's 2666, in January. Having the deadline and reading the discussion really helps push me to keep reading when normally I would just blow it off.

Since Apple rolled out iTunes 9 recently, I've been enjoying the Genius function, which creates mixes from your iTunes collection based on individual songs you select. Today, I used David Bowie's "DJ" as a jumping off point and Genius created a great mix that included this classic:

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.