Thursday, December 24, 2009

Time to read for fun

I think I've been averaging a book a day so far. And I think I need to maintain this if I hope to finish the pile of books I borrowed. I've realized the topics are so random that I don't even know which one to read next.

I started a book yesterday called, "American Nerd, the Story of My People". I had heard the author of this book speak (about the book) on a podcast. It sounded interesting so I borrowed it. Good thing I didn't buy it though because other than the first chapter, I don't think the rest of the book was very interesting at all. The author defines a "nerd" as someone wh likes rules and regulations and reminds people of a machine. He claims that the usual definition of social awkwardness applies to more than just "nerds". Anyway, half of the book was specific cases of kids who grew up in very chaotic households and therefore liked playing Dungeons and Dragons with other nerdy teenagers around the neighborhood because the game had very specific rules, unlike their lives. And then the book made a lot of references to Pride and Prejudice, which I read in 12th grade but didn't find it particularly interesting. So I didn't understand this author's particular obsession with the P&P crowd.

Today, I started a book called "The Looniness of the Long Distance Runner - An Unfit Londoner's Attempt to Run the New York Marathon from Scratch" and it has been very enjoyable to read. The guy is really funny and he basically writes about his training to run the New York Marathon. I thought it would be pretty dry to read about someone's "adventures" in the gym but I like his humor. He's a writer and has coupled this marathon with writing a book about it. He starts out his training in the gym and his "methodology" is to find out how much the daily charge of a gym is and then immediately pay for a year's membership. Then every time he goes to the gym, he would calculate how much it costs him. So if the yearly membership is $300, then the first time he goes, it would be like spending $300 for the gym. The second time, it would cost $150, and so on. He figures that by the time you get down to less than the daily charge, then you can stop going and have reaped some sort of benefit from it. His own first time to the gym consisted of using the shower because his hot water was not working. During his second time in the gym, he gets on the treadmill and successfully spend enough time that the digital display ticked off the first mile. And then (in his words),

"Just as I was feeling quite pleased with the effortless ease with which I have vaulted this first psychological barrier an annoying small voice inside my head says, 'How do you know they're miles? They might be kilometers.'
'This is Europhobe Britain', I retorted jingoistically. 'They have to be miles.'"

Of course, he finds out right after this that all the machines have been changed to metric. He actually does pretty well after a few months of training. His first half marathon, he ran in well under 2 hours (1:44) which is way better than I'm hoping to do for mine. Maybe I should've let myself trained longer before my first half marathon? Hm...

I haven't ran very much in the last week because my left knee is still bothering me. I was feeling better Tuesday morning but my knee starting hurting after about a mile. Maybe I should just take this whole break as a holiday from running? I'm worried that I won't be able to get back into shape when I get back to school and end up overtraining again... Oy...

1 comment:

yalu said...

Oooh. It's definitely a good thing you are on the West Coast. It is wayy too cold to do any sort of exercise here outside. Good news is that I've discovered lots of gyms have free trials, and after I get my blackberry I'll join the Citi gym!