Gravity's Rainbow Cross-Post

(For anyone who wants to read along but doesn't necessarily want to do it on Facebook.)

Going by the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition (776 pages), we have all agreed to do our level best to read through the top of p. 38 by next Monday. (Last sentence = "Well, thought Pirate, guess I'll go back in the Army...") If you have a different edition, it's roughly 4.8% of the way in. Our consensus was to shoot for 5 pages per day/35 pages per week.

I'm not an ELA teacher but I've had the benefit of working with many many good ones, so I've suggested that while you read, look for 1-2 sentences/ passages/ parts/ whatever that either impress you (*), confuse you (?), or utterly blow your mind (!). On the Facebook group we are then posting/responding to our */?/!, so if you want to post yours in comments here, go for it. Or, hey, if that doesn't work for you & something else does, cool! Do that & tell us about it.

I've been told not to worry too much about trying to catch and understand every single reference in the book because you will literally spend your entire life chasing down references & background information. If you're planning to read along, I would just prepare yourself to sometimes go, "Hm, ok, don't know what that was about. {shrug}" and move on. This isn't a Pynchon PhD program we're doing, here!

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***Le Reading Schedule***
(Penguin Classic Deluxe Edition, 776 pages. It doesn't break up perfectly into 35-page chunks but each week's section is generally within 5-10 pages of 35.)

May 28-June 3: pp. 3-38 / 4.9% (“Well, thought Pirate, I guess I’ll go back in the Army…”)

June 4-10: pp. 39-74 / 9.5% (“No sleep tonight. Probably no chance even to catch a cup or cigarette on route. Why?”)

June 11-17: pp. 74-116 / 14.9% (“…her hair not bluntly Dutch at all, but secured in a modish upsweep with an old, tarnished silver crown…”)

June 18-24: pp. 116-147 / 18.9% (“The thought of him lost in the world of men, after the war, fills me with a deep dread I cannot extinguish…”)

June 25-July 1: pp. 147-180 / 23.2%(End of Section 1)

July 2-8: pp. 181-208 / 26.8% (“Gingerly he steps across the sill then, not sure if it’s door or high window, inter her deep room.”)

July 9-15: pp. 208-247 / 31.8% (“…and follows Slothrop’s cab out the winding dark road to Raoul’s party.”)

July 16-22: pp. 247-282 / 36.3% (End of Section 2)

July 23-July 29: pp. 283-319 / 41.1% (“Gearin’ up fer thim Rooskies, And Go-round Number Three….”)

July 30-Aug 5: pp. 319-365 / 47% (“But in the Zone, hidden inside the summer Zone, the Rocket is waiting. He will be drawn the same way again….”)

Aug 6-12: pp. 365-398 / 51.3% (“Make a note of that,” orders Tchitcherine. They both start cackling insanely there, under the tree.)

Aug 13-19: pp. 398-440 / 56.7% (“If she lived, the ring would be good for a few meals, or a blanket, or a night indoors, or a ride home….”)

Aug 20-26: pp. 440-464 / 59.8% (“But where is the electric voice now that will ever call for him?”)

Aug 27-Sept 2: pp. 464-500 / 64.4% (“…tears that will add nothing to the whipped white desolation that passes for the Oder Haff tonight….”

Sept 3-9: pp. 500-534 / 68.8% (“You just connected. Can we go after her, now?”)

Sept 10-16: pp. 534-567 / 73.1% (“…inclined over a Sterno fire tending a simmering pot, is that of Major Duane Marvy.”)

Sept 17-23: pp. 567-601 / 77.4% (“…with a dusty chintz drape she’d received from a cousin who had never understood her taste.”)

Sept 24-30: pp. 601-628 / 80.8% (End of section 3)

Oct 1-7: pp. 629-669 / 86.2% (“The colonel, with a last tilt of his head, exposes his jugular, clearly impatient with the—“)

Oct 8-14: pp. 669-714 / 92% (“…in which subscript R is for Rakete, and B for Blicero.”)

Oct 15-21: pp. 714-748 / 96.4% (“He feels he must go with them, but separate, a stranger, no more or less at the mercy of the Zone….”)

Oct 22-28: pp. 748-776 / 100% (End)

GDPR & the Covering of the Ass

This is probably me being paranoid, but hey! Just a quick post & then I don't even have to worry about it anymore.

As you probably know because you use the internet, the European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation law goes into effect today. (You've probably noticed a weirdly large number of "We're updating our privacy policy!" emails from various online organizations where you have accounts.) Basically it says that if you collect & do stuff with the personal data of EU citizens, you have to tell them, or else pay massive fines. This probably doesn't effect me but hey, there's some EU traffic up in here, so let's just do the due diligence & be done with it.

Do I collect personal data on this site? Aside from not accepting anonymous comments so there is *some* kind of info you have to enter for that, I'll just copy & paste what John Scalzi said because he said it so well:

"I personally am not (and never have) collecting any information about anyone, other in the very general sense of reading and comprehending whatever bits of personal information people leave in their comments. That said, I don’t do anything commercial with any of that — I don’t mine my comment threads for personal data, and certainly don’t comb through them for commercial purposes. It’s not that kind of site, and I’m really not that interested. Doing any of that requires work and effort that I have no desire to do."

All I really want to do is ramble into the void and occasionally ramble back and forth with other weirdos who are as running-preoccupied as I am. I have no interest in monetizing this blog, its visitors, or whatever data trail they happen to leave. I don’t even use sales affiliate links (and if that ever changes, I'll be transparent about it). So rest easy.

Does Blogger collect personal data on this site? Almost certainly. Ie, if you comment, you probably get a cookie left in your browser to make things more efficient for you in the future. Like every other online entity, I am certain Blogger is doing whatever it is they have to do in order to comply with the GDPR. I'm pretty sure there's nothing else I need to do about that but if I learn that there is, I will certainly do it.

So, long story short, another Scalzi quote: "Basically, we’ll just keep on doing what we’re already doing here. If any of that changes in any significant way, I will let you know."

Adventures with Iron Deficiency, Part 2

(Once again: I am not a doctor, nutritionist, dietitian, coach, etc. and have absolutely no formal training whatsoever in medicine, diet, sports training, etc. and probably no one should listen to me about anything. Everything I know, I've learned from reading or talking either to people who ARE experts or other female runners who have had similar experiences. This entire blog is just Some Lady Rambling on the Internet and if you are getting your medical and/or training advice from me something in your life has gone very, very wrong; please go pay an actual expert actual money.)

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So, last time we were talking about iron deficiency--what it is, and why runners (especially female runners) might care. You can read Part 1 where I discuss my first experience dealing with iron deficiency & some things I learned about it here.

All caught up? Excellent!

Fast forward to about a month before the Boston Marathon. In my first couple months of training I felt amazingly good--workouts were easy, and I had no trouble hitting the mileage. After that (as you know if you've been following along), I had some injuries and got really sick one week, so I would never in a million years have thought that I was training hard enough to mess with my iron levels.

Still, I kept getting that same feeling I remembered from when I was training for Eugene; just exhausted all the time, hitting workout paces starting to feel way, way too hard (and for the first time I can ever remember, sometimes actually impossible), and that sleep-deprived/low-blood-sugar, knock-me-over-with-a-feather feeling while running, even just on short easy runs.

For a while I was chocking it up to stress, losing fitness from all the missed miles, and maybe just getting old. But chatting about it with Don one day, he was like, "When was the last time you had all your blood work checked? Could it be iron or thyroid or something?"

Adventures with Iron Deficiency, Part 1

(Super obvious disclaimer: I am not a doctor, nutritionist, dietitian, coach, etc. and have absolutely no formal training whatsoever in medicine, diet, sports training, etc. and probably no one should listen to me about anything. Everything I know, I've learned from reading or talking either to people who ARE experts or other female runners who have had similar experiences. This entire blog is just Some Lady Rambling on the Internet and if you are getting your medical and/or training advice from me something in your life has gone very, very wrong; please go pay an actual expert actual money.)

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People didn't talk much about iron levels when I was in high school and college. Or, at least, not my particular circle of runners & coaches. In fact I don't think I ever even had mine tested until I got a summer job running the barn at a Girl Scout horseback riding camp in college, and I had no idea what the numbers meant or even what the deal with low iron really was, except for some vague notion of how iron bonds to oxygen and that's why you need it to make red blood cells. Which, y'know. Sounds important. But wasn't exactly something I worried about.

My next encounter with iron talk was many, many years later, reading running blogs by people way, way, WAY faster than me (like RoseRunner, and Kris Lawrence, and Camille Heron), how they'd started generally feeling shitty on their runs while training hard, and so the doctor said, "You know, let's just check your iron just to be safe." It was't a problem I was personally having at the time, but I guess I must have put a mental pin in it to revisit if it seemed relevant.

So, a few years later, while I was training for the Eugene Marathon, I started feeling just really awful. Like tired and cold all the time even when there was no good reason for it, and so many runs, even short easy ones, where I felt like I might fall over at any moment. The way I tried to describe it to my doctor was that it felt like being sleep deprived and low blood sugar at the same time, only it happened when I was definitely definitely not either of those things. Also my workouts were just a slog. I could hit the times still, usually, but felt like I was dragging myself through them & when I got home I just wanted to lay on the couch and not move.

The Life-Changing Magic of Bottoming Out

As you might imagine, after we got home from Big Sur on April 30th, I took a week completely off all physical activity (except going to work, which is to say, I went to work *at least* three days of five). Recently, though, I've gotten back to a basic level of activity. Very, very basic.

Some things I've been up to post-Boston/Big Sur:

Karate. I've been treating my class like my red headed step child these last few months & was starting to wonder if our students would even remember who I was. I still can't do any kicks properly but at least I can move around okay.

Boston 2 Big Sur: Should You Or Shouldn't You?

I don't remember where I first heard about Boston 2 Big Sur; it just seems like one of those things that's sort of been in the water since I started running distance races ten or so years ago. I'm sure I first read about it on someone else's blog back in the day, or one of my very earliest Bay Area running buddies mentioned it in passing. Who knows. But for about as long as I've wanted to try to qualify for & run Boston, I've always known that if I did, I would try to complete the Boston 2 Big Sur Challenge as well.

Part of this has to do with wanting to run Big Sur, but not wanting to devote an entire training cycle to it since it's pretty much guaranteed not to be a fast race. So Boston 2 Big Sur kind of let me do a two-for-one: Train for and run a "for-serious" marathon (Boston), then run another casually while I'm still in shape to finish the distance reasonably well.

There was also the issue of getting in; the race is popular enough that there's a lottery, so you can't just assume you'll be able to run it whenever you want. (See this post for more details about the Big Sur Lottery.) Boston 2 Big Sur was the closest I'd ever come to being guaranteed a spot.

Of course, I'd never tried to run two marathons just 13 days apart, let alone running one of the toughest road marathons around just days after running what is on its own not necessarily the easiest marathon around. When I first started running marathons, I never would have dreamed of attempting such a thing, but October 2017 rolled around and I was feeling a bit nervy, so I figured, "Ehhhhh, what the heck? It's not a challenge if you're sure you can do it!"

(At least 2018 was one of the 13-day gap years; some years the two are only 6 days apart & I'm not 100% sure I'm *quite* that crazy.)

When I was first thinking about doing Boston 2 Big Sur, I had a lot of questions. I'm grateful for everyone on the internet who wrote race reports and shared their experience, so I thought I'd pay it forward & add to the collective bank of information that's out there. Obviously these are all just my personal opinions, and they're extremely colored by my experiences & background, so, as always, YMMV.

Race Logistics: Big Sur Marathon

This post is about the logistics/nuts & bolts of running the Big Sur Marathon; you can find my race report at this link. :)

Location:

Big Sur Station, CA to Monterey, CA

Date: Late April (April 29, 2018 this year)

Price: I want to say that the 2018 race cost $175-180 this year. So, not cheap, but not out of line with other high-profile marathons. Boston 2 Big Sur was $300, so $120 more for your medal, jacket, post-race food & beer, & presumably the extra administrative costs.

Field size/deadlines/sellout factor: The marathon is capped at 4,500 & it's popular enough that registration for the stand-alone race is by lottery each year in July. In fact, I learned by reading the race program that it's actually a series of five lotteries:

• Groups & couples
• Loyalty runners (ie, those who've run before)
• Monterey County resdents
• First-timers
• Last chance drawing

This makes a lot of sense given what Road Bunner had told me before, that once you get in once, it seems like your odds of getting in again go way up. (Hence her getting in eight times.)

Boston 2 Big Sur registration happens after Boston Marathon registration closes (it opened on October 1 this year) & is first-come, first-served. If you've already gotten into Big Sur via the lottery and then register for Boston 2 Big Sur, your registration is converted & you're refunded your original registration fee.

Staging, Parking, etc.:

So, I can't really talk about the Monterey end of the race at all because we stayed down at Big Sur station. If you want to go that route instead of catching a bus from Monterey at 3:30am, here's how I did it.

Race Report: Big Sur Marathon

I'm planning to write a separate post specifically about the Boston 2 Big Sur Challenge, but I figured I'd give Big Sur its due & write a proper race report just about that race first. :)

Friends, I must say that post-Boston marathon, I was in rough shape. If you've been playing along at home for a while now, you might recall that part of the reason my Boston training cycle sucked so badly was getting injured badly enough to miss a week of training on three separate occasions, not to mention all kinds of little yellow flags & micro injuries that made it difficult to ever really build up much fitness at a stretch.

I'm pretty sure I know most of the reasons for this (which maybe I'll write more about in a future post), but just suffice it to say that I knew going into that race that I was very, very far from top form and was lucky to even make it to the start. The upside of this is that I wasn't able to run hard enough to be sore after, but I definitely did have a number of body parts screaming at me to DAMMIT WILL YOU PLEASE JUST STOP WITH THIS NONSENSE ALREADY! In all honestly, if it wasn't Boston & I didn't have so many sunk costs already, I probably would have said "Eh, screw it" & stayed in bed.

Planning Your Boston Marathon Trip: Trip Logistics

This post is about the logistical issues involved in planning your Boston Marathon trip (at least, from the view of a first-timer from the opposite coast!). To read my Boston Marathon Race Report, click here.

Somehow it didn't occur to me until I was registered & in a training group that like any other race, Boston has "streakers" -- people who run the thing every year. It had kind of always struck me as a bucket list kind of thing, or at most an 'every-few-years-when-I'm-feeling-spendy' type of thing. But no; there were people in the Facebook group with 10, 15, 20, or more Boston Marathons under their belt, many of them even consecutive!

Of course, most of those people live within easy driving distance of Boston, where your participation costs are mostly the registration fee and a night or two of lodging. (And if you have friends or family in the area, perhaps not even lodging.) I know there are even West Coast folks or those from other far-flung areas of the country who still run Boston regularly, and I admire the commitment, but WOW, that's a significant logistical & financial commitment.

When I first signed up, I had a lot of logistical questions--when to travel, where to stay, food options, the expo, transportation issues, etc. While there was a lot of information out there on the internet, it wasn't always easy to find answers to specific questions I was wondering about. So I figured I'd do a post on my experience & hopefully add just a little more info to the pile & maybe someone out there will get a question of theirs answered just a little bit sooner.

Gravity's Rainbow Book Club Update

Howdy friends!

The Gravity's Rainbow book club is gearing up. When I asked around I was shocked to find that so many people were interested in joining in!

What is Gravity's Rainbow, you ask?

Lengthy, complex, and featuring a large cast of characters, the narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II, and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military. In particular, it features the quest undertaken by several characters to uncover the secret of a mysterious device named the "Schwarzgerät" ("black device"), slated to be installed in a rocket with the serial number "00000".

Traversing a wide range of knowledge, Gravity's Rainbow transgresses boundaries between high and low culture, between literary propriety and profanity, and between science and speculative metaphysics. It shared the 1974 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction with A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Although selected by the Pulitzer Prize jury on fiction for the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Pulitzer Advisory Board was offended by its content, some of which was described as "'unreadable,' 'turgid,' 'overwritten' and in parts 'obscene'". No Pulitzer Prize was awarded for fiction that year. The novel was nominated for the 1973 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

TIME named Gravity's Rainbow one of its "All-Time 100 Greatest Novels", a list of the best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005, and it is considered by some critics to be one of the greatest American novels ever written.

In short, it will be awesome, & the idea is to read at a non-crazy pace as we all have busy lives & some of us have other reading we have to do as well.

Currently, we're organizing in an open Facebook group here. The goal is to start the week of May 30 to give everyone time to get a book. (I will probably keep it open until then, & then make it a private group.)

So yeah--If you're interested, come on over and say hi!

Race Report: THE BOSTON FRICKIN' MARATHON

See also:

What It Was Like to Run the Boston Marathon in a Freezing Deluge (NY Times)

Harsh weather turns Boston Marathon into a punishing slog (Boston Globe)

Is today the worst weather in Boston Marathon history? (Boston.com)

In any case it's been *quite* the experience and I certainly have plenty to say about it! In fact, I have so much to say about different aspects of this race and the entire trip that it makes the most sense to break it up into a few different posts. Otherwise, I'm going to end up with a 40-page treatise that no one's ever going to read.

First things first, though: Race Report! I'll do logistics, etc. later; this one is going to be mostly just about my actual race experience & how it went, other than the lead-up you need to set the stage.