Books 2018: Quarter 1

As you probably already know, I've been reading a classic a month for the last two years. It started as a one-year project in 2014, but I've enjoyed it enough to keep going with it & will probably continue until it starts to feel like a chore. You can find my past reviews by clicking on the "books" tag at the end of this post, or be my friend on Goodreads. (You can also just go to the site & hunt down my review feed without being my friend. Don't worry, you won't hurt my feelings.)

***Also*** there is a group of us who are girding our loins to attack Gravity's Rainbow sometime in the not-too-dim-and-misty future, so give a holler if you've got the cojones and want in.

ICYMI, the classics I selected to read in 2018 are here.

On to the reviews!

Race Report: Oakland Marathon 2018

So I wanted to wait until the race pics were available to publish this, but it sounds like they won't come out until maybe next Sunday and I didn't want to wait that long. (You can get them free & instantly if you give CSE all your Facebook information, which, sorry, no thanks.) So, please enjoy this photo-lacking account of my Oakland Marathon experience, and I'll go back & add pictures when I get them. Unless they suck. (But, if they suck REALLY bad, then I might still.)

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Well, I'm super behind with weeklies, but that's partly because of more dumb injury stuff. :-/ Honestly, at this point I just want to finish Boston under my own power and depending on the day there have been a number of times when I was not sure that was realistic.

Which, hey! Brings us to the Oakland Marathon!

The Backstory

Sometime last fall, Jen shared a discount code for the Oakland Running Festival, which fell on the day of my last 23 mile long run before Boston. I really hate doing my 20+ runs on the same old loops in GG Park, so I decided it might be nice to run a nice easy marathon on that day instead. I could have done the half but didn't want to squeeze in *another* 10 miles before or after, and besides, I'd never run the full, which had a reputation for being both pretty and hilly, which I thought might be fun and also good training for Boston and Big Sur.

Boston Marathon Week 13 of 18: Some running was involved.

Man, you guys, I couldn't even call week 13 a mixed bag. It started out with a glimmer of hope but went downhill very very quickly for all kinds of reasons both physical and general life-related until on Sunday night I lay in a hotel bed in Texas, fuming over what a waste most of the week and weekend had been and over the fact that I could barely walk comfortably and also had to get on a plane back to SF in like five hours.

The Pros & Cons of Going Carless

Back in January I was savagely rear-ended on the freeway by some idiot going 90-100mph and somehow managed to escape without injury or crashing my car into the freeway divider or another car. (Like, it was a close thing. I cannot BELIEVE how lucky I was.) While I was fine, my 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid was totaled. AAA towed it to a body shop for me, but the kind manager there very gently informed me that repairing it would involve essentially rebuilding the back half of the car, and that I'd just done $10,000+ worth of damage to a car that at this point was worth *maybe* $4,000.

I am hella disappointed in the Oakland Marathon

Wow, this training cycle is just flying by (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse)! Given that I just did my first 20+ miler last weekend, it seems kind of crazy that I'm just two weeks away from my longest training run--the Oakland Marathon on March 25.

I have run the Oakland Half Marathon three times (again, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse!), but I've never run the full. I mainly signed up for it because kind Jen shared her discount code, it fell on the same day as my last fast finish 23 miler, and doing three miles more seemed infinitely more appealing than running the half and shoehorning in ten more miles before and/or after. But it's also well known as a somewhat hilly course, and given that both Boston & Big Sur have their share of solid hills, I thought it would be a nice addition to my training.

So, I was disappointed to hear that with less than a month until race day, Corrigan Sports changed the course in a way that made it not only flatter but also less interesting and scenic. Instead of winding through all the different neighborhoods of Oakland, the course now mainly just meanders repetitively around downtown and an industrial port area.

Discount Code: Race to the End of Summer!

Hi Bay Area friends,

Just a quick reminder about one of my new favorite local races as you begin to think about your fall race schedule. In both 2016 and 2017 I ran the Race to the End of Summer 10K in San Jose, and had a great time! There's also a 5K as well as a half marathon option. AND, I have a sweet $7 discount code (AK2018) for you to use for any distance.

The race is Sunday, September 2, & takes place near the Coyote Creek trail in San Jose. It's not a super pricey event, BUT the first increase is coming up on March 15, so if you register soon and use the code, that's $18 for the 5K, $23 for the 10K, or $43 for the half. Not a bad deal!

Boston Marathon Week 12 of 18: Mixed Bag

This week had its ups and downs. Ups included getting myself on the treadmill on a work trip for an 11+ mile pace workout and also getting my first 20+ miler of the cycle in the books; downs included doing only three runs and spending a couple of days fighting ALL NEW AND EXCITING is-it-or-isn't-it injury demons. Like come on, now, body. Enough of this horse poo.

Now, obviously, although my top priority is to be healthy enough to run and finish this race at all, I'm still planning to try to run as fast as I can, whatever that happens to be on race day. But as I look back over the last 12 weeks it's hard not to see a smoking, scorched-earth landscape littered with the debris of missed workouts and low mileage weeks. Oof. Not pretty.

I don't know if it's all the travel or the stress (and there is a LOT of stress right now not related to running, between work and travel and, oh yeah, the logistical nightmare that is Boston 2 Big Sur with a national speaking engagement right smack-dab in between the two) or maybe age is finally beginning to catch up with me. But man. The injury gods are not happy.

But I'm not calling it a lost cause yet! We've still got six solid weeks left, here, and I'm determined to wring every last bit of preparation out of them that my body will allow.