The Year of No Shopping

In general I'm not big on resolutions or setting new goals just because I have a new calendar, but a month or so ago I read this article by Ann Patchett and immediately went, "OMG. She is me and I am her. I need to do this."

The article is about how in February 2009 she learned over lunch that a friend had made 2008 her "no shopping" year.

"After traveling for much of the previous year, she had decided she had enough stuff, or too much stuff. She made a pledge that for 12 months she wouldn’t buy shoes, clothes, purses or jewelry.

...

At the end of 2016, our country had swung in the direction of gold leaf, an ecstatic celebration of unfeeling billionaire-dom that kept me up at night. I couldn’t settle down to read or write, and in my anxiety I found myself mindlessly scrolling through two particular shopping websites, numbing my fears with pictures of shoes, clothes, purses and jewelry. I was trying to distract myself, but the distraction left me feeling worse, the way a late night in a bar smoking Winstons and drinking gin leaves you feeling worse. The unspoken question of shopping is 'What do I need?' What I needed was less."

There was so much recognition for me in those words. Now, I would not in any way describe myself as a compulsive shopper or hoarder. I have never put myself in financial danger through frivolous spending. But distracting myself from anxieties about the world by going, "Let me just see what cute dresses are on sale at Nordstrom" or "Perhaps there is a comfy running top I need at Athleta, better check"? Spotting something randomly that I didn't even know existed until that moment and suddenly feeling like I NEEEED it? Getting sucked into good deal after clearance item after massive discount code because "How can I afford NOT to buy it???" Yeah; that all needs to stop.

So, 2018, in addition to the Year of Racing All The Things, you are now the Year of No Shopping.

Boston Marathon Week 6 of 18: Winter Running: Take 2

Friends, we are officially a third of a way through this training cycle and I'm not exactly sure how that happened.

There's something about hitting 50 miles a week for the first time in a training cycle that makes it start to feel real. All through training for RNR San Jose and even through November and December running in the low to mid 40s felt physically terrible, as if I were training much much harder than I actually was, and it was hard to imagine getting back into that 50-60 mpw marathon training zone. Thankfully in the past few weeks something seems to have shifted and longer, harder workouts are finally--FINALLY!--starting to feel good again.

{proceeds to cross alllll the phalanges & knock on alllll the wood...}

~*~*~ Boston Marathon: Week 6 of 18 ~*~*~

Books 2017: Quarter 4

Nothing like logging out of work email for the year and curling up by the fire with a good book! The holidays were busy with various family & social events and all kinds of travel, but I still found some time to knock out a few tomes.

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, if that's more your speed.)

ICYMI, the classics I selected to read in 2017 are here.

2017 Classics: Quarter 1

2017 Classics: Quarter 2

2017 Classics: Quarter 3

On to the reviews!

Michigan.

This past Monday I logged into my RunCoach account to find this waiting for me:

My RunCoach speed workouts for the most part are usually pretty simple, x number of x00 meters @ x:xx pace with x:xx jogs, or sometimes two of those with 30-40 minutes at marathon pace sandwiched in between. In any case, pretty easy to glance at, quickly commit to memory, & execute without too much thought. We don't tend to do "ladders" or "pyramids" other fanciness very often, so this one threw me off a bit.

Boston Marathon Week 5 of 18: Not the greatest of weeks...

The one advantage of evening long runs through Golden Gate Park:
Seeing the Conservatory of Flowers lit up for the Summer of Love

Not a great week for me, guys. I had a couple of solid workouts but that's pretty much all I can say. Things were going just fine until Tuesday morning when I was rear-ended on the way to work. I was driving in the far left lane at normal freeway speed when some dude slammed into me at what must have been 90-100mph without even trying to stop. My car skidded all over the road and I was just lucky I was able to keep it from slamming into the freeway divider or careening into the other lane & getting hit again.

Boston Marathon Week 4 of 18: There's "hills" & then there's HILLLZZ.

Oof, running a bit behind getting this one up. Progress, not perfection, right?

As I've started actually-for-real training for this race & occasionally chatting with other runners about it, people keep bringing up the course. Like "Have you ever run the course?" "Have you ever been out there on those hills?" "It's a really tricky course, you know." "OMG those HILLZ. Watch out for those HILLZ, man!"

And I'm like, "Okay? I train in San Francisco?" I mean. No disrespect to the Bostonians out there, but I did live in Boston for three months and, dudes, we have different definitions of what hills are.

2018: The Classics

Because we need to have other goals in life besides running ever faster and longer and more batshit crazy pants races, I started reading (or listening to) one classic novel per month back in 2014. Originally it was just a one-year resolution, but I enjoyed it enough that I decided to just keep doing it until I got bored or it started to feel like a chore.

The Classics: 2014

The Classics: 2015

The Classics: 2016

The Classics: 2017

(I'm a lot smarter now than I used to be.)

So, BEHOLD! The classic novels I'll be reading in 2018: