Dawn's Reading Blog

I read the first edition of Galloway’s Book on Running because my mother found it at a tag sale, but I see there’s now a second edition which is the one linked here. For a book written in 1982 (the 1st edition), it holds up very well. The only part that seemed obsolete was the “running after 40” section. 40 is the new 20 or whatever, so the idea of needing a special section for the over-40 crowd is quaintly old-fashioned. Perhaps “running after 70”. In fact, I see he’s now got a book called Running Until You’re 100, which is closer to the reality of the people I run with.

There was also a semi-slanted “running for women” section but since it mostly concentrated on pregnancy with a tiny warning about amenorrhea, I’m not going to hit him too hard for this. He did have his wife write this chapter, as though women are aliens who can only understand each other, but I guess where pregnancy is concerned that’s fair.

The rest of the book was old enough to be new again. He warns about stretching. He’s mildly rabid on the umpteen glasses of water thing, an urban legend which is only now being called into question, but he doesn’t tout sports drinks. His diet recommendations dovetail very nicely with what I happen to be eating anyway (except for chocolate, but perhaps that was in the section for women).

Most importantly, his program seems very gentle. It’s a bit like when Steve told me to start walking hills. It’s hard to believe that easing up could be the key to moving forward, but the hill walking advice came at the right time, and I’m going to give Galloway’s program a try. I start in a few weeks and I end at the Boston Marathon. Let’s see how it goes.

I wish Next Man Up was written about a team other than the Baltimore Ravens. I don’t care about the Ravens and they’re not even in the same conference as the team I do care about. So I know little about their schedule, history, rivalries or players. And didn’t much care to learn.

Nevertheless, this was an excellent, enthralling book. Feinstien’s writing is highly readable with enough detail to provide context but not enough to drown out the drama. I do love behind-the-scenes NFL books to begin with and this was a superb example. Please go write one about the NFC East!

26 Miles to Boston: The Boston Marathon Experience from Hopkinton to Copley Square is a good idea executed only moderately well. The pictures are good and the book contains a wealth of information, history, and anecdotes from the first 100 years of the marathon. The information about past runnings is supplemented by the author’s experience of running the marathon on its 100th anniversary.

Unfortunately, the book suffers from two problems. First, is its schizophrenic formatting. The author uses italics to relay his own current thoughts and experiences. Italics are also used for other interjections. Sometimes it seemed like they just italicized every other paragraph for fun. The narrative jumped back and forth between history, scenery, and current events. I’m sure the intention was for the past to illuminate the present and for the present to refer back to the past, but the actual result was jarring and unpredictable. I feel like more informative formatting (e.g. only italicizing the present) and a more predictable rhythm (e.g. each chapter opens with scenery, goes to history, and them moves to the present) would have helped.

The second problem is that the author didn’t actually get into the race. He was a gypsy runner. I’m very sorry he wasn’t able to get a number but it seems like the book should have been written by someone who did. Also, he was very non-competitive. I’m not saying you need an elite athlete to write this book since the race is very much about its weekend warriors, but someone who had trained longer, run other races for comparison sake, and had a target pace might have made for more interesting reading.

I enjoyed most the more factual parts of the book–where the course goes and what happens at each step. The history was also interesting although I don’t know enough about running to put it into perspective. It’s too bad that the intertwining of past and present didn’t work better.

The Runner’s Literary Companion is fiction about running. Some of the entries are short stories; others are chapters taken from longer works. There are also some poems at the end. I don’t think running lends itself to fiction. The results were formulaic: underdog wins at the end. In real life, the underdog isn’t that big of an underdog. He’s like the #3 ranked guy instead of #1. In these stories, he’s some guy who’s never run a marathon before somehow winning it all. Um, no.

And I’m not sure you can make up what goes through a runner’s head, at least not without having done a lot of running yourself, which I can pretty certainly say many of these authors hadn’t. The heroes of these tales don’t take water on 30 mile runs because it’ll be too heavy or they do a back stretch in the middle of Heartbreak Hill. They win with their hearts, not their legs. Of course, it’s dramatic license. If I weren’t a runner, it wouldn’t bother me. Just like if I weren’t in computers I wouldn’t mind movie scenes where the computer thinks so hard it blows up.

But the book does seem to be aimed at runners and for most runners I think it would be more laughable than inspiring. Best to stick to non-fiction in this field. On the other hand, the stories that went for a less realistic, more character-driven slant were entertaining and well-written.

Reading Ultra-Marathon Man and The Extra Mile back to back gave me an interesting male/female perspective on ultra-distance running. Pam Reed sure spends more time agonzing over whether what she’s doing is OK, particularly with respect to her family. Dean Karnazes mentions how running affects his job a few times but he seems comfortable that he’s a good father. Pam also talks a fair amount about a supposed competition with Dean whereas I don’t recall that Dean ever mentioned Pam, not even that she beat him in one of his Badwater runs.

Overall, I guess Pam doesn’t seem any more or less crazy than Dean (she just worries about it more). It’s what they do and they’re both good at it. Dean eats a lot, Pam eats a little (she’s anorexic). Sounds like Dean suffers more physically but Pam suffers more mentally. They both agree that the actual running is a grind and that ultra-distances are run with the heart, not the legs.

I think Dean’s book was more entertaining, but it’s inspiring to read about a woman who won a sporting event overall: not just first woman, but first.

So I started dating an Ultra-Marathon Man and he gave me this book to read. I do a little running myself but not in a crazy way (the crazy/sane distinction being anything I wouldn’t do vs. everything I do do). It’s an interesting read. Dean is one tiny bit egotistical but I suppose he has the right to be. He’s also nuts, but he’s nuts in a happy, fulfilled way and there are worse things you can be.

Apparently this book motivated my new boyfriend to do his first 100-mile race. Funny, but it hasn’t had that effect on me. One thing I learned when I started climbing is that I’m not that tough. Brave sometimes, stubborn always, but not really a good sufferer. This book posits that suffering is required but fun. So I’m going to leave Steve and Dean to it.