Book #39: Runner's World Run Less, Run Faster

Title: Runner's World; Run Less, Run Faster: Become a faster, stronger runner with the revolutionary FIRST training Program
Authors: Bill Pierce, Scott Murr and Ray Moss

The book behind the FIRST program, which transformed me from a 3:55 marathoner to a 3:27 marathoner.

I needed something to get me out of my running slump, and this book did the trick. I'm now excited about getting back to running after my self-imposed one-week break. I'm going to do a 5K speed run and see how fast I am, so I can plug all of the numbers in the the formulas and set a new goal for my new marathon this fall. I loved the FIRST program when I used it over the winter, and the book is an excellent companion to all of the (free) info available on the internet.

Book #38: Curry

Title: Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors
Author: Lizzie Collingham

In Curry, Lizzie Collingham uses traditional Indian restaurant dishes (korma or vindaloo, for example) and uses them as chapter headings for her explorations of the history of food across the subcontinent.

Curry is pretty similar to The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, but with a much more scholarly bent. If the Fortune Cookie Chronicles is Newsweek, Curry is more The New Yorker. It's still very interesting (I actually think I liked it more) but it wasn't a quick read. Instead, it's more of a slow simmer. But it, like just about everything I read these days, made me hungry for some Indian food...

Book #36: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Title: The Thousand Splendid Suns
Author: Khaled Hosseini

I read this book for the first time less than a year ago, and went on a two-day binge reread (for book club) over the weekend. My feelings about the book haven't changed, so you can read my original review here

Book #37: The Host

Title: The Host
Author: Stephenie Meyer

When Wanderer, an alien life form whose species invades Earth and takes over humanity to serve as hosts for their souls, enters the body of Melanie, she's surprised when Melanie continues to keep up residence.

I really wanted to like The Host. And actually, I found it really thought-provoking and interesting. But it was long. Way, way, way too long. A good 300 pages too long, I think. And for a book without much action and just a lot of being holed up in a cave, that's way too long. Anyone think Meyer might be getting paid on a per-word basis like Charles Dickens? If the book had been 300 pages instead of 600, I think I would have loved it.

Book #34: Unaccustomed Earth

Title: Unaccustomed Earth
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri

Eight short stories about second-generation Indian-Americans navigating childhood, adolescence and young adulthood in the United States.

I'll admit it, I have some kind of inborn prejudice against short stories. Even though smartmama keeps trying to convince me to take on her favorite genre, every time I pick up a book of short stories, I get frustrated and end up putting it down before I finish. Not this time. Lahiri's stories felt like my own. Her characters struggles with being bored as a stay-at-home mom, relationships with adult children and their parents, going through adolescence when you feel separate from the dominant culture-- all of them could have been written about me. As I read the stories, I kept thinking of that famous opening line from Anna Karenina, which says something to the effect of "Happy families are all happy in the same way, but unhappy families are unhappy in different ways." Tolstoy makes happy families sound boring. The families in Lahiri's book while not perfect, are, for the most part, happy, but they're definitely not boring. I just got finished ordering her first book of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, from amazon. I can't wait to get my hot little hands on it.

Book #35: How To Eat Supper

Title: The Splendid Table's How To Eat Supper: Recipes, Stories and Opinions from Public Radio's Award-Winning Food Show
Author: Lynne Rosetto Kasper and Sally Swift

Yeah, this is a cookbook, but it's so heavy on the "stories and opinions" that I spent as much time devouring it as if it had been a regular book, so I think it counts.

If you've been around me over the last five years, you probably know that I'm slightly obsessed with Lynne Rosetto Kasper's NPR food show, The Splendid Table. It's what gets me through my long runs on Saturday mornings, and even though my regular dinner fare is much more lowbrow than the recipes in this book, I felt inspired after receiving the book for Mother's Day to step up my cooking a few notches and try to cook a few things from the book each week. So far I love what I've made, and I love what I've been learning as I read. I even tolerate the admonition to use Sharffen Berger in anything calling for chocolate, as well as the word organic on practically every single page of the book.

Book #33: The Left Hand of Darkness

Title: The Left Hand of Darkness
Author: Ursula LeGuin

Genly Ai arrives on Gethen, a wintry planet inhabited by hermaphrodites, in order to convince the Gethenians to join an intergalactic trading alliance. Along the way, he faces many obstacles and finds a friend to help him achieve his goal.

I blogged about this book at fMh, so if you want to find out how I felt about it, check out the discussion over there.

b.u.r.n.o.u.t.

Right after I came back from Nashville last month, I spent some time thinking about my running over the next year. I knew a lot of people talked about getting burned out from running too many marathons back to back, but I was just so giddy after the Country Music Marathon, that I envisioned myself doing marathon after marathon until something gave out on me.

Over the last month, I've been training for the Wasatch Back (which is less than four weeks away-- yay!), signed up to do a race on July 24th with my sister-in-law, Alison, got picked in the lottery to run the St. George Marathon at the beginning of October, got asked to run in another Ragnar Relay here in Texas in the end of October, tentatively planned on a repeat performance (hopefully minus the viral illness) at the Texas Marathon on New Year's Day, and that's all before the big Kahuna-- Boston, next April.

Yesterday, when I woke up to do my 18-mile run, I could hardly pull myself from my bed. It was dark, and I was tired, and the bed seemed so inviting. It's been so hot all week. Yesterday, at 5:45am, it was 80 degrees, and probably about 80% humidity (it kept threatening to rain, but nothing ever came). Somehow, over the last six months, I forgot how brutal running in Texas in the summer can be. I know I've said this before, but it's just like running in the bathroom after someone took a water heater-draining shower. And the treadmill in my bedroom, with its huge east-facing windows, isn't any better for my morning runs. In just a week, Bryce and Annie will get out of school, and I'll have four to contend with instead of two when I lock them out of the room and try to sneak in a quickie (run, that is).

Anyway, yesterday morning I did nine miles before I decided that I just couldn't hack it. Did you hear that? I couldn't hack it. I went to the gym and finished up with a spinning class instead, and even there, in the air-conditioned relative coolness, everyone complained about how muggy and sweaty it was. For the rest of the day, I felt terrible: tired, irritable, kind of sick.

This is what running in the summer does to me. And now, because I've loaded my schedule up with races from now until next year, I can't take break. Every single Saturday, I'll be up before dawn, hitting the concrete. Ugh. And even though I love running, I kind of hate it too right now. I know there were lots of people (my friends Elisabeth and Melodee included) who wanted to get into St. George and couldn't, so I feel like I have to slog through the endless sweaty summer and not bail on this race. I'm just not very happy about it right now.

Can somebody give me a pep talk?

Halloween in May

On Sunday, I was doing the solo-parent church thing when Maren had a pooptastrophe, ruining her outfit, the floor of the cultural hall (we're slow when I'm by myself), and my outfit. So I took her home for a quick change, and left the kids with my friend Tamara and her husband. They played with Tamara's folder games and apparently didn't do anything too terrible in my absence.

Then, after church, Tamara called. She said Isaac was playing one of the games, which was about holidays, when he told her that he missed Halloween because he was in the hospital. He actually had his second femur-draining surgery on Halloween. Now that he's getting better, Tamara thought it would be fun to recreate the holiday for him.

So last night, about fifteen families from the ward met at a nearby park. The kids, dressed in everything from batman pjs to tinkerbell costumes, went from trunk to trunk collecting candy. The adults chatted, relaxing as the sun sank in the sky and the day finally cooled off. Isaac got to wear the Diego costume he got for his birthday seven months ago. He was adorable, and so happy (and he's walking really well with his new shoe lift, which is great, too). Several of the moms showed up without their husbands but with four or five kids in tow, juggling new babies and sweet treats. Since I've been in that same situation many times myself, I really appreciated that they came. I always think of charity and service as something not very fun, but I think that we all, adults and kids alike, had fun. And I definitely felt the love for our little family from our ward family.

Why I love Thursdays...

Monday-- babysitting swap, soccer for the big kids, Family Home Evening
Tuesday-- cub scouts
Wednesday-- physical therapy for Isaac, ballet
Thursday--
Friday-- physical therapy

We haven't left the house all day. Maren caught Isaac's nasty fever/cold thing, so I didn't even hit the gym this morning, and since I can keep her feeling pretty good with a little bit of Tylenol, we've used the day to get caught up on laundry and ironing and cleaning the bathrooms. And I just love knowing I don't have to schlep anyone anywhere after the big kids come home from school. For the first time since Bryce started kindergarten, I think I'm actually looking forward to the summer, when we don't have anything on our agenda in the late afternoons.