If you want to get in on the action then check out the Run Bulldog Run website. He requires a couple of things to be eligible. First you need to subscribe to his RSS feed either through an RSS reader, or via email. Then you need to leave a comment and tell which method you chose at the original post. You also need to check out his page of motivational quotes and email him a quote by a specific person. This lets him know you are a real person and can follow directions. Optionally, as a third task, you can write about it on your blog or somehow tell others about the contest.

I heard Dean talk about this book in a recent interview at Endurance Planet. I am excited to read the book when it comes out. I recently re-read Ultramarathon Man and am curious as to what adventures Dean will tell about in this book.

I have also started biking much more. I am incorporating that into my exercise week at least twice and sometimes three times a week.

Reading
I am not sure what happened to my reading log this last month. My records say that I only read 582 pages in 4 books. I am convinced I read at least one more book, but I cannot figure out what I read. I picked up some pretty easy reading books this last month and tore through them in a couple of days. Until I figure out what other book or books I might have read, I am sticking to what my log says.

I re-read Ultramarathon Man which I reviewed once before. I also read Re-Entry, which I wrote a post about during this last month. I started a book in July that I am going to finish soon. I plan to write a full review on that one as well. It is a missionary biography which I am very much enjoying.

This book was loaned to me by an older missionary couple yesterday. We were talking about furlough (the topic of a soon-to-be-released Missionary Talks episode). The book talks about some of the struggles that missionaries face as they go back to their home culture. While the book focuses on people returning permanently, it also covers missionaries who are only temporarily returning home, such as we will be over the next year.

Two things the book mentioned that I thought might be of interest to you have to do with relationships and misunderstandings.

Peter Jordan, the author, mentions that relationships will be different upon return home. Even though a relationship can thrive over distance, often the individuals are no longer as emotionally connected. Our emotional togetherness happens through shared experiences and just spending time with one another. The missionary and the friend back home have not only been living through different experiences, but through different cultures.

We have friends with whom we love to spend hours and hours talking. We would often spend 2 or 3 nights a week with one another talking into the wee hours of the morning when we were in town. We were very connected. While we still have a tight relationship with them, we have also not been a part of their lives for the last four years. When we got a chance to be with them earlier this year I noticed that other mutual friends were now filling in where we used to be. I became jealous of the fact that we no longer occupied the same space we used to. Of course it is silly to think that your friends are going to not change or build new relationships over a four year period.

But multiply this with every friend the missionary has, and you can start to see why re-entry can be stressful for the missionary. Things will never be the same as they were.

The other thing I wanted to point out is the matter of misunderstandings. The missionary returns home and comments about how things have changed for the worse, or how wonderful things are back home. Those who have lived through the changes won’t see it as starkly as the returning family will. They have had a chance to grow into the changes a little at a time.

Where we personally had greater frustrations were when we would mention some things that were so great in the US and then hear people complain about that very thing we found to be wonderful. We have to remember that others will never see things from the same light we do. Nor, will we be able to see things from their perspective.

One example of this is the variety of products you can find in the stores. When we go looking for something here in Mexico, a can of peas for example, we might find a can or two on the shelves. There will be no choice as to which brand you get. If they do carry them, they will only have one brand, and more often they won’t have any anyway.

Earlier this year when we were home for a few weeks we were amazed at how much people complained that Wal-Mart did not have the particular product the person wanted. Maybe they were looking for milk. Of course they want a particular brand in a particular size and fat content. When we arrived in Mexico just four years ago we could not get pasteurized, homoginized milk like we expect in the US. All the milk came in un-refrigerated liter boxes with expiration dates 6 months into the future. Now we have a choice of 2 brands of milk that resembles and tastes something like the milk back home.

I just have little sympathy for the person who has to settle for a different size (a gallon as opposed to a half gallon) or has to go to the store across the street to get the milk they want because the store they are in doesn’t have it. At least it is available relatively easily.

It would be easy for the missionary to become bitter at their friends and family for not understanding them, and the missionary is just as guilty for not understanding those back home.

I am half way through the book and find it very insightful. I am glad I have gotten a chance to read it and will probably write a review of the book in a couple of days when I am done.

I ran 17 days and did not run 13 days. There were only two times that I took two days off in a row and once I did not run for three days in a row. Even though the mileage was down a bit, I was still consistently on the road, just with lower mileage. My longest run this month was just under six miles.

This week I finished with my swim class. It has been a great six weeks of swimming, but my schedule over the next two months before we leave to move back to the US will prohibit me from being able to regularly continue going to the pool. I will still swim when I get a chance. The most important thing is that I have learned how to swim properly now.

I started marathon training this week. Over the next few months I will be running between 20 and 35 miles a week. By the time I run the marathon I will have made up my lost miles and gotten a few miles ahead of the yearly goal once again.

Reading
I read 1097 pages in six books this month. Among the really interesting books were Flags of Our Fathers, Healing ADD and Freakonomics.

Flags of Our Fathers was great! It was well written and gives a history of the six men who are in the Iwo Jima flag raising photo. The author is the son of one of the three survivors of the six. The book helped me understand why my grandfather never talked about the war. My grandfather, like the central character in the book, was a Navy Corpsman stationed with the Marines at Gudalcanal, Bougainville and Guam. Like the men in the book, I suspect my grandfather believed that the heroes were the men who did not come home after the war. He went over there to do a job. He accomplished it and came home, but probably believed the real heroes were the men who sacrificed their lives so that he could come home.

My personal opinion is that anyone who serves in the military to protect my country is a hero.

With a better understanding of what he went through, I only wished my grandfather were alive today so that I could possibly get more information from him.

Freakonomics is a book that was wildly popular a couple of years ago. Steven Levitt applies an economist’s eye to societal trends that don’t necessarily fit in the realm of economics. He explains why school teachers sometimes cheat and how they do it, as well as how they get caught. Also he tells why drug dealers live with their mothers. Many other interesting topics too.

The book Healing ADD breaks down ADD into six categories instead of the traditional two. Besides medication, which the author believes is very helpful, he recommends other interventions that can help each of the different classifications of ADD. While there is a lot of controversy as to whether diet helps or hurts ADD behavior, Dr. Amen recommends dietary changes that can help certain types, but clearly stresses that diet alone is not a cure-all. He also recommends coaching and exercise as two other methods in a multi-faceted approach to controlling ADD.

Amazingly, I finished five of the six books I was reading. I will be picking up all new books this month to chew on. Or, I will be pulling books from the shelf that were previously partly read and need to be finished. There are 13 books on my “To Be Read” shelf. I have plenty to choose from.

I started swimming 3 days a week this month. I am running to and from swimming class which is only .6 miles from my house. That is the reason I have so many days in a row that I have run. Sometimes I will put in a little extra distance at the track by the swimming pool on swim days. Otherwise, I am saving my longer distance days for non-swimming days.

Longest run this month was 8 miles. I ran 3 races during the month.

Reading
I did much better with my reading this month than I did with my previous couple of months. I read 925 pages in 8 books. I am still reading in 5 of those. It seems like they are all big books.

I also read a couple of magazines from cover to cover. I am never sure how to count those pages, so I just don’t. And, of course, I read at least a bizillion pages online. That is where I spend the majority of my reading time.

I also listened to a 400 page audio book this month. Also not sure how to count that, so I will just leave it out.

All in all, I feel like my reading was much improved this month.

Without giving a full list of titles, here is a summary of some of the subjects. Healthy eating, ADD, missiology, creationism, baseball history, a classic, Bible, and a fiction book.

However, it is not an easy reading book. It was also not quite what I expected. I was 175 pages into the book before I realized that he was never going to get to the material I was looking for. My expectation was that he would give a list of “eat this” and “don’t eat that.” Instead, he spent the entire book laying out guidelines of what to eat and why. But in general categories, and not specific items. Of course there are many specifics given, but more importantly, he wanted you to understand why you should make the food choices you make. And for that, I loved the material.

He explains how your body processes different types of fats. How your body responds to proteins and carbohydrates. He also talked at great length about different vitamins and what they do for you.

In a nutshell, he advocates a diet high in whole nuts and grains, lots of veggies and fruits along with good fats that our body needs. All of this is coupled with exercise and weight control. I got the feeling that if Dr. Willett could get you to do one thing, it would be to exercise. Though the book was all about food and how it affects your body, he strongly emphasized that the foundation was exercise.

If you have ever listened to Dr. Monte’s podcast, Fitness Rocks, you are familiar with the teachings of Dr. Willett

One third of the 350 page book is dedicated to recipes.

Surprisingly, he did not beat up every other diet program. He said what was basically good about most programs and how they could be altered to be better. There were a few, however, that he recommended the reader avoid. Mostly, though, he gave some suggestions on how to make the program you like, and seems to work for you, just a little bit better.

I found the book very informative. I also found it a bit too technical for most people. Not that most people could not understand it, but I think most people won’t care to try. He enjoys dissecting different medical studies and explaining what the mind numbing numbers mean. While I personally enjoy that type of material, I doubt the book has mass appeal. It would be nice for someone to write a follow up book telling people how to put into practice the principles of Willett’s book. He does have the recipes in back, but I think there needs to be an explanation along with the recipes that are more simplistic in what the purpose of the food combinations are. As the book is now, you have to have read the whole book and understood its concepts to understand why the recipes are designed the way they are.

Now I have to figure out a way to ship this book back to Mom without her noticing it is missing.

Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy, Walter C. Willett, M.D., Free Press, New York, 2001, 348 pages.

I am about 5 miles ahead of my goal for the year. This is my second longest running month–January was longer by 1 mile.

Reading 800 pages
I only read 644 pages this month in 5 different books. Nothing was really outstanding other than the Marathon book by Hal Higdon. Without having a goal I would not have read as much as I did. I am disappointed that I missed it again (missed in February too). But I am encouraged by the fact that I have used the goal to keep me pushing to be a more consistent reader.

This was a well written book. Higdon is an experienced author and his skill comes through. The book is written particularly with the first time marathoner in mind. He briefly covers the history of the marathon and why anyone would want to run one. But it is not just for the new marathoner. After I have a couple of marathons under my shoes I think it would be a great resource to read again. He talks further on how to improve your time.

There were two things that disappointed me in the book. One was how little ink was dedicated to shoes and also how he handled nutrition.

The information he did give about shoes was incomplete. The edition of the book I have was written in 1999; I hope that his shoe coverage was expanded in the 2005 edition. I don’t know if it was even possible to go into your local running store 10 years ago and have a gait analysis done like it is today. There is much more that the average runner can do in choosing the right shoes than what Higdon covered in the book.

The chapter on nutrition seemed to advise from the perspective that the readers would already be eating properly and that to train for a marathon you would need to change where you get your calories from. But there was not a basic list of good and bad foods. I realize that this is not a nutrition book, but since one chapter was dedicated to nutrition, I expected there to be more about general eating. In a nutshell, he said that it would be hard to get the volume of calories you need from your regular diet because it would mean so much greater volume of food. Of course he has to be talking about someone who already gets the bulk of their calories from non-processed foods. I think it would be more accurate to assume people are eating junk and they should be taught what is proper and what to avoid. It could also have to do with the fact that he grew up in a different generation and has always been an athlete.

His chapter on post race recovery, without being overly long, went into detail as to what you should be doing immediately after the marathon and just about every hour following that until the next day. He then gives you guidelines to follow for several days after your race.

His training plans are worth the price of the book. The plan itself is reproduced all over the Internet. But what makes the book special is that he does not just say “Run 3 miles today.” Rather he tells you that on Thursday of week 4 (4 weeks before the marathon): “Five miles for novices. You are entitled to feel a bit tired today. It’s normal. That’s what training is all about. A 40-minute tempo run for experts. Although the mileage buildup continues, we’ve already begun to cut back on your tempo runs. Don’t overdo today’s workout. Save something for a very tough weekend.” That is his coaching coming through. It is not just a bunch of numbers on a chart for Higdon. Those numbers represent something and he knows what you need to hear each day of the 18 week plan.

I am curious to see the newer edition just to see if he spent more time on shoes and changed his focus with nutrition. Other than those two things I thought it was an excellent preparation book. I am glad I had a chance to read it several weeks before I need to start training for my fall marathon.

Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide, Hal Higdon, 1999, Rodale Press, 121 pages.

I ran a total of 85.1 miles for the month.

For the year I am at 248.5 miles and have run 52 out of 91 days this year. That puts me 1.5 miles behind where I need to be for the year. That will be pretty easy to make up.

Reading 800 pages a month
I read 855 pages this month. Not too much over the goal, but I did make it this month.

I read from 6 books. Besides the Bible I read Talking with Catholic Friends and Family, The Trumpet of the Swan, Passages: Darien’s Rise. I started The Art of Deception and read some more on D Day.

April should be pretty easy to stay on track. I will be home the whole month so it will just be a matter of staying consistent.

I ran a total of 72.2 miles for the month. I ended the month right on track for a 1000 mile year. At the end of January I was 6.5 miles ahead of schedule. Traveling and a very tightly scheduled conference ate up the 6.5 mile buffer, but that was why I worked to get ahead.

Reading
I fell way behind on my reading. I only read 657 pages (goal is 800 per month). Most of the reading I did was in the last week and a half of the month. No real excuse other than I was busy and did not make it a priority until late in the month.

I read Do You Mind if Your Kids Don’t and Cure for the Common Life and I completed When Charity Destroys Dignity. I also read on the book D Day, but not very much. I need to finish it within the next 2 weeks so that I can give it back to the owner when I see him. I also read a master’s thesis entitled Seducing Spirits.

The month of March will be another tough month, but without the goals I think it would be easy to cruise through the month and not accomplish much in the area of reading and running.

Do You Mind if Your Kids Don’t?

In this book, Dr. Bill talks mostly about the relationship between parents and children, but it really is more than that. He gives you great biblical principles on family relationships and how to train your children to be disciplined and respectful. He also explains very clearly how one can be saved and know it as well as how to find God’s will for one’s life. Much of what he gives are the same principles he teaches to teenagers every week at the Bill Rice Ranch (named for his father).

One of the biggest emphasis he has in the book is about the relationship between parents. The Bible has very clear teaching that parents should be united in their relationship, especially with their children. This does not mean that parents always agree or that they never have to work through differences of opinion, but as far as children are concerned they need to see a united leadership in their mom and dad.

Because I know Dr. Bill’s children very well, this book means much more to me. I know that the things he teaches have been borne out in the lives of his three children who are now grown and serving the Lord in different ministries.

I would recommend this book to any teenager and young adult. It is best to start building your philosophy about family before you are married. This is also a good book for anyone in ministry. You will learn how to clearly communicate the message of salvation.

Do You Mind if Your Kids Don’t?, Bill Rice III, Bill Rice Ranch Publications, 2007, 205 pages.

The book is written by Scott McCloud. I was previously unaware of him. Apparently he has been a long time guru in the comics industry. He has two other books out, Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics. Those two seem to have been big successes. If they are anything like Making Comics, I understand why.

I am not an expert on comics theory or philosophy, but I will say that McCloud is a genius. His ability to explain the philosophy of comics in such a basic way is incredible. This is not a book about how to draw, but it is a book about drawing comics. He also deals with lettering philosophy and finding your own genre and niche.

He boils down for the reader what makes a comic readable and why things are done in the way they are. He points out some sacred cows–one of which he calls “flow”–but then also tells you how to go against the norm to find your own style in other aspects.

He gives many examples and is very encouraging for the new comics artist/writer. He shows that there are many styles out there that have been successful, but then he also points out why they are successful. It is not just one style of art that will make a comic be accepted. Nor is it one type of story. There are many factors involved and he tries to point those out. But, he also admits that there is no magic formula. Some of it is just trial and error.

I was disappointed by one thing in the book. There are some language and pictures that just are not appropriate for a 10 year old. I am disgusted with myself for assuming the book was written for all ages. It is not. I took Geek Dad’s recommendation with the thinking that it would be good for children since that is the tone of their blog and podcast. I did not have a Sharpie(tm) handy when I read the book the first time. I guess that means I have to read it again with Sharpie or white out in hand.

I understood the book as a whole. But I am not sure I completely got my head around Chapter 6 Section 3: Understanding Comics Culture. Maybe the second time through it will make more sense to me.

I really did buy this book for my son. He has read it twice or three times in the two weeks we have had it. But it was a good read for me as well. I have no interest in becoming a comics artist, but I am a communicator. I love reading books on communication and particularly philosophy of communication. This book was right up my alley. The subtitle is: Storytelling secrets of comics, manga, and graphic novels. It really is all about how to communicate a story from one person to another.

Absolutely highly recommended. If you have younger children, maybe below the age of 14, then you may want to read through the book first to make sure it is acceptable. If not, there are only a few places where the pen of censorship needs to be applied.

Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels, Scott McCloud, Harper, 2006, 264 pages.

Because the book is written by several authors, the style is not consistent. Also the quality of the stories is not consistent. Some are, without doubt, better stories than others.

I have read about many of the races mentioned in the book, but not all of them. Some were new venues for me and I enjoyed learning about them. Most stories are between 4 and 8 pages long.

This is not a teaching book. You aren’t going to learn how to run a 100 mile race from this book. That said, you can learn a lot from other people’s experiences. You also learn how crazy some people can be.

I really enjoyed the book and think that it will be one of the very rare books that I go back and read from in the future. I probably will never read the whole book again. I will just pick and choose my favorite stories. I marked a few that were particularly enjoyable to make my future reading through the book easier.

One thing I would have loved to see in the book is that the editors had included in the author summary which race they were writing about. There were a couple of stories that were not clear to me as to which race or year was the subject. There were several runners who talked about the exact same race and year, but unless you flipped back through the stories, you would not have known they were talking about a shared experience.

I don’t know how appealing this book would be to new runners. But, it is very enjoyable for those who like reading race reports and for people who have actually considered ultra distances.

Running Through the Wall: Personal Encounters With the Ultramarathon, Neal Jamison, Breakaway Books, 2003, 304 pages.

Running
My goal is to run 1000 miles this year. I have currently run 40 miles. That is a bit ahead of schedule, but not much. I need to run 19.3 miles a week. By Monday of this week (1-14) I need to have completed just 38.6. Being ahead of the goal is never bad. I have been able to run pretty consistently and have not missed a single planned run in the last several weeks. I am in just a maintenance mode right now. I am not training for anything specific. While running with my friend Jeff, we are running much faster than I would normally run alone. This has been good to help me with some tempo type running.

Reading
I am attempting to read 800 pages a month this year. I have not decided yet if I will make this a month to month goal, or a year goal. If it is month to month then I will not carry over any extra pages that I read in one month to pad the following month. If it is a goal to read 9,600 pages (12 X 800 pages) in a year, then I could carry over extra pages.

Currently I have read about 450 pages. That will translate out to over 1,100 pages by the end of the month if I keep up this pace.

Summary
I am excited about both goals for the year. I just hope that excitement stays with me long enough to make it a commitment that I will absolutely stick to. Writing about it here and sharing it with you really helps.

How are your goals going for the year?

The first is the book Running Through the Wall (it is was a birthday gift). It is a collection of race reports from ultramarathons (any distance longer than 26.2 miles). I have made it about a quarter of the way through the book. I will be giving a full book review on it in a few days. The quick analysis is that it has some incredibly great stories that are worth the price of the book and some stories that seemed to be included just to make the book thicker. I guess the stories mean something to the individual author, but they are not too moving to me personally.

I had a fun experience related to the book on Monday (the day I got the book). The book was brought down by a mission team from Ohio. While they were helping to paint our church, we stopped to eat lunch. I was chatting with a couple of the team members asking where they went to school and what they studied (these are all college age young people). One of the girls attends Liberty University. I asked her if she had ever had a class with Dr. David Horton, who is responsible for influencing many of the stories in the book and is a professor at Liberty. She said she took a running class from him. I got all giddy to be in the presence of someone who has taken a class from him. I told her that I would bring my running shoes the next day so that she could sign them. She did not seem to have much of a sense of humor, so I took the shoes, but ended up not pressing the issue and making her sign.

The other item that arrived with the book was the video Running on the Sun about the 1999 Badwater 135 ultramarathon which is run from Death Valley to Mt. Whitney 135 miles away (a Christmas gift). I watched it last night. It was very good, though slow moving. I was pleased with how “clean” the film was. Though there were the shots of puking, draining blisters and conversations about bodily functions, it was basically PG content. Until…the last 30 minutes of the film went totally downhill. I kept thinking that my son might enjoy the film and that since there was no cursing, he would be able to watch it with me some time. But at the end of the show everyone was tired and irritable and they made up for the lack of cursing for the previous hour.

I am expecting a couple more running books with the next shipment. Stay tuned.