Category: Books

Review: Running Through the Wall

One of the books I received for my birthday was Running Through the Wall: Personal Encounters With the Ultramarathon by Neal Jamison. It is a compilation of stories written by people who have run ultramarathons (any distance over 26.2 miles). Most of the stories are in the form of a race report on a particular race. Some are more in the form of “my-life-as-an-ultramarathoner.”

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.

Goals updates

I have been very busy this week and have not really had a lot of time to write. But, even though I have been busy, I have not run across much to write about. Therefore, you get to read about how my goals for 2008 are progressing along.

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?

My Birthday and Christmas gifts

Since we don’t have mail sent directly to us, the books and videos I got for Christmas and birthday were hand delivered on Monday. I have not gotten all of them yet, but I did get two items.

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.

Days of the week

I read a great book a few years ago that explained the names of the days of the week. The book was The Clock We Live On by Isaac Asimov. Then today I read a post at Daily Writing Tips that covered the material again. I just think it is fascinating to see where the names of the days of the week come from, especially as you see it in different languages. Since I know Spanish and English, I will explain them here. If you know another language and how the days are named, then please leave a comment so we can see how they compare. I know there are similarities in different languages.

As a quick primer the names in English and Spanish are:

  • Sunday — Domingo
  • Monday — Lunes
  • Tuesday — Martes
  • Wednesday — Miércoles
  • Thursday — Jueves
  • Friday — Viernes
  • Saturday — Sábado

The book explained (if I remember right) that originally the days of the week had names reflecting celestial objects. That has changed over time and languages. Each object was dominant in the first hour of the day. The cycle is Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon. Each hour is controlled or dominated by that object. Starting at Saturn and counting through the cycle until you reach the 25th hour, and the start of the next day, you land on the Sun. Then through the cycle again, the 25th hour starts the next day dominated by the Moon. Through the week you get Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus then Saturn again.

Sunday started with the sun. In Spanish it is Domingo which comes from the Latin Dies Dominica (Lord’s day).

Monday is the moon. Moon in Spanish is luna. Lunes is the Spanish word for Monday.

Tuesday is a bit convoluted, but it comes from Mars, the god of war. The reason it gets lost in the translation is we take Tuesday from the Germanic god of war, Tiu or Tiwa. In Spanish the day is Martes which comes from the planet Mars which is Marte. The relationship to Tiu, or Tiwa, is that Mars is the god of war.

Wednesday comes from the Germanic god, Woden. It is a bit of a stretch to make Woden and Mercury connect to one another. Suffice it to say that the English Wednesday is named after Woden and the Spanish Miércoles is named after Mercury.

Thursday is named after the god of thunder, Thor. In Spanish it is Jueves and is named after Jupiter who was a Roman god whose power came from his thunderbolt, and thus the connection between Thor and Jupiter.

Friday gets its name from Freya, the Teutonic goddess of love. Viernes in Spanish comes from Venus,  which is the Roman goddesss of love.

Saturday gets its name from the planet Saturn in English whereas the Spanish Sábado comes from the word sabbath.

The book, The Clock We Live On is very interesting. It not only talked about the days of the week, but why the day is broken into 24 hours and how different words came to be used the way they are. I specifically remember that ‘minute’ gets its name because it is a small part of an hour (Latin minuta = small part of something). And ‘second’ gets its name because it was the second division of the hour. I am serious, that is really where the name comes from. Pretty lame, huh?

Unfortunately the book is not available new. You can dig around at Amazon and find it used.

Review: The War of the Worlds

There are some authors that I just want to like, but can’t really get into. H. G. Wells is one of them. I think the first book I read of his was The Time Machine. I don’t know if I finished that one. I think I may have finished The Invisible Man. I know I did not make it through The Island of Doctor Moreau.

I have finally thrown in the towel on The War of the Worlds. I am not giving up easily, I made it 150 pages into the book. It is a book that I really wanted to like.

I torture myself with some books just because they are supposed to be classics and “must read” material.

As much as I did not like the content, I do have to say that it is well written. Or, at least I think it is. He does a good job of writing, but there are two things I don’t like about it. I am more of a Jules Verne type of fiction reader. Wheres Verne tries to explain in detail why something works the way it does (even though you know it can’t), Wells requires you to make assumptions and just accept that what he says is true. I realize that approach is the norm in fiction, and particularly science fiction, but that is probably the reason I dislike fiction. Even if something is not true, I like to read a book that tries to convince me it is.

The second thing I don’t like about Wells’ style is very typical of books from his time period and before. There is an assumption that I have nothing better to do with my time than read their words. These stories move too slowly. I would prefer the comic book version: more pictures, fewer words. I don’t mind reading big books (though the shorter the better), but I want to get to the point of the story quickly. Or at least keep moving along.

While I can accept the assumption that Martians have invaded the earth, I need a bit more convincing that the slugs which are trapped from the first landing become a major force in the world in just a few hours. They were all but dead upon landing.

The kicker was when I got to the end of the story and he says “Oh, here is the second part of the book. I told you what happened to my brother and how the story ended, now I will tell you what happened to me.” Huh? If I know how it ends, why would I keep reading? I didn’t.

This is not really a fair review since it is pretty obvious I am not a fiction reader. However, this book would certainly not make me want to become one.

Wells, I am sorry, but you are just not for me.

The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells, NYRB publishers, 250 pages.

Here is the MP3 of the Orson Welles audio version.