My Thought Spot

Running
I ran only 50.1 miles during the month of June. I knew this would be a low month because of going to the swimming class for the whole month. I also started riding my bike to go to class instead of running there. I finished the month 21 miles behind my goal pace for the year. I am not at all discouraged about that. It has been good to step back just a little as I get ready for marathon training.

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. [I have a more complete list of ADD books I have read or recommend.]

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.