and all is right with the world...

It's not often that a problem or running injury will be solved unwittingly, or simply vanish from existence, but that's happened with me.  By not stretching my right hamstring post-run (er, or pre-run for that matter) I not having any more pain running.  Now, this is one aspect of my running game--I had to make quite a few adjustments.  So there.
I've also been making great use of the Saskatoon Public Library and discovered the work of Anthony Bidulka, whose private detective novels are set in Saskatoon.  I've got a queue of books a mile long, including novels by Salmon Rushdie (Fury), John Updike (Memories of the Ford Administration) as well as a few by Nicholson Baker, the aforementioned Anthony Bidulka and Sara Gruen.

Today's run was a brisk five kilometres around Forest Grove.  A glutton for change, I decided to mimic a particular marathoner's arm swinging motion, and this resulted in my running a fairly blistering pace over the first few kilometres.  But yes, I neglected to remove my glasses before I left the house, forgot my headband as well.  But you know what?  Who cares.

I ran a 3:29 kilometer.... fact or fiction?

So I feel like I'm beginning to really figure some things out.  While massaging my right hamstring the other day I noticed a sore spot in the middle... a few moments of thumbing it alleviated my knee pain. Interesting.

Today's run lasted 5.3k--an odd number, but I decided to assess my performance every 5 kilometers or so.  Just as I was about to do my first assessment, I felt a sharp pain in the fibular head on my right leg. Workout: over.

But while I was running (along an L-shaped path that follows alongside Circle Drive) I realized I probably wasn't going to be running too much today, and so I decided to do a few 500 meter intervals in order to get my heart rate elevated.  I haven't been terribly happy running long distances at slow speeds with pounding pain in my legs.

And evidently I ran a 3:29 kilometer, according to Runtastic.  Although I don't consider myself terribly fit right now, I'm definitely fit enough to run what amounts to a 5:35 per mile pace for at least a few minutes.  Whether Runtastic was off or not doesn't really matter, I really was hauling ass for a bit.

All-told I ran pretty fast (26-ish minute 5k) for a training run with a taped ankle and nagging hamstring.

Happy Thanksgiving! (er, it's almost Thanksgiving here in Canada).

A few thoughts on running books, and praise for Running With The Kenyans by Adharanand Finn

The most you can ever ask of an author is to take you on a journey.  In Running with the Kenyans [Amazon.ca Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk], Finn wisks us through the Kenyan countryside with terrific, and sometimes lyrical, prose that evokes a sense of realness lost in a lot of writing. It's a delight to read such a terrific book (following on the heels of the similarly satisfying memoir of Caleb Daniloff) and read an author who bares his soul on the page.  Murakami, as much as I love his writing and respect his world class authorship, never opened himself up the way Finn does, over the course of his own running memoir.

At any rate, running books are often hit and miss.  On my 16k bike ride (round trip) to the downtown branch of the Saskatoon Public Library, I reckoned I'd pick up a few running books.  And so I did, in addition to the Daniloff and Finn books, I picked up a book on Harry Jerome (a seemingly dispiriting introduction rather killed the book for me--after all, telling me how I should feel about the subject matter before the first chapter has even begun usually means the author doesn't trust the reader--obviously what happened to Harry Jerome was horrible, but at least let me experience it all through the narrative); C by Tom McCarthy (which has nothing to do with running); and a biography of Bill Rogers which was probably written by the co-writer--in any event, the amount of name dropping in the first 20 pages was enough for me to close the book and just stare at the wall while my 7-year-old step-kid drifted off to sleep.  There was one other book, written most likely by a sycophantic fan, of a runner from the 60's and 70's.  The author apologizes for his subject a bit too much for me to read very far (e.g. if he'd only entered school at the proper age, he woulda been state champion etc).

A good running book, in my humble blogging opinion, makes no excuses for what it is.  If an author name drops, it's not on purpose, nor is it the focal point of an entire chapter or the reason for an extended anecdote.  As readers with a finite amount of time on earth, we are owed authenticity. Cheers to Adharanand Finn and once again to Caleb Daniloff for the good read.

Toothlessness and Training

And so, dear readers, I followed a terrible 11k run (in the rain) with a dental procedure to remove a tooth (molar, thank god).  Let's start with the run...

So after about 1km I noticed that the pressure in my right leg was pretty intense.  I knew immediately that it would be another run-walk-run ordeal, and that my metal would be tested in the cold cold rain.  Today's run was supposed to be an easy 12k run.  Instead, I stopped (at 11k) once it became clear that if I went any further I was going to do damage to my right knee.  I walked the rest of the way home (2k) in the rain.

Fast forward a few hours: the dentist is using his tools to yank out one of my molars.  A few minutes after the deed is done I notice him in his office eating a burger from Burger King.  I guess you get desensitized to all this after a while.   God even I want Burger King now, but I can't eat anything solid for 24 hours. Oh well.

On the bright side, it occurred to me that if I must run-walk-run-walk, maybe I can do sprints during the run portion?  Maybe I'll become the 20 metre world champion?

My next run is on Wednesday, and my plan is to run 16k.  I'm not saying that a hurricane will hit Saskatchewan (I mean let's face it, if that happens...), but knowing my luck...

Photos from the trail

From the Mendel Art Gallery:

Autumn reading: Caleb Daniloff's Running on Ransom Road

Reading a good book will make you ask questions and intuit answers. Some authors paint in broad strokes, while others like Robert Caro and Nicholson Baker can seem impossibly myopic.  In either case, good writing exists within the realm of the qualitative, not quantitative.  Good writing is not perfect; in fact it's rather imperfect. 

I discovered Caleb Daniloff's "Running on Ransom Road" after biking to the library looking for a few books to read.  I reckoned I wanted a few running books and a (non-athletically concerned) novel.  Sure enough, nestled among books about the Boston Marathon, Haruki Murukami and runner biographies, was Daniloff's expository meditation. Part memoir, part diary, Daniloff takes us through his marathons against the backdrop of his boozing past, where bacon figured prominently.

I always enjoy hearing how people came to "believe" in running, and how they persevere despite injuries and other setbacks.  That we all suffer in much the same way is a kind of comfort, I suppose. In Daniloff's book, I find a clear and well-defined universe of anecdotes and memories laid out in the symmetry of easily digestible chapters.