Reading List.

After many years of not reading, I have really started to enjoy it over the last couple years. My library was slowly and steadily growing for a while but has now become stagnant. I have been on the look-out for one particular book ever since 2008 when I was out at Dalhousie. A friend of mine, Ross Jacobs, used to always read excerpts from a book called "The Average American Male" by Chad Kultgen, and they were always hilarious. Clearly it has been a bit of a fruitless, haphazard goose-chase searching for this book seeing as it has taken me over 2 years.

At work, I have recently gone from last in seniority to second and received my raise for making it to 6 months! This means a couple of things, a) I can pick and choose shifts a little more and work it around my training a lot better and b) I'm going to have a lot more money. With this increase of income I have decided to continue the now stale growth of my library. So yesterday in my boredom at work I decided to do a little research and create a book-wish-list. I went online and explored the "books" tab on Google. It was really neat, they have loads of books on there and you can even search to see if what you are looking for is in a library near you. When you do the library search, they also give you lots of books that other readers enjoyed. A lot of the books even have a "preview this item" option where you can read a good portion of the first chapter of the book. After a couple hours of getting paid $14.58 to look for books I comprised a list of 9 books that I thought looked interesting.

The Average American Male by Chad Kultgen
I Just Want my Pants Back by David J Rosen
Goodbye Lemon by Adam Davies
Not That you Asked: Rants, Exploits, Obsessions by Steve Almond
Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilman
The Fuck-up by Arthur Nersesian
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max
The Contortionist's Handbook by Craig Clevenger

I seem to enjoy quasi-realistic fiction books. A lot of these books are kind of "a-in-the-life" style where there is one main character that is narrating or being documented. The stories are a bit out there sometimes, but are ones that could and do happen in real-life.

If anyone has read any of these books please let me know how they were. I'd also like any suggestions for good books you have read, send me anything and everything you've enjoyed.

Off to the Races.

Well, Flagstaff has come and gone and once again it was a fairly uneventful year. The training was great though. I went in fairly unfit and came out rocking workouts in similar splits as I was this time last year. That success from Flagstaff has continued now that I am back home in Victoria. Cliff Childs and myself had a really great workout on Tuesday. (2x800)(5x300), we went 2:01 and then 5mins later 1:59-2:00 and the 3's were 45,45,44,43,41.

I am surprised and happy to see that the fitness is coming back so quickly. I have a few races coming up in the next little while. I start with an 800 in Victoria on June 5th and then the weekend after I head to Edmonton and run in the Northland Park 1 Mile Road Race and the day after rock a 1500 at the Edmonton International. I'm using the mile/1500 back to back as a little preparation for racing back to back days at nationals.

I'm really excited to get back on the track and in some good races. As I said in my previous post, feeling good is a good feeling. That has become a bit of a mantra of mine lately. Hopefully this feeling and excitement will continue through to the end of the season and I can throw down some good races.

Feeling Good is a Good Feeling.

Well, I officially opened my season two weeks ago now. I went over to Vancouver for a 1500m. The result was an eye opening 4:02. Until then I hadn't ran over 4 minutes in a couple years. I wasn't really upset with the time, nor was I very pleased with it, obviously. I led a lot of the race, but when those boys starting picking up the pace near the end of the race, I just did not have the turn-over to keep up. When I crossed the line, I was hardly out of breath which just confirmed what I already new about where I was as far as fitness goes and made me feel good about the 3000m I had coming up a week later. The 3000m wasn't anything special, 8:34, but it was a much better result compared to the 1500m. Cliff Childs and myself were trying to help Dylan Haight along to the World Junior standard of 8:15. I think we may have been able to do it with slightly better pacing of the start, oh and if there hadn't been a 60km/h head wind on the home stretch.

After the 3000m a bunch of us went out to dinner and then headed to home. Most of us had to be up at 3am the next morning to leave for our training camp in Flagstaff, so it was an early night. However, racing at around 7:15pm and not eating until around 9:30pm really doesn't set you up for a great sleep. I don't think I fell asleep until around 1am, and even with my crappy sleeping pattern, 2hours is not enough. I felt golden until our lay-over in Seattle were I had a nice long nap in the terminal, which continued on the flight to Phoenix. We did arrive in Flagstaff until roughly 6:30pm... 15hours of travel time is lllooonngg.

I've known been in Flagstaff for just over a week, and have a week left. We've only had 2 track sessions so far, but it's been good. We did the same 2 workouts last year, and I was running roughly the same times. Considering I missed pretty well 3 months of training, I'll settle for running the same times as last year. I was a little sore after the first week, but I got a nice massage after the session on saturday and after some self treatment on sunday I feel great going into the second week. Feeling good is a good feeling because it is going to be a tough one. We're doing back to back workouts tuesday and wednesday and then another one saturday.

Anyway, not the most exciting post, but I was bored and just wanted to throw up a bit of an update.