April ‘08 Running Report May 1, 2008

In a word… Fail.

I ran a grand total of 12.75 miles in April. My total for 2008 is currently 161.85 as of this moment. If I’m going to make my goal of 500 miles in 2008, I have to kick it back into gear.

So what happened?

Two things happened… I got sick for one thing. That head cold floored me for what felt like half the month. My current personal running rules include a clause about breathing - if I can’t breathe, I’m not gonna run. For another thing, some pretty heavy personal stuff came up this month which caused a lot of stress and some insomnia. The personal stuff will be ongoing for a while, but that’s the subject of another post. What’s relevant here is that I SHOULD have dragged my exhausted carcass out of bed to run even if I didn’t get the sleep I needed. The exercise can only help.

So what’s the plan?

It’s past time to get back to it. The morning is already blown (for the gym anyway), and lunchtime is booked up with some goings-on across the street, so I’ll go run after work. A nice run through the neighborhood or, if it’s raining, a treadmill trot will be very good for me.

One bad running month isn’t going to end the 500 mile goal, but those remaining miles aren’t going to run themselves. The only thing for it is to lace up, head out, and get it done.

Book 21: Death By Darjeeling April 30, 2008

I wish I could remember who originally recommended this series of books to me. I’m seem to think that it was someone I randomly bumped into in a store and started chatting with…

I should have loved this book.

The main character in the book owns a tea shop and much of the book takes place in it. I’m an absolute tea junkie. I love tea and harbor not-so-secret hopes of one day owning and operating a used book store/tea lounge.

The story is set in Charleston, SC, one of the most historic and colorful cities in the US. I love historical places.

The story is a “cozy” - a murder mystery in which the violence is downplayed. I usually like those.

Well, what should have been the perfect novel storm just plain fizzled for me.

Somehow, Childs made the historic district of Charleston seem bland and dull - a non-entity. The characters were incredibly flat and uninteresting. The scenes in the tea shop didn’t give me the peak into the world of tea that I had hoped for. The mystery itself was OK - I didn’t figure it out before the end. The problem was that I really didn’t particularly care who did it. If I wasn’t something of an obsessive completionist, I don’t think I would have finished the book.

I really hate giving a book a bad review. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to write a novel, to get all the elements just right. The amount of creativity and persistence required to get a book finished and published is really something remarkable. If it were my book and some schlub on the internet was dumping on MY work, I’d probably be upset. Still, my book reviews come down to one question - “Would I recommend this book to a friend?” The answer in this case is “No, not really.”

The up-side for Childs is that her books ARE popular. Tea really is a booming business and tea shops like to sell her books. Her books have been mentioned to me several times when people find out that I’m a big fan of tea and that I like to read. I’ve checked out her website and it seems that she has two other series based on two other booming businesses - quilting and scrapbooking. I’d bet that people into those hobbies are also familiar with Childs’ work. Say what you will about her writing, but Childs has hit upon an interesting niche - hobby-oriented mystery series.

Book 20: The Unnatural History of the Sea April 28, 2008

In a nutshell, the Unnatural History of the Sea is a great book, but pretty damn depressing.

Humankind has been fishing for centuries. Unfortunately, there aren’t many records of any sort from the early days of fishing, but there are a few journals. What Roberts has found boggles the mind - flora and fauna on an exponentially larger scale and abundance than that found today. He reports rivers that were more fish than water when it came time for fish to spawn, islands covered in sea turtles, and fish many times the size of those in existence today.

The history of the sea is a story of shifting baselines, the change in environmental norms as human generations pass. Those huge sea creatures in huge numbers declined as the populations were fished. See, fishing naturally selects the larger animals first - the bigger, fatter, and older the fish, the more valuable it is. As the larger fish are removed, people get used to seeing only smaller ones, and fewer of the fish in general. It becomes “normal” for only a few fish to be around when there used to be huge schools.

The advent of trawling is pointed to as a major event in the history of the sea. Trawling enables fishermen to pull the greatest number of fish from the ocean with the minimum effort (that is not to say that fishing is easy - everything I’ve seen indicates that it is brutally demanding work).

Naturally, removing the majority of fish from a population plays merry hell with the health of the population. As it turns out (this was news to me), the reproductive power of fish increases as they age. So the older, larger animals crank out more eggs/sperm than the smaller, younger animals. This means that the small fish that are able to escape the trawl’s netting aren’t as capable of restoring the population size as the larger fish. It’s a double-whammy for the population.

And that’s just regular trawling… bottom trawling is even more destructive to fish populations. The nets are weighted so they scrape along the bottom of the sea. Not only are animals removed from the environment, but the actual environment is torn to shreds in the process. Corals that take hundreds or thousands of years to grow are ripped up, as are the plants that fish and invertebrates depend on for food and shelter. Triple-whammy.

Most of the book can be summed up in the following statements - “Marine populations are in a nose-dive and many, if not most, might not be able to recover even if extreme measures are taken immediately. Human intervention in the ocean is the direct cause, particularly trawl-fishing.”

There is little hope in the book until the last few chapters. In those last few changes, Roberts has laid out what appears to be a very reasonable plan of action to save what we have left, help it recover, and still supply the world’s human population fish. The plan is multi-faceted, calling for changes in everything from the politics of fishing, to the act of fishing, to where fishermen are actually allowed to fish. The last bit is the most remarkable, and best explained.

Roberts calls for 20-40% of the ocean to be set aside as marine reserves. Marine research claims that these reserves will actually boost catches while protecting populations and keeping them healthy. There are a few marine reserves existing today, and apparently fishing near the reserve has rebounded to an astounding degree - in some cases, the population rebound happens in just a few short years, though the cases discussed in the book point out that the populations improve more as time goes on.

Naturally, a great deal of politics would be involved in getting his plan enacted, and a great deal of corruption would have to be wiped out. The political element makes me pretty skeptical that the needed changes will be made in time.

“Ghost fishing” is discussed (ghost fishing is the term for the death of animals caused by lost fishing gear), and the loss of marine life caused by litter (plastic in particular) are both discussed. I think most people are aware that a lot of plastic winds up in the ocean, where it poses a danger to sea turtles and adorable tap dancing penguins. What I was not aware of was the danger of tiny, microscopic bits of plastic - stuff that is put into facial scrubs or bits of plastic that have broken off larger bits. These bits enter the food web when they are consumed by plankton, which are in turn consumed by other animals, until the concentration can cause harm.

What isn’t discussed is chemical pollution. It’s just as well, I suppose. It was hard enough soak in the rest of the onslaught marine life is subjected to. I suppose it’s a testament to just how resilient life is… Still, I can’t help think that it’s probably time to quit pushing out luck and DO something about the oceans being emptied.

All in all, the Unnatural History of the Sea is a great read, especially when read in conjunction with The World Without Us. Still, have something light on hand. Something happy… ‘Cause this one is a downer.

Book 19: Ice Cold Grave April 20, 2008

Charlaine Harris’ Harper Connelly series keeps getting better. An Ice Cold Grave is the third (and most recently published) book in the series. I had some doubts in the beginning, but the characters are still shaping up very nicely. Harper and Manfred are still the most interesting characters, though, I suspect that Tolliver will be fleshed out even more in subsequent books. Past that, I can’t really comment further on character development without delving into spoilers.

Consider this a spoiler warning!!

Harris originally presented Harper and Tolliver as brother and sister, but not blood relatives. Harper’s mom married Tolliver’s dad when they were teens, and they were brought up as siblings for a few years until they could get out of the house (the home situation was horrendous…the parents were drug addicts, alcoholics, etc). In the book previous to this one, Harper admits to herself that she’s got feelings for Tolliver, who she’s still having trouble not thinking of as her brother. In this one, they get together. Yeah. Not-really brother on not-really sister sex scenes. The weird factor is cranked up to about a nine for me here. The situation as presented is believable, but the fact that they considered each other siblings for so long has got me a little tiny bit icked out. The characters are a bit weirded out by it, too, and Harris is dealing with that… but still… it’s a little… icky.

OK, back to non-spoilery content.

The plot improved again, also. The mystery wasn’t *quite* as see-through as previous ones. I still had it pretty much figured out by half to two-thirds through the book.

I’m beginning to think that Harris’ real talent is in character and universe development. That seems to be the big difference between the Sookie and Harper series - the Harper books are hinged on a mystery to be solved, while the Sookie books are essentially about Sookie’s development as a person in an extremely interesting universe of characters.

As mentioned, Ice Cold Grave is the last of the three currently published Harper Connelly books. To this point, if someone asked if I’d recommend the series, I’d say yes with some reservations. These are good if you’re looking for a quick, beach-read type book, but they’re no where near as enchanting as the Sookie books.

Back in the Saddle April 18, 2008

I came down with a mind-numbing, brain-deadening headcold/chest cold/virus thing last week. At first, I thought I had strep, but the doc insisted that it was a virus. The result was that my running has been side-lined since last Thursday. I’d wake up in the morning when Matt, the dedicated soul he is, got up to go to the gym. I’d fully intend to get up as well, but simply failed. I’d be too tired after a night of fitful sleep and my throat would hurt and I’d just roll over like a lump and stay in bed.

I’ll say this for coming off a running habit - it sucks. When I stop running for a while, I start feeling chubby, which isn’t terribly pleasant. Between that and still being sick, I just haven’t felt all that great this past week.

Well, this morning, I was finally able to peel myself out of bed and hit the gym. I decided to do a nice easy two miler on the treadmill to ease back in (and not aggravate my cold) and it went remarkably well. Covered the readout with my towel and trotted on off, listening to some OK Go. I was surprised a while later when I checked my progress that I’d already gone a mile and I was scooting along at close to a 10 minute mile pace. Super cool.

I finished that two miler in 20:49. I was pretty darn happy with that for my first run after being sidelined by virus and general wussiness.

So, after running, I ambled on over to one of the multi-purpose rooms to get my yoga on. I finally made it all the way through the class and it was wonderful.

As mentioned in previous posts, I am trying to jump start my yoga practice. I spent some time going through the available yoga podcasts in iTunes and found one that’s got a LOT of promise. I’ve gotta hand it to the people over at YogaDownload.com, they can put together one heck of a yoga class. I’ve listened to a bunch of yoga-classes-via-podcast, and so far, this is hands-down the best one. Each podcast comes with a PDF demonstrating the series of poses, so you’ve got a visual. (I’ve checked out several yoga video podcasts, but as I’ll be practicing in the gym for now, it’s just not practical to have to watch a video.)

I’ve only listened to one class so far, but I was so impressed that I’m comfortable recommending the podcast with two reservations. The first one is the same reservation I have about yoga books and videos - they’re great resources, but I never recommend STARTING yoga without a good teacher. You really need a teacher to help you get the most out of your practice…and how to practice safely. Yoga is by-and-large low-impact, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you CAN hurt yourself.

The second reservation is that if you aren’t familiar enough with yoga poses, you’re not likely to know what to do fast enough to keep up. The class isn’t too fast-paced, but if you have to reference the PDF, you’re going to get left behind very quickly.

So! Basically, YogaDownload’s podcast is perfect for someone who’s had some moderate to significant yoga experience and is looking for a classroom guide in podcast form. If that’s you, check out YogaDownload - it’s pretty darn neat! The pace was great, challenging, but do-able - I was sweating just as hard as I was during the run toward the end. My only suggestion would be to stack some good cool-down/meditation music after the podcast. There’s about a minute of ambient type music at the end of the class, but I felt the need for some more quiet time at the end.