Project Status

An update on pretty much any of my various projects will be about how little progress I am making towards longer term goals. Oh well. The year is winding down so I will have a chance to revisit some of my various projects, assess what's working (and whether I want to keep doing some of these things), and get myself a new direction on one or two of these efforts. 

My marathon training has been pretty much a carbon copy of last year's cycle. I've run about the same distance, have had similar length runs, and am hitting pretty much the same pace on my runs. The one big difference is the health of my knee this Sunday 3 weeks out from the race. I screwed something up during breakfast on the equivalent Saturday last year. I did not have that issue yesterday. That means I can do a long run this week and some more medium distance runs next week. I did a short run on the Monday of last year and that was it until the marathon. The running I did manage during the marathon was inefficient and super slow. I did very little training the weeks around Christmas two years ago because I was up with family in Virginia. Hopefully training right up until the race (with the appropriate taper) will result in a better race experience. I know I won't be doing an effortless jog over the entire distance. I'm hoping for less than 6 hours. That's an average of 13 minute miles. I would be happy with that. It would be a good building point for starting the new year with a better running plan. 

I'm barely reading. I don't think I've read a single page in over a week. I don't have the energy to read before going to bed and I'm not looking for time to read in at other points during the day. I'm too distracted by games and other trivialities. I have basically zero shot at meeting most of my New Year's Resolutions, but I could read a Dickens book. I read a few pages of Oliver Twist. That's my best bet at finally checking another Dickens book off my list, but I haven't built any momentum. It's more a choice and being lazy than any actual barrier between me and getting some reading done. I need to change up how I use my time and make time for reading. I really don't like this lack of progress on reading books. Hopefully I can use my week off Christmas week to build some momentum and head into the New Year poised to get my owned book pile a little smaller. 

Books, training, odds

I finally finished another book. My reading time has shrunk to almost nothing, but I still try to read a few pages every night. I used this approach to get through 10 lbs Penalty by Dick Francis. There was a 5 Books post on his novels a month or so ago. I could remember seeing his books in the bookstore so I found one at the library and gave it a go. It was a fun book. The story moved along briskly, the writing style was pleasant, and the dialogue wasn't stilted or awkward. I liked the book enough that I went up to a local library and bought a couple of his books from the used book section for 75 cents each. I don't count these as owned books. They are basically open ended library books. I will put them in the local take one leave one box when I finish them. 

10 lbs Penalty was my 21 book of the year, but, more interestingly, it is book 799 of my Goodreads list.  Assuming I don't start reading something else, definitely not a given, Jefferson and the RIghts of Man will be book 800. This book is going very slowly. I am very much against abandoning this one as I left Jefferson in France when I stopped reading The Hemingses and he's currently in France as I'm about a third of the way through the second volume of the Dumas Malone bio. I would like to get back to the US with Jefferson in one of these chronological biographies. My wife is out of town this week so I will make it a point to read a decent chunk of the book each night. If nothing else I'm hoping to build momentum and get myself moving enough that I can make it to the end of the book. I'm not really feeling anything else I have sitting on my shelves. The most likely usurper would be the 4th Sanderson secret project book. I would like to finish that by the end of the year, but I have a couple weeks until I start feeling pressure on that one. I have the last week of the year off so I'm hoping to do some day reading during that week. A fun book like Sanderson is a perfect fit.

Marathon training plods on. Saturdays are usually for long runs, but I spent my morning taking my wife to the airport. I tried running after dropping her off last year. That was probably the worst run of the training cycle. My solution for avoiding the heat was to use the treadmill. That kept me out of the sun, but it was still blazing hot, even with a fan blowing on me. My shoes were giving me all kinds of issues and my watch got very confused by the treadmill. I got in 10 miles of a planned 18 and called it quits. My training never really recovered. I did a shorter run the next week, was at Disney World the week after that, and messed up my knee getting into our booth at dinner. I'm still amazed I was able to finish the marathon. So rather than tempting a repeat and getting off my training track, I will skip beer and go to bed kind of early tonight so I can get up and run tomorrow. My plan is for 16 miles. That gets me to the turn toward Animal Kingdom on the actual marathon course. Having that reference in mind during these long runs has helped me stay focused on making the entire distance. It's not just an abstract number. It's a physical place that I can visualize myself running through. The deeper I can get in training, the better I should do on the actual course.

My plan for the post run portion of my Sunday is to exert myself by hanging out on the couch. Sports betting is once again a part of my life so I will turn on Red Zone and spend the day taking it easy. I should replace a section of screen around my pool, but I'm typically not in great moving around status after my long runs. Maybe tomorrow will be different. I plan on getting in the pool after my run. I've been avoiding the pool while some scraps on my knee and hand heal (I tripped on the sidewalk during my Thursday run the week before Thanksgiving). I've managed to avoid adding more money to my account after my initial deposit. I've been a bit free in making bets. I found a pretty good rhythm when I was betting on college basketball games a couple of years ago. I didn't do as well when I was in Virginia last March during the conference tournaments. I was just betting favorites without really having a strategy or an approach. I have fallen into that same pattern in the first couple weeks of having the ability to bet games again. I thought I was going to have to reload my account, but I put my last $35 on a three game Premier League parlay that cashed this morning. (I usually bet conservatively to avoid big losses, but I read a tweet about Elon Musk's approach to risk and decided it was the right time to go all in.) That bet got me back over $100 so I could take a step back and reassess my approach with a fresh bank roll. I've used the public bet info in the CBS Sports app to get me out of my losing approach. I'm not looking to make a bunch of money. I just want to be able to keep making small bets to keep things interesting.