the Way of the Turtle

BOOKS
Beyond the Marathon & Hardrock Fever by Robert Boeder
One Mile at a Time by Dwight Smith
Saturday, September 2, 2006

I suppose one advantage of being semi-laid-up is more time to read (though, truth be told, I virtually always find time to read, as evidenced by the dozen plus bookcases scattered around my home.)

Just finished two moderately interesting books by Robert Boeder, an ultramarathoner. Beyond the Marathon: The Grand Slam of Trail Ultrarunning details his efforts in 1994 to complete the trail ultra Grand Slam (four 100 mile races - the Old Dominion 100 and Western States 100 in June, the Leadville Trail 100 in August, and the Wasatch Front 100 in September.) Hardrock Fever describes his attempts to run the Hardrock 100 Mile Endurance Run, one of the toughest 100 mile trail races (he finally succeeded in 1999 on his 4th try.) Both were quick reads; Boeder's writing style is very matter-of-fact, and I'm impressed at the amount of detail he remembered from his races and from training. I guess what I enjoy the most about these sorts of books is two-fold: I feel a certain kinship with these crazy people out doing crazy trail runs, so it's fun to read about people who value some of the same experiences I do, and reading about their efforts helps me understand what to expect when I put myself in challenging races. It also gives me something to dream about, a bit - I think it would be pretty cool to someday run a 100 mile trail race. Both books were tough to find until one day I happened to stumble across them on the Barnes & Noble site, of all places, and a few days later they arrived at my door! (Of course, if I'd taken the trouble to send a check to the address on the publisher's site, I probably could have gotten signed copies...)

One of the books I'm reading at the moment (in addition to the latest Star Wars novel and a fantastic book on kata applications by Lawrence Kane and Chris Wilder) is One Mile at a Time: Cycling through Loss to Renewal by Dwight Smith. After losing 2 sons in auto accidents 9 years apart and his wife's death in the early 1980's, Smith set out to ride the perimeter on the US on a touring bicycle. He wore a portable cassette recorder with a throat mike to record his observations and took thousands of pictures, and the writing has a life which reflects this. As I'm reading about his experiences biking across the northern prairie, through the Greatl Lakes region and the Adirondacks and up into New England, I find myself both missing being able to ride my bike and considering the possibilities of someday doing a multi-day ride (perhaps a 3 or 4 day solo ride from Albany to Rochester some summer, or possibly the Cycling the Erie Canal tour which occurs every July.) Although I'm only about 1/3 of the way through this book, I strongly recommend it to anyone who enjoys this sort of story (more info on the book can be found here.)

JMH