Sunday, 07 December 2003

Yesterday I took another stab at the robot story, without much success. I got about 500 words written in the weirdly post-modern version that it seems to want to be, but I'm not really satisfied with it. I think I'll put this one aside for a while. I've got the zeppelin story to rewrite and the demon story to take a fresh stab at.

No writing today--I had my race.

It was a 5k, so 3.1 miles. A bit before the 3-mile point I found myself only a few steps ahead of a race walker, who gradually caught up and walked next to me while I ran about as fast as I could. It was only very slightly disheartening. After a bit, just a couple hundred yards from the finish line, I began to feel that I could pick up the pace and hold it through the finish, so I did. I even passed a couple people.

I was pretty out of breath at that point, and it took a little longer than I was comfortable with to catch my breath. Normally when I slow down, I recover in just seconds. This time I must have run up a serious oxygen debt. After a minute or so, when I was still panting, I began to think I had perhaps pushed it a little too hard.

That didn't keep me from thinking an hour or so later that I should have been able to pass the people who finished just in front of me.

I don't know what my time was. It was over 30 minutes but less than 34--maybe about 33. Hopefully they'll have the results on the web after a bit.

Saturday afternoon, we went to see "Love Actually," a fun, heartwarming movie. No story structure, though. Still, highly recommended.