Saturday, 17 April 2004

Last night Jackie and I went to a concert, a small affair put on by the Independent Media Center and a local high-tech company. The band was MJ Walker and Fictive Kin, which doesn't seem to have a website, but which describes its music as "Americana Roots Folk," which is not a bad description.

The performance itself was excellent, and Jackie and I had a great time. We hardly ever go out to listen to live music, even though we both like it, simply because so many performances start too late at night. (This one started at 8:00 and went on until 10:00, which kept us up only moderately past our typical bedtime.

The set began with a solo piece taking its text from an epic poem about Hugh Glass, the guy who was mauled by a bear and left for dead, who crawled 100 miles to find help and survived. After that they played a few tunes of a folkish, country sort of flavor, both serious and funny.

As I said, we enjoyed it a lot.

Before that I saw "Kill Bill 2," (without Jackie, who was just as glad to miss it) and enjoyed it a lot.

Today Jackie and I got up early and went to the Fitness Center and lifted, then went to Allerton Park where I ran (most of) 5 miles on the trails while Jackie walked and enjoyed the flowers and sculpture.

I say "most of," because I found myself pretty worn out by the last mile, and ended up taking several walking breaks. Despite that, I went 4.95 miles in 1:10:13 for an average pace of 14:11. For the week I ran 10.5 miles, which was nearly my planned distance.

My plan for next week was to run 12 miles including a long run of 6 miles, which I now fear may be a bit beyond me. So, I've decided to stick with a 5-mile long run for another week. (In fact, for several weeks if need be, but I don't think it will.) Jackie had a clever suggestion, which was to split the trail workout away from the long workout. So, my plan will be to run a couple of 2-3 mile runs early in the week, then a 5-mile run late in the week, then a 2-3 mile trail run over the weekend.

Tomorrow we're going to try to go to Lake Mingo, the site of the race I'm preparing for, and hike around it. I don't know what the race route will be, but we'll just hike around whatever trails we find.

The other thing I'm doing is reading The Confusion, the new book by Neal Stephenson. I'm a big Stephenson fan, and this book is everything I'd hoped for. Fabulous, wonderful fun.