Monday, 31 May 2004

Spent this evening getting ready for my reading in Chicago. I printed a copy of the story in bigish print, marked a few minor changes (deleted a couple phrases that I'll perform rather than describe), marked a bit of emphasis. I also read it aloud for the first time. Some stories I read aloud as part of the writing phase, but this one I hadn't.

Did some thinking about exercise. I realized that I'd gotten into the habit of running farther. Not farther every day or even every week, but generally having a goal of longer and longer runs. Just habit, really, because I'd spent all last year working up to being able to run 6 miles (for the 5.5-mile race last October) and the first part of this year working up to being able to run 8 (for the 7.1-mile race in June). It also seems to be the expectation of most runners and most people who write about running--that runners want to run either farther or faster.

I've decided that I'm running as far as I want to. I've done a couple of runs of over 7 miles, but now that I'm as ready for the race as I'm going to get, I'm going to ease back down. My plan is that I'll run 2.5 to 3 miles three times during the week, and then 6 miles or so once on the weekend, and that'll be my running program.

Similarly with bicycling: I'll bicycle to work on days weather permits, and then try to get in a long ride on the weekend.

Last week I ran over 16 miles and bicycled over 50. That's just about where I want to keep it. I hope that putting some limits on the exercise will free up some time and energy for writing.

DVDs for season six of Buffy arrived a few days ago. We haven't started watching them, though. We decided to run through all the episodes in order. We're just getting going on season two.