Meb, King and Me

Lot's of literary stuff going on right now. This morning I finished reading Meb Keflezighi's, Run to Overcome. What a great read! Despite some impressive accomplishments such as winning the U.S.A. Olympic Marathon Trials earlier this year, the 2009 ING NYC Marathon and the silver medal at the 2004 Olympics, I didn't know that much about the guy. Now I do.

I've gained a ton of respect for Meb after reading his book. The autobiographical approach takes the reader through how his family emigrated from Eritrea to the U.S. under very dire circumstances. He discovered running while growing up in San Diego, went on to run for UCLA and then turned pro. There's a lot more to the book than that and it's great to follow his life and career and the tough decisions he's had to make along the way.

Highly recommended, especially since he placed first in the Olympic Trials this year. On top of his obvious running talent, I really respect his work ethic, intelligence and kindness towards others which will make it very easy to root for him whole heartily in London this summer. I'm sure anyone who reads this book will feel the same way. Definitely check it out.

Speaking of running books...My book "Boylston Street" will be coming out soon. Soon. Subjective word, isn't it? The copyediting is taking a lot longer than I thought it would, mostly because I hate doing it. I'm really grateful and appreciative for the hard work Blaine performed by identifying and supplying me with several dozen pages worth of spelling and grammatical errors, which are super-duper valuable. However, making the changes is boring and tedious, so that's the big hold up. Thankfully, I'm nearly done. I just have to smooth a few other things over and hopefully it'll be out in e-book format by the end of June and a print version will follow shortly thereafter. I'm looking forward to getting that out, primarily so that I can get back to concentrating on another book I've been working on which I feel is coming along extremely well.

Back to reading... I'm now fully into Stephen King's new Dark Tower book, The Wind Through the Keyhole. So far, it's awesome! His Dark Tower series is some of his best work in my opinion, so I'm really stoked he came out with another book for the series. Though it concluded with the seventh book, this one takes place between books four and five, and can serve as a stand alone story, according to King. Really interesting so far.

I've just begun, but so far Roland and his ka-tet are rushing to hunker down for a "starkblast", which sounds a bit like a turbo-charged cold front from hell. That kind of reminded of the weather during today's run. It was overcast (again), but the sky was darkening quite a bit with rather ominous looking clouds in the last few miles. The sun has definitely been quite scarce lately with all of the rain the past few weeks, but at least the vegetation is a very lush green right now.

I took the run a little faster than I should have. That was kind of dumb, as today and tomorrow are supposed to be really easy paced so I can give the legs some turnover on Friday without wearing them out. Will have to be sure to take it especially easy tomorrow. It was just really hard to take it slow today after intentionally taking the last two days off. All part of my duct-taped plan to recover from Boston while prepping for Sugarloaf.

Ran 5.6 miles @ 7:29/mile pace.
Paved and dirt roads.
Very hilly.
Lower 60s, overcast, very humid.
Brooks Mach 13, shorts, short sleeved shirt.