Day: August 17, 2008

I RAN 13 MILES TODAY!

I’ve been blog­ging about train­ing for the Philadel­phia Marathon on three dif­fer­ent plat­forms (first Tum­blr, then Pos­ter­ous, then final­ly Dai­ly Mile. For the record, I liked Pos­ter­ous best.) I’m decid­ing right now to go the Lizzyville route and make my progress a part of this blog going for­ward. Sound good? Good.

The last two weeks have been inter­est­ing. I’ve been run­ning for nine weeks. As I’ve men­tioned before, I’m fol­low­ing Hal Hig­don’s inter­me­di­ate two sched­ule. It’s gone well so far, even if I’m intim­i­dat­ed by some of these dis­tances. Last week, I was hob­bled by shin splints and gen­er­al stiff­ness. This week was a 180 degree turn­around and I have no idea why. Weird, right?

I don’t know what was dif­fer­ent between this week and last, but I hope I can keep run­ning like I did this week­end. We spent the entire week­end at the Jer­sey shore, cel­e­brat­ing Helen’s 30th birth­day at our friends Suzanne and Frank’s house in Atlantic City. It was a great time, punc­tu­at­ed by two runs totalling 19 miles: six on Sat­ur­day and 13 this morn­ing. Both were com­fort­able and quick.

This morn­ing’s run was great. Rob and I hit the boards at just about 6 a.m. and ran two miles and change to the Vent­nor end before turn­ing around and run­ning all the way to the top, past the casi­nos on some of the rick­eti­est board­walk I’ve ever set foot on. But we weren’t fin­ished there. We turned around and ran all the way back down to the Vent­nor end before mak­ing one last turn to fin­ish the last mile and a half. It took just under two hours and was a per­son­al best dis­tance for both Rob and me. I nev­er thought a 13 mile run would feel so good!

Now I’m real­ly excit­ed to run the Philadel­phia Dis­tance run. Today’s run told me that I’ll be ready for it!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay

MAKING A CALL FOR COMICS

This item caught my eye over at Book­slut last Fri­day as I whit­tled away at my feed read­er. As I checked out io9’s plea to Hol­ly­wood, it under­lined how much I need to start read­ing comics again. But there’s more to it than that. If you’re one of the poor souls fol­low­ing me on Good Reads, you know I’ve been work­ing on David Had­ju’s lat­est book, The Ten Cent Plague, for­ev­er. It’s been a fas­ci­nat­ing read, but an inter­rupt­ed one. The upshot? I want to read comics like nev­er before!

A lit­tle back­ground: I’ve nev­er been a com­ic book read­er. A lot of that I’ll chalk up to tim­ing. Being born in 1977 to par­ents in then very rur­al Berks Co., Penn­syl­va­nia, meant not hav­ing access to a lot of things cul­tur­al (read: cool.) It also meant not being exposed to such-like until lat­er in life. My friend Ben Warfield hand­ed me a few comics dur­ing high school, mem­o­rably the Martha Wash­ing­ton series and V for Vendet­ta, both of which I con­sumed hasti­ly when I should’ve been read­ing stuff like Ethan Frome. I haven’t read much since then, oth­er than falling in love with Amer­i­can Splen­dor a few years ago when the movie came out, just like every­one else.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I plan on track­ing down some of io9’s sug­ges­tions, start­ing with Heavy Liq­uid, which is con­ve­nient­ly being reis­sued at the end of Sep­tem­ber. Treat their list like a primer. I’m also reach­ing out to folks who I know are into comics (Toby and Dou­glas, you’re my only hopes. Send links!)

But what would a blog post be with­out a seri­ous qual­i­fi­er? Here it comes: I’ll issue the caveat that it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that I’m not going to end up devot­ing myself to comics (maybe I’m wrong?), but I’d love to be exposed to some cool, new stuff. If any­one has sug­ges­tions, or is as curi­ous and in the dark as I am on this stuff, feel free to hit up the comments!

(P.S. I’m try­ing to fig­ure out how I want to for­mat titles on Black­mail Is My Life. Tell me if you pre­fer all caps to what I’ve been doing. You can also let me know if you think the font is easy to read, or if changes should be made. Thanks!)

Posted on by J T. Ramsay