Day: November 26, 2006

Elmore Leonard’s The Hot Kid rolls right through its story like a Tommy gun through a bank guard. Yes, it’s gangsters and a dapper U.S. Marshal in the Prohibition Midwest, and the bank robbers, oil wells, road houses, and more just keep life (and death) humming along. Overall, a well-written romp, although without the cleverness of some of the “modern” era crime novels where Leonard has earned his reputation. Wait for the paperback…I’ll be returning this hardcover copy to the library this week.

John Gardner’s Troubled Midnight was a jacket pickup. Meaning, I picked it up in the library after reading the book jacket and finding that one of the blurbs grabbed my attention.

Readers with a taste for intelligent international suspense in the spirit of Frederick Forsyth…should find this an exciting thriller.

Only after I got home did I notice that the blurb was for a different book! 😉

Troubled Midnight combines a murder mystery with an espionage tale from World War II, where the Nazis deep-cover spy is working to ferret out the destination of Overlord (aka, D-Day). I didn’t love the mix. Nor did I find the main character, Suzie Mountford, that compelling… apparently this is the fourth novel Gardner has written with her as the lead. I suppose others enjoyed these more.

Only later did I realize that I’ve read John Gardner before, in a few of his James Bond continuation novels, done at the request of the Fleming estate. I enjoyed those more, and did feel like he found the right rhythm there. (Side note: looking forward to Casino Royale shortly.

Note: from the news on the Gardner website, it’s not clear whether he’ll be writing again (he’s had a stroke).

Three days after running 5K in 19:22, I put in an 18:57 at Run Wild. According to the official results, 29th place overall, 7th in the M30-39 age group, with a 6:07 minutes/mile pace. I’d have to drop 90 seconds to get to top three in the age group. Not gonna happen.

The dinosaur T-shirt is already on the boy, even if it’s disappointing that Gary Larsen’s Far Side cartoons are no longer the signature of the event. (Wish I knew why.) But another Golden Gate Park race, this time with a big crowd, especially since the rain held off. The 5K is flat, though with a gradual slide downhill for the first half, and a returning gentle grade uphill in the second half.

Splits:
5:47
6:10
6:58 for the final 1.1 miles, which is effectively 6:20 pace.
(Round up for the missing seconds; splits were watch time only.)

I felt like I ran the last half-mile aggressively, but maybe at that point in the race, it’s all relative. There was no way I’d hang on to that first mile pace but I would hope to control the slowing. Still, I’ll take a sub-19 5K.

On Thanksgiving morning, I started by being thankful that Golden Gate Park is home to so many road races, including the 2006 Run for the Hungry. I entered both the mile, run at 8am, and the 5K, run 30 minutes later. I am running the Academy of Sciences race later this morning, again doing the 5K distance, but I felt compelled to enter the Thanksgiving Day races because tucking into a lot of food later in the day feels more acceptable somehow after racing and because this race is the next in the series I ran in earlier this year.

I finished 3rd in the mile, running a 5:31 (official results), which was at the slow end of my expectations, but so be it. Average of 1:22 per quarter-mile, with splits like this: 1:19, 1:20, 1:27, 1:23. To be fair, the only uphill grade was in the third quarter-mile. There were fewer than 100 people in this one, and many were walking. 30-39 age group is a challenge; I was third in the age group as well as the race.

The 5K had many more people racing, although it’s still a small race overall. With a bit less than a mile to go, I found myself even with the guy who finished just ahead of me in the mile… once again, he had more left than I did. 19:22 overall. 6:04 for the first mile, 6:26 for the second mile, and 6:50 for the final 1.1 miles (no 3 mile marker; it’s about 6:12 pace). There was a fast posse way out in front in the 5K, so I really ran my own race — neither passing nor being passed after the first mile. I finished 13th overall, 7th in the age group.

Off to warm up!

If my colleagues didn’t support a sense of whimsy and my sense of humor (?), I never would have been able to post this faux press release just before Thanksgiving.

For the record, I’m usually a no cranberries man, but on turkey sandwiches after the big day, the canned sauce is much more spreadable.

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