On My Nightstand (In Honor of Dr. Seuss' 107th Birthday)

I literally can't remember a day in my life when I didn't have a book in front of my nose. Oh I'm sure there were some, there must have been. I mean, I wasn't born reading or anything. I remember the "Aha!" moment when I knew I could read though, as crystal clear as if it was yesterday.

I was sitting on my mom's lap and she had Hop on Pop open in front of us. She'd probably read it to me a thousand times. I looked down at the page, and all of a sudden I knew that the words on the page were the words she was saying. I knew what each word meant. I think I was about four years old and from then on I could read. It was just a matter of accumulating more words. By first grade, they didn't know what to do with me, so they put me in a fourth grade class for reading. I loved it. By 6th grade I had consumed everything on my parents' bookshelves from pop psychology's  I'm Ok You're Ok to my dad's hefty historical tomes like Miracle at Midway. Yes, I've even read War and Peace. Books have been my friends as long as I can remember.

So today we honor that wonderful man known affectionately as Dr. Seuss. When I was in college on this day, my friends and I used to stand on the "free speech mound" in front of the student center and have an all-day read-aloud Seuss-a-thon. We would bring bubbles to blow and take turns reading our favorites. Mine are The Lorax (but you knew my tree-hugging self would love that) and The Sneetches and Other Stories (but you knew my non-conformist self would love that).

I still read nearly constantly. Being a very fast reader sometimes is a disadvantage. A good fiction book doesn't take me very long to devour. But it also means that I can usually make it through several books a week, just reading during my morning tea and at bedtime.

This week's picks are:

NON FICTION:

Bruce Lee: Fighting Spirit This is honestly one of the best biographies I've read in a long time. Instead of just sensationalizing on the whole Bruce Lee memory, the author Bruce Thomas captures the essence of Lee himself. In addition to an extremely thorough bio of Lee's life through all its stages, Thomas delves into Lee's philosophies, both of training and of life, and the evolution of his approach to training, fighting, and the mental aspect of his arts. He doesn't just report on them either, he interprets and indeed expands on them. For anyone interested in the martial arts, I'd say this book is a must read. It's impossible to underestimate the impact that Bruce Lee has had on modern martial arts.

Be Iron Fit - Okay, this is a re-read for me. But I found this book invaluable in preparing for my Ironman, and since I'm coaching triathletes (including half-Iron and Iron distance athletes), I thought it would be worth checking out again. Though I've checked it out from the library multiple times, this one has gone on my Amazon "to buy" list. The simple straight-forward advice in this book, and the three training plans for Ironman make it worth a purchase for any athlete looking at going this distance.

Winning With American Kata - Okay, this is an esoteric little book that only a martial artist interested in improving their kata (or forms) would read. But it fit what I was looking for precisely. The first part of the book is dedicated to creating your own new kata, which at this point I'm not interested in at all. But the second half contains lots of great tips on improving your kata for tournaments or tests.  And the pictures are priceless. This guy has the ultimate fierce look DOWN.

FICTION:

Tricks by Ellen Hopkins This book is aimed at young adults, but it looked intriguing and I picked it up. Although it's a fictional story of the lives of several young people, written in first person, it's written in poetry not prose. At first that was hard to get used to, but eventually the book's format started growing on me. As a parent of a teenager, the theme of the book was both intriguing and horrifying. Without giving too much away, it's partly about the many ways that young people can get themselves into bad situations. It's good to go into parenting teens with your eyes wide open. This book is a fast read that sucks you into the lives of the characters.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest I probably don't need to recap this one. You either love this series of books (a trilogy, along with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire) or not. Translated from their original Swedish, they're a hard-hitting series with a kick-ass female protagonist. I like that. However, they're also chock full of nitty gritty details (what each character ate, what underwear they put on before putting on their charcoal grey worsted wool slacks, that kind of detail). And the plot, with its unfamiliar place names (to those of us who have not lived in Sweden) and Swedish surnames takes a bit of brain power to keep straight. Still, I've really enjoyed this series, and was on the wait list at the library a long time before this copy got into my hands. I didn't like it as much as #2, but better than #1.

Question of the Day

It's been a very long time coming, but I am kicking around some chapters for an Ironmom book. You see, I have this crazy idea that not everyone out there wants the ridiculous quick-fix fitness solutions that are the main offerings on the shelves of bookstores. One look down the fitness aisle will land you with dozens of variations on "Get Fit Fast, Without Hardly Having To Do Anything!" but very few books that are reasonable time-tested approaches to achieving real health and fitness. A couple of my favorites that are out there are John Bingham's The Courage to Start and The Slow Fat Triathlete: Pursue Your Athletic Dreams in the Body You Have Now by Jayne Willliams.

The former is a great book but is just about running, and after a good start the last half of the book kind of depressed me. The latter is an awesome and terrific book but I swear I can't get anyone to read it just because of the title alone. Picture this conversation:

Me, to friend who really wants to do triathlons: "There's this great book you should read! It's called the Slow Fat Triathlete"

See the problem there?

So I think maybe just maybe there's still a need out there for an Ironmom-y kind of a book. So if there's anything that you ever wished was in a book like that, a book that helps people get from Point A (unhealthy and out of shape) to point B (ultimately healthy and fit and loving it) in the real world where they have things like jobs, babies, and households, let me know!

Along those lines, I got a comment on a post the other day from Becky who was wondering what kind of trainer I have. I'm currently using a Cycleops Fluid trainer (and I'm using it an awful lot these days since it's one workout I can actually do with a broken arm!) I like it because with the fluid it automatically changes resistance so you can just pedal away and not have to worry about adjusting tension like in the old-style wind trainers. It's relatively quiet so I can watch a movie while cycling, and it folds up so I can take it to races to use for warming up, or I can store it out of the way. It's stable and I've only fallen off of it once (that was when I was foolish enough to watch 28 Days Later while pedaling and when a zombie leaped out at the camera I jumped so high I came unclipped and fell off of the trainer). All in all, though I'd love it if a Computrainer fell out of the sky and into my workout room, I'm happy with the Cycleops.

Book Review: The Slow Fat Triathlete

Slow Fat Triathlete: Live Your Athletic Dreams in the Body You Have Now

Don't let the title put you off, this is one of the best triathlon books around, and definitely the first one I would want to give someone just getting into the sport. It's inspirational, funny, and contains a heck of a lot of good information. There's just that darned title getting in the way. I recommended it to a friend of mine and watched her kind of cringe - it's like when you tell someone they should read this book you can hear them thinking "Does she think I'm slow, and fat???" I love the way the author explains the title in the first page, it really makes sense with the rest of the book, still I worry that it keeps more than a few athletes-to-be from picking this little gem up.

The author, Jayne Williams is just a gifted writer. She has that ability to turn her own experiences into something that everyone can relate to. On top of giving you her insights into her own first races and eventual immersion in the sport, she passes on a whole lot of wisdom on everything from what to take to your first race to how to survive putting on a wetsuit for the first time. She handles it all with humor and an upbeat quirkiness that conveys the awesomeness and beauty of the sport without descending to the maudlin. With chapters on equipment, training, your first race, how to be a supportive spouse or partner, injuries, illness, and eating, this book pretty much covers almost everything I'd want to tell a first-time triathlete.

So pick this book up and give it a read. Even if you've been in the sport forever, it's sure to touch more than a few memories and give you a smile. And give it to your noobie friends, just tell them to ignore the title. No really, you're not slow and you're not fat, just read the book already!

On My BookShelf

I'm reading two Ironman training books right now. Be Ironfit by Don Fink and Going Long by Joe Frield and Gordon Byrn. Each of them has some really good stuff to offer anyone training for this kind of distance. The Ironfit book is much more readable and usable though. I like the training schedules, and I'm basing my own schedule loosely on the ones in the book, from here on out. The book is very straight-forward and includes almost everything you need to do to get from triathlete to Ironman.

Going Long has some genuinely great nuggets of information, but you have to plow through pages of acronym-infested, almost-undecipherable text to get to them. The authors have the unfortunate habit of acronymizing too many real words. Do we really need to call "breakthrough" workouts "BT" workouts? And what about ATP, ME, LT, TT, and all the other acronyms? By the time they're done shortening everything, I keep having to page back and forth while reading to remember what everything is called. Couple that with many nearly-incomprehensible tables of data (and this is from a former engineer who loves her Excel spreadsheets and tables of data!) and the book becomes signifigantly less useful than it should be. It's worth a read though, or at least a skim, for the good information that's buried beneath the chaff.