Author: Bukkhead

I'm the writer here.
Posted on

Company– review on Goodreads

CompanyCompany by Max Barry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoy corporate cubicle fiction, for some reason. Books like Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, and I’ll even include Last Night at the Brain Thieves Ball by Scott Spencer. Company is sort of a mix of these, in as much as there’s the petty politics of working in a cube farm, and a deeper conspiracy fueling the intrigue. Don’t read Company if you feel good about the corporation you work for and don’t want that feeling challenged. Calling Max Barry “cynical” is like calling Microsoft “profitable.”

Barry’s style is a bit stark, a bit plain, matter-of-fact. He gives you just enough description to keep things straight, but leaves the rest of it to yourself, and the reader will eventually fill in details from her own experiences. Again , this can have a devastating effect on someone otherwise sympathetic to working between four half-walls all day long. Barry is unrelenting, but not so harsh as make his fictions seem hateful or mean. I mentioned Ferris and Spencer, above, but the end of the novel was evocative of Neal Stephenson’s The Big U, although not quite as heavy or taxing.

Comparisons to Dilbert are inevitable, but whereas Scott Adams pitches withering sarcasm against smug incompetence, Barry’s Company is more about the corporate machine itself, the kind of synergies it fails to generate while wasting vast amounts of energy. Adams has a lock on irony; Barry has a lock on pathos. This is a quick read, and you’ll find yourself shaking your head throughout, not at the absurdity of how business operates in the Company, but instead at how familiar that absurdity is.

View all my reviews

Posted on

Tokyo Suckerpunch– review on Goodreads

Tokyo SuckerpunchTokyo Suckerpunch by Isaac Adamson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So it turns out Tokyo Suckerpunch is out of print, but I was lucky enough to find a copy in a used bookstore. Reading books made out of paper and ink is weird, but I managed, thanks to Adamson’s engaging style sense of humor. I was a little let down by a meandering plot and not much payoff at the end, but if books are for getting lost in on a rainy day, you could do worse than this one.

I got my copy at a Half Priced Books, one I’d never been to and visited on a whim. Didn’t find it in the sci-fi aisle (which was appropriate as TSP’s not sci-fi). Didn’t find it in the mystery aisle (which threw me, since this is clearly a take on the traditional detective story). It was in the mainstream fiction section… but that is where they stow magic realism, right? Looks like I should have taken that as a bit of forewarning.

Because on the one hand a mash-up of genres seems like it would be a lot of fun. A journalist in Japan covering a martial-arts competition for a teen rag published in Ohio, on the trail of a mystery woman, pursued by the Yakuza and a secretive religious organization, and all of it wrapped around a dead B-movie director. Oops, that sentence had no verb. And TSP had no point, either, I’m afraid. The genre-mash suffered from a lack of cohesiveness.

Which is not to say it wasn’t fun to read, but only as a gaijin tourist in Adamson’s version of Japan. Some fun action scenes, some witty dialogue, some good moments straight out of your favorite noir library… but that’s about it.

The back-of-the-book blurb calls this a mix of The Big Sleep and Memoirs of Geisha, with some Chinatown thrown in. Can’t say I agree with that. The geisha parts of the novel are incidental, and have little or nothing to do with the plot. It’s an interesting choice for creating a femme fatale, but Adamson’s geisha might as well have been a faerie. And as for the Chandler reference—TSP’s main character, Billy Chaka, isn’t nearly as self-loathing as required for such a comparison.

Go ahead and read the book if you can find a copy. Or I’ll loan you mine. And if you find a copy of the sequels, let me know. It rains a lot in Seattle, so it’s nice to having something to curl up around when my e-reader is recharging.

View all my reviews

Posted on

I Am Stupid

Here’s a quick personality test for you: go read this article, “Apparently This Matters: Paging Dr. Mario,” and then answer the following question.

Does this article

A) make you mad because people get paid to write drivel like this and you could do that so why isn’t someone paying you…
B) make you happy because people get paid to write drivel like this and since you could do that maybe someone will pay you to do it someday.

Personally I would answer A, and I am really trying very hard to convert to B. I am. I want to stop being such a bitter, cynical grumpy old man. It’s not even a matter of “not taking things so seriously.” Trust me, I don’t take anything seriously. But I want to stop being so darn snarky.

(And for the record, it is snarky, and not sardonic. Only very attractive women can pull off sardonic. The rest of us are merely snarky, and if we’re not careful, we might even be snidey).

A few years ago I pledged that I would stop making people feel bad for liking things. And it’s been going fairly well, except that I’ve been shifting my judgment from “you’re stupid” to “that’s stupid.” And it is such a worthless evaluation. At worst it comes across as condescending, at best, patronizing. “That thing you like, I think it’s stupid. But it’s okay that you like it! I like really stupid things too!”

Sorry, to those of you who’ve had to hear me say that. Not cool.

Who am I to judge? Well, I can judge, you know. I got credentials. I have taste (I married into having taste, anyway) and an education and enough lifetime experience that when I think something’s dumb, it’s not just a knee-jerk reaction.

But that’s not the point. Just because I think something is stupid, doesn’t mean it is, and even if it is stupid, what benefit comes from my evaluating it as such? Whatever injury I feel is being done to me by experiencing the stupidity is only made worse by my complaining about it. It takes less energy to change the channel, put down the book, click on the a different web page. Way way way less energy. I’m the one’s who stupid.

Seriously: it takes one to know one. The truth is, Jarrett Bellini had an experience and shared it and that he gets paid and I don’t is irrelevant. Entirely pointless. If I get upset, that’s on me, not him, is a reflection of me, not of him. I’m the one who’s stupid.

Which is not to say I should just be all hippie-dippie lovey-dovey about everything. I should have standards, and set expectations for high quality. But getting upset doesn’t make anything better at all, so why bother.

Instead, I should try to take inspiration from things. I should use my well-earned powers of judgment to find what is useful and good—and if I don’t find anything, then at least I got the benefit of exercising my abilities.

Or, at the very least, I got an excuse to write my own drivel and post it too. And yes, I am available for paid writing positions, if anyone’s, wondering.

Posted on

For The Love of Socks

Posted on my “blog” at Runner’s World

I’ve been participating in these monthly run-raffles at a nearby running store, where they give away shoes, GPS watches, races entries, and so forth. My first night there, they were throwing socks into the crowd. And then, out of hundreds of people I won… a gift certificate for socks. I have to say I was sort of disappointed.

When I started running 5-ish years ago, I was in old sneakers, gym shorts, cotton briefs, cotton t-shirt, chunky mp3-player. I was too slow and running distances that were too short for any of those things to be a problem. But I wanted to get into it, so I went to the internet. I was told shoes! You must have the right shoes!

So I went and got the right shoes. Did one of those treadmill tests, you know, with the video camera and the sales associate who knew how to link my stride to the shoe they wanted to sell me. Yes, I’m being cynical here. Turns out the guy was way wrong, that my natural-forefoot strike doesn’t need any kind of correction at all.

But he also talked me into getting some socks. And for that I’ll be eternally grateful. I also, over the course of a few months, learned about moisture-wicking fabrics for my shirts and undershorts. I got a slick mp3 player and an arm-band to hold it. But it was those socks that changed me from a guy who sometimes goes for a run to a real runner.

There have been times when I’ll want to go for a run, and maybe I can’t find the shirt I want, so I make do. Or my shoes are muddy from a previous run, so I’ll use an old pair. Or I have to revert to gym shorts again because I haven’t done the laundry. But run in anything besides my running socks? Forget it.

Anything else and my feet get uncomfortably hot almost immediately. My toes feel cramped and suffocated. Blisters and not just likely, but guaranteed. Chafing on the ankle. Cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria.

Yeah it’s probably more psychosomatic than anything. But whatever gets me out there is a good thing, and this an ode to help me remember that. The other day I found myself frantic, looking for clean socks. No socks, no run! (I’ve tried barefoot running and I like it but my calves won’t let me do it all the time). Finally I found one of those pairs I’d won in that running-store raffle… and you should have seen the smile on my face. Sure, a new expensive GPS watch would have been cool, but it would have been worthless, me sitting next to the washing machine, waiting for my socks to get clean.

Posted on

Its Okay to Walk Now and Again

This is mostly a message to myself, but if you can take some sort of inspiration or consolation from it, that would be just fine with me. I’m not trying to be a living example, or anything, however. I’m sure some people would read this and think “yeah, rationalize it, ya fat lazy baby.” That’s fine too. I mean, inspiration can come from bums in gutters as much from heroes on plinths. So if you’re running too fast and need to walk, or if you’re walking too much and need to run, you can go ahead and eavesdrop on this conversation with myself. And if you’re just fine the way you are and can accept that about yourself, if you don’t need to be listening-in on the self-indulgent ramblings of a tired old man, fine, I’ll talk to you later.

Oh, and this is about running, but it can be a metaphor for life, if you want. I think someone said that 40 is the new 30, which would be nice except I think they only said that because someone else said 30 is the new 20. And I think they only said that because all of the 20-somethings are having trouble finding jobs since the 60 somethings won’t retire and let the 50 somethings have their senior-management positions. It trickles down, and so the 30 year olds are still writing all the copy. They still want to be lauded and revered, so they’ve designated themselves the new youth. That means what 20 years old used to call “too old” (30) is not now 40. That’s me.

And just to be clear, this is not the same kind of message as when I said that you have to learn to run slowly. That was about not pushing myself too hard, even though I was capable. I didn’t mean it as a metaphor for anything, but if I did, I guess it would have to do with banking your energy and holding back just a bit, learn how to contextualize your performance, so that you shine when you shine. Tree in a forest kind of thing maybe.

(Or not, I don’t know. I’ve been drinking beer all day so I can be too drunk to drive so I can’t go to Burger King and get some onion rings because they’re bad for me. I don’t know if that’s the best solution to my problem, but that doesn’t matter—I’m just trying to tell you why I may not be very clear in what I am saying. And that totally isn’t a metaphor for anything at all.)

Running slow instead of fast all of the time is so when you do run fast it’s awesome. You know what they say: if you do it too much, it’s stop being special. Not very Zen, but then that’s where this idea of it being okay to walk now and again comes in. You run and run and something starts to hurt or the hill looms too large or you’re so thirsty you can’t spit. And then you think “Ah, what the hell’s the point of any of this.”

Well, there is no point, and if there was, maybe you wouldn’t bother anyway. Admitting you don’t want to, even if you think you have to, gives the power to choose to do so back to you, so you can run again later. Half a mile later, or tomorrow, or next week. There’s some things you have to do whether you like it or not, and you can try to enjoy turning 40 and 50, but sometimes you’re not going to.

And while you may be willing to hate a few miles now so you can love a few dozen later, when you’re well trained and ready and able, the truth is you’re no star athlete, so you’re not going to lose much walking now and again. So go ahead and walk, and learn to enjoy that too, and if nothing else, let it inspire you to write yet another goofy blog post.

Posted on

The Atrocity Archives– review on Goodreads

The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1)The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My goal is to read 52 books this year, and it turns out The Atrocity Archives is really two books, or maybe even three. But I had no idea, going in, that this was the case. Some other review said “Terry Pratchett mixed with Mark Leyner” and my response was “sold!” So I jumped in and halfway through, I was on the denouement, wondering how the heck this Stross guy was going to keep it going. I started in on the second story, and couldn’t figure out what it had to do with the first… and when I got to the end of that one, I realize the bulk that was leftover was an essay on the co-mingling of the horror and detective/spy story genres.

So, on the one hand, you get your money’s worth (in the e-book edition, anyway; can’t vouch for others) but on the other hand, I wish I had known all of this before going in. (Which is more a reflection of me than it is of this book.) Add to this that I do notagree with the assessment that this is Pratchett mixed with Leyner, and you can get a feel why I’m only giving this 3 stars instead of 5. I’m way too biased by a mild disappointment.

That said, These so-called “Laundry Files” stories have a lot of potential, so I willread more of them, the sequels and such. What I’m hoping to see is better development—the risk when mixing two genres is you get the boring, pedestrian parts of each and no synergy. That’s what I felt was going on here. I’m no Lovecraft expert, and I’ve only reads a handful of spy novels, so maybe, again, it’s just me. But I didn’t get a sense of either genre, really. I did like the inter-office politics that Stross plays up as a major plot point, so I’d love to see more of that.

I know Stross is getting raves for his more recent works, so if nothing else, reading this older stuff is prep-work to get a feel for his style. The Atrocity Archives is readable, funny in the right places, descriptive, and the actions scenes don’t get bogged down in details. Some of the reference to magic and the mathematics of quantum mechanics are a bit glib, but then if he got too specific, the book might become unreadable afterall, so credit goes to finding the right balance.

View all my reviews

Posted on

Malice In Blunderland– review on Goodreads

Malice in BlunderlandMalice in Blunderland by Jonny Gibbings

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m guessing Johnny Gibbings read in a how-to-write book, or on a website someplace “try to abuse your main character as much as possible” and then he thought to himself “oh, I can do that.” And thus we have Malice in Blunderland, the story of a man riding the rails of unapologetic violence and humiliation. I’m thinking this might even be a genre of fiction. The kind of novel that would be enjoyed by those who go online to watch videos of guys wrecking on their skateboards. Part Irvine Welsh (Filth, not Trainspotting) part JG Ballard (the wince-worthy parts of Crash), a picaresque without any of that bothersome metaphor and theme.

Look, I’m not trying to slag the guy off here. Lots of people are going to love this book. Yeah, there’s clichéd characters, deux ex machina in spades, plot twists as predictable as anything you’d see in one of those 80’s mass-produced comedies… there’s typos and I’m even going to complain about how my particular e-reader didn’t like the formatting of the .mobi file I received. But Johnny can write. I swear, I’m not being facetious—plot, character, setting, who gives a damn—Gibbings’ prose style is good enough for me, good enough that if he writes another book, I’ll probably read it.

I say probably because there really where parts of Malice that made me cringe. And I think it’s fair that you, as a reader, should decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I read American Psycho, was glad I did, and swore I would never read it again. I saw Natural Born Killers, thought it was brilliant, and resolved I would never give it a second viewing. But I know there are people who reveled in the painful textures those pieces provided, and I think they’d love Malice in Blunderland.

View all my reviews

Posted on

What I’ve Done On My Vacation

Fair warning: this will be a dull post. I’m just going to recap some of the writing I’ve been doing over the last few weeks (Since June 1st).

Here at Bukkhead: two short stories, three book reviews, six other pieces, one of which I also posted on the blogs at Runner’s World.

Over at Wiffli: “Oops, Forgot a Title,” “Screw You, BMI,” “Anybody Else Seen Snooki’s Boobs?” and “Gwyneth Paltrow Used the N Word (With Asterisks).” (By the way, if you want to write something on Wiffli, just let me know.)

On AntiPundit: “First Post in 2+ Years,” and “Nothing Could Be Finer Than to Be in a Vagina.” (You can post political opinion on AntiPundit too, if you want.)

Total: 17 bits, 10481 words. This doesn’t cover a few longish e-mails to friends, or a blog post I made on the internal corporate website at work. Or, ha, this post.

Also, I ran 65 miles.

For the month of June, so far, it looks like the “bad” day was June 9th—no running, and no writing at all. According to my paper journal, I didn’t do much—I watched the Mariners lose, and I hung out with some friends at The Bottlehouse. I think I mowed the lawn that day.

And all of this while suffering from Vestibular Neuritis (I am, this week, fully recovered). How? Why? I really do think it’s this lack of idle web-browsing. Granted, there was some Bejeweled Blitz in there, some Diablo III, some Hitman Absolution: Sniper Challenge, and a lot of Draw Something, Words with Friends, Wordament, and Plants Versus Zombies. But still, I got a tell you, this web-browsing fast has really upped my productivity.

I could really use a nap, though.

Posted on

I Am Getting So Damn Tired of All These Ninjas in My House.

fiction by Jason Edwards

I am getting so damn tired of all these ninjas in my house. Stupid Japs. Look, I am not a racist. I’m not racist. I have three friends with Jewish names, my neighbor is a black guy, very friendly, and as for the Japs, I even like sushi, okay? I am not racist. I’m just so tired of all these ninjas in my damn house!

Like the other night, I’m in bed, trying to sleep, long day, I work for a living damn it. Then I hear something. Silent assassins my ass. I open my eyes, and up there, clinging to the ceiling, a ninja, just watching me. So I roll out of bed real quick, and thwip thwip thwip, three throwing stars right into the pillow where my head was just at! So I pull out a samurai sword from under the bed—yes, I have a sword, and you would too if you had ninjas—and when the little fucker drops down, I cut him up, good. Now I’ve got ninja blood all over my samurai sword, my bed, my clothes. And that pillow is ruined. I had to spend the rest of the night cleaning up, burying the body, bundling together towels for a pillow for the night since JC Penny isn’t open that late. I work for a living god damn it!

If they were predictable, that would be one thing. I can go two, three weeks with nary a ninja. And just when I think it’s over, it’s done, like they don’t come around in the spring or something, I’ll go to get some cereal out of the pantry and there’s one squatting there. Thwip thwip, use my cereal bowl to deflect the throwing stars, he comes flying out, I dodge, rip open the refrigerator door to block his ninja kick, and when he falls back, hurl the toaster-oven at him. I think the people at Bed Bath and Beyond are getting suspicious. I’ve been through, like, five toaster-ovens that way. I like toast.

I told James at work about it (he’s one of the guys I know with a Jewish last name). He thought it was a metaphor. “Get some Ninja-spray, Al.” They’re not goddamn slugs! They’re ninjas! 15th century feudal Japanese assassins! They’re not going to kept away with some pest strips and a good bleaching. Jesus Christ.

I showed him my scars. “I got this one a month ago. I was washing my car, minding my own business, and I couldn’t find the squeegee, you know, to wipe the water off the windows. Then I remembered it was in the trunk from when I took the car to the car wash that time. So I go to open the trunk, and out comes this ninja! In broad damn-it daylight! All dressed in black with that faggy red sash around his waist, waving a katana like a flag in a parade! He got me good, right here, before I wrapped the garden hose around his legs, punched him in the back of his head a few times, then stuffed him back into the trunk. Had to get seventeen stitches. The deductible on the insurance is killing me, James!”

He wasn’t impressed. Tried to show me a scratch he had on his shoulder. “Swordfight ,last week, with a pirate.”

I couldn’t tell if he was making fun of me, until Dave popped up from his cubicle. “My sister was chased by zombies last week.” James just stared him like he was an asshole until he sat down again.

So far, I’ve been lucky, I guess—it’s only at home. There’s this bar I go to a few times a week, a nice little place, clean. Got a nautical theme. Pretty much anti-ninja, which is nice. I’m in there once, and this old pro’s sitting next to me. Seen her a few times, she knows I’m not shopping, so we just talk about sports or whatever. I tell her about my problem. “One was hiding in my bathroom once, in the tub, I could see him through the curtain. Managed to slice him down before he even made a move, buried him in the same curtain. So that was an easy one.” I laugh at the irony of it , sip my ginger n’ rye.

“You sure they’re ninjas? Maybe you got Yakuzas.” She’s smoking a cigarillo, looks almost more like a bandito than a pro, in her cowboy hat and bandoleer and chaps.

“What, the Japanese mafia? Naw, they don’t wear pin stripe suits or sunglasses or have elaborate tattoos. Just short little fuckers in silk pajamas and face masks.” I shudder and finish my drink. Munch some peanuts.

“Maybe they’re in disguise?” The door opens, this huge werewolf thing’s standing there, she pulls out her six shooter and plugs him between the eyes, blows smoke off the barrel and reholsters. “Silver bullets,” she says.

I shrug. “Another one, Larry,” waggle my glass at him. “Maybe. Seems pretty elaborate. I mean they only attack me at home. I figure Yakuza, they’d go for a car bomb or something.”

She shrugs back at me, adjusts her hat, stands up and throws some bills on the bar. “Maybe it’s an honor thing. I gotta git—got a client at 3:30.” Then she moseys off, sound of gunfire coming from outside after she leaves.

I get up to the use the can, and right before I open the door, I get nervous. I got my hand stretched out, just frozen like a jerk. What if there’s a ninja in there? I don’t have my samurai sword, I’m not quite drunk yet but a good ways along, so my reflexes won’t be so good. What if there’s one in there, got his katana and nun-chucks all ready to go. I’ve led a good life, I guess, other than this ninja thing. But am I ready to buy it, right here, in this shitty little bar, a handful of peanuts my last meal?

The light underneath the door goes off, and I didn’t even realize it was on, and I get this cold rush down my spine, cause that means someone’s in there after all, and I’m still standing there with my hand out when the door opens and Chuck Harper walks out. He goes “oops” like I was grabbing the door right when he opened it. Heads back to the bar. I get the shakes, go in, feeling stupid, cause like I said, they never attack me anywhere except at home. Make a mess on the toilet rim, I’m shaking so bad. But I get it cleaned up as I calm down, a bunch of TP, three flushes worth. I ain’t no slob.

I’ve tried everything. I’ve called the cops, but they don’t seem to care. I saw a psychiatrist, just to make sure it wasn’t all in my head. By the time we were through my second session, she told me “Al, you’re not crazy, okay? You’ve got ninjas, and that just happens sometimes. I can give you a prescription for valium, to calm down between attacks, if you want.” I took the scrip, but never filled it.

Camus, I think it was, in Myth of Sisyphus, said something about how, once you accept your punishment, it isn’t punishment anymore. At least that’s what the back of the book said—I never read the whole thing. Of course, he was talking about the punishment we get for bothering to stay alive. Like it’s our own damn fault we’re so miserable, when there’s always the suicide option. It’s not giving up, and it’s not noble, either. It’s just a choice, like choosing a blue tie instead of red a one. I can quit my bitching, let the ninjas do what they do, or just man up. There’s kids starving in Africa. They don’t got ninjas, but they don’t got boiled hot-dogs on Fridays either.

(Ninjas came at me while I was cooking those once. Spilled ‘em on the floor in the ruckus. I was pissed something terrible, let me tell you, for that one. But I still ate ‘em.)

Anyway. Here I am, sitting in my living room. TV’s busted, big crack in the window, pile of dead ninjas ruining my sofa. Three of ‘em. Three of ‘em came at me at the same time. I thought they were supposed to work alone. Maybe they’re getting tired of me too? Maybe they’re getting fed up with how many times I haven’t been killed by them yet. I don’t know.

Sure, I could just let ‘em do it, let ‘em kill me, let ‘em then dissolve back into the night. Cops’ll call it a heart attack or something. I’m 54 years old, that’s not too young. But it’s the principle of thing, isn’t it? Okay, fine, ninjas killed my dad, and his dad before him. It runs in the family, maybe. But I thought we were supposed to be making the world a better place, each generation. Thought we were supposed to be happier. I need this curse like I need a hole in my head. I need to be digging ninja graves in my back yard like I need new taxes. Gimme a damn break!

And now there’s a sound coming from the ceiling, a scrabbling sound, and I can hear something crunching over the broken glass I laid down in the crawlspace. Five of ‘em in one day, are you shitting me? I’d move, but let’s face it, the housing market ain’t what it used to be. I guess this is just my cross to bear. Stupid ninjas.

Posted on

You Gotta Run Slow

Posted this over at Runner’s World, just for the heck of it…

Bit of background: always wanted to run, usually hated it: lungs, blisters, etc. Finally read No Need for Speed, realized slow running was just fine. Finally found out about non-cotton socks. Finally found a way to run and not hate it. Been at it now 4 years, 3600 lifetime miles, one marathon, dozens of halfs, currently 40 years old, 5’8” 185 lbs, etc. I’m so average, I make vanilla look exotic.

Back when I got started running I aimed for 10-minute miles. Longer runs dipped into the 11:30 per mile range at the end, and I could scorch a 5k at 9:45 per if I didn’t mind resting a few days after. I never really tried to “train” for speed—I was just trying to stay on the road longer, if I could. I remember the first time I ran for 75 continuous minutes. Almost  7 miles! It was glorious. Almost as glorious as the beer I had afterwards. Okay, fine, beers.

Books and magazines recommended so-called “Tempo” runs, but frankly, I was baffled. How do people know what pace they’re running at? Is there really that much difference between 10k pace and half-marathon pace? Can a person really know that they’re running at “10 seconds less than 5k pace.” Ah well. I was just in it for sweat and the excuse to listen to loud music in my iPod. On good days I might have been able to say “I finished that guitar solo one telephone pole earlier than usual, hmm…”

I figured I’d just log a few thousand miles and see what happened. And what happened was that I did get faster, of course. I live in Seattle- it’s hard to not run up hills here. And hills just make you faster. And running longer, naturally, makes you faster. And I started running more consistently, too. Instead of a run starting around 9:30 per mile and ending around 11:30, I was better able to stay within 30 seconds or so of per-mile variance. Not an elite achievement, to be sure, but the mark of a little road experience.

Unfortunately, when I say  got faster, I got only faster. It got to the point where a 5k run or a 10 mile run was at about 8:45 per mile, give or take.  No matter what. (I know this isn’t really “fast.” I ain’t qualifying for Boston at that speed.) I still had no idea how people were able to know the difference between their various tempos.

And I was so in love with running. I wanted to do more than 15 miles per week, but I just couldn’t manage more than three days out of seven. Maybe four every once in a while. More than that and I was getting overuse injuries. It was very frustrating. Yes, I was faster, but I felt like I was back at the drawing board.

So one day, I decided, if I’m back at the beginning, I’ll start over. Why not? Why not run slow, like I used to? Yes, when I started, a 5k was a marathon. So I’d try running at my old pace. I went out and did 5 miles at about 9:45 per mile. It was tough, forcing myself to slow down. Had to put slow songs on my iPod, songs I’d never run to before. I am living proof one can run while listening to Adele. Not ashamed to say it.

And I tried running slow again the next day. And then a third day. No soreness, no fatigue. I decided to take another page from the conventional wisdom, and force myself to rest one day. But after that, I did another three-day mini streak—and two of those days where back-to-back eight milers! I had run six days out of seven, and covered three times as many miles.

So here I am, falling in love with running all over again, and logging more miles, more days. I’ve got way more songs that are run-appropriate now to try out. And since more running means I get to drink more beers, I’m thinking this “run slow” thing is actually a gift from the Heavens. Lotterty, schmottery. I got my miles!