Running Like a Girl

I want to run.  For fun.  For exercise.  For me.  I used to run all the time when I played soccer because that's part of the game.  I never really got into running long distances around the track as training in the off-season, like so many of my friend did, but that didn't mean I wasn't jealous.  Fast forward nearly ten years, two undergraduate degrees and one, almost two, masters degrees, and I would kill to be running as a way of losing the grad school weight.

I mean, really, I would love myself a lot more if I were doing ANYTHING to be losing the grad school weight.

So I search the best way I know how--books.  I read books upon books about losing weight.  Both sides of it--how to stop eating a ton of shit and how to get off my ass.

I've found books on clean eating, on eating healthy on a budget--both financial budget and time budget, on skinny Italian food, on eating six meals a day to lose weight--even when you aren't hungry.  I've read books on being a vegan--but I love bacon and steak and chicken too much.  I've read books on how to be a yogi--both from the diet and the exercise standpoint.  But I've never read a book on running.

I love yoga, but I think that yoga is more of a "me" thing--I do it (or, rather, want to do it--let's be honest, I'm not DOING much of anything lately) because it makes me feel good.  So I need and want to find something else to shed the pounds (a dear friend of mine runs to lose weight and does Zumba to feel good).  I like that philosophy.  This way yoga won't become my make it or break it thing.  It will be my calming down thing.

This post had some bookish point...

I recently found Running Like a Girl:  Notes on Learning to Run by Alexandra Heminsley, which is part memoir and part guide.  Heminsley shares with readers her journey to become a runner from being not a runner in her 30s, then she creates the guide that she wished she had had when she first started out.

Confession--I've only just started reading it, so I can't review it yet.  But I wanted to call everyone's attention to the book in case, like me, you are wanting to soak up the nice fall weather and start running before it becomes all icky and winter-y.  You can totally expect a review and a status report next month.

Do any of you have any good guides for getting started running?

Kelly's Review of "Still Alice" by Lisa Genova

Title: Still Alice
Author: Lisa Genova
Published: Pocket, 2007
Where I Got It: The library

Forget Dracula, House of Leaves, or any Stephen King novel, this may be the scariest book I've ever come across. While there may be no vampires, demons, or murderers, there is something even more frightening: reality.

Alice Howland is a fifty year old professor of psychology at Harvard. She and her husband are celebrated scientists who have three successful children, a summer house on the beach, and seemingly perfect lives. Alice begins to forget words, gets lost in her neighborhood, and fails to recognize someone she just met minutes before. She visits her doctor, only attributing these incidents to menopause. After a brain scan, she is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

While the thought of being diagnosed with Alzheimer's at age fifty isn't scary enough, I did some research and found out that a small percentage are diagnosed in their early thirties. Can you even imagine?? I myself have a TERRIBLE memory; I have to write down everything or I'll forget it immediately and I can't remember saying things I said just a few seconds before. Though this is mostly due to a stroke I had in high school, the even slight possibility I could for all practical purposes lose my mind sooner than I'd think terrifies me.

Anyways, back to the book. After the diagnosis, the rest of the book follows Alice through the next year. Her progression in the disease is a rapid decline. She starts just forgetting to do tasks and other chores, yet by the end of the book, she gets lost in her own house and is beginning to not be able to recognize her husband and children. I thought the effect on Alice's family was the most interesting part; her children, all in their twenties, are suddenly forced to take turns babysitting their mother. Her husband responds to the disease with much more emotion than Alice. I couldn't even imagine myself in her husband's place - he eventually had to quit his job to care for her. That's love.

While I have no personal experience with Alzheimer's, I can deduce that this would be a pretty bleak book for someone who has a family member with the disease. Yet, all in all, this was an excellent book. I read in a few hours. Highly recommended for an eye-opening read. 5 stars.

Natanya's Ramblings on This Mean Disease

Title/Author: This Mean Disease: Growing Up in the Shadow of My Mother’s Anorexia Nervosa by Daniel Becker

Publisher/Year Published: Gürze Books, 2005

How I got this book: Library

This Mean Disease is, as the subtitle states, Daniel Becker’s memoir of his life as the son of a woman with anorexia nervosa. He starts with the point at which his mother’s anorexia began, which was not, as one might expect, when she was a teenager, but instead at age 34, when she was already married with children. Becker continues through his life, up until his mother’s death, including both his own story and information from relatives, family friends, and doctors. He recounts his ignorance of his mother’s condition, his feelings of hopelessness, and his attempts to cope with them with drugs and parties, as well as his difficult relationship with his disconnected father.

This is the first straight-out memoir I have read, and as such, I feel kind of weird rating someone’s life. However, I have nothing negative to say about Becker’s well-written piece. His story is interesting, making a compelling book, and he did well at avoiding unnecessary details (something I feel would be difficult when recounting one’s entire life), keeping This Mean Disease short and easily comprehensible, but still beautifully written. The simplicity of the writing keeps the memoir from pulling too hard at our heartstrings or wrenching us apart into pieces, as many depressing books do. Becker does not try to elicit our sympathy, but rather seems to have set out to tell us his story and allow us to view it objectively and make of it as we may, a method I found beneficial to the telling. The story on its own is heart-wrenching enough. Thus, despite the lack of vivid descriptions, it is not difficult to get into the story and understand what Becker went through. Though most people cannot easily relate to the story as a whole—even at the time, with so few recognized cases of anorexia nervosa, most patients were teenagers or young adults, not mothers of three in their 30s, 40s or 50s—we can understand why Becker felt the way he felt at different stages of his life.

What makes this book all the more interesting for me, however, is that I know Daniel Becker as he is now. He was my teacher in high school, and I still talk to him frequently when I go back to visit. He is always cheerful, very smart, and a great person to go to for advice. I could never have guessed that he grew up with so much misery and pain, but I respect him all the more now that I know, and for being able to tell his story.

Becker’s story is unique, honest, beautiful, and haunting, and this review certainly does not do it justice. I feel in a way privileged to have gotten to see into this part of Becker’s life.

4 stars