Monday, May 25, 2009

The Mad Scientist

A few days ago, I was reading about Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein." It was both the first modern horror story and the first science fiction story. Written in 1818 - it touched on many concepts that would not really be fully explored by literature or science for another century.

Probably the most obvious lesson of "Frankenstein" is the importance of airing out our wonderful ideas with others. This is as important when building a training plan as building a humanoid made from cadaver's body parts.

I'm not saying that you should always bend to what others say - you know your own body better than anybody else - but, by this point pretty much every possible training strategy has been tried. If you don't use what others have learned, you are basically wasting your time - but at least you won't find yourself holed up in a dank castle waiting for the townsfolk with torches & pitchforks. It is, after all, just running.

Last Week
Monday: 6 miles
Tuesday: 8 miles - a few intervals
Wednesday: 10 miles
Thursday: 0 miles
Friday: 8 miles
Saturday: 6.5 miles
Sunday: 14.5 miles
Total: 53 miles

Next Week
Monday: 7.5 miles
Tuesday: 10.5 miles 8X100m
Wednesday: 9 miles
Thursday: 8.5 miles
Friday: 7 miles
Saturday: 7 miles
Sunday: 16 miles
Total: 65.5 miles

5 comments:

RM said...

Ben, may like to join you on Sunday. Not sure yet, as I might attempt to do a longer run on Friday. Guess that will depend on whether we're going to the game.

I didn't realize all that about Frankenstein. Pretty neat. Maybe it will inspire me to read that book.

THE KRIS said...

while i agree with ben on the importance of some of the themes and lessons of the book, it is, non the less, a piece of crap. not that it's badly written or the story uninteresting, it's just that 12 seconds after the guy brings his creation to life, he freaks out and spends the rest of the book complaining. i just can't get down with listening to some dude whine about what he's done after not giving the consequences of his actions a second thought at any point during the weeks it took him to create the creature. seriously, it never occurred to you that this might be a bad idea?

what ever. i might also be interested in a run on sunday.

Ben said...

are you saying the monster is kind of like the time you got that tatoo of phil collins on your ankle?

THE KRIS said...

i won't offend gay people by calling a tattoo of phil collins the gayest thing ever, but i defy you to come up with something gayer.

Ben said...

well, it was your tatoo - i guess you can call it whatever you want.