Roxy training diary month 53
October 2007

Oct 31.  Last post of the month, and time for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). 

This will be my third time.  This year's novel I'm calling Strangely Carved Forms, after an entry in John Wesley Powell's journal about the area that's now Lake Mead.

As you know from reading the Oct 26 entry, last year's novel, Infectious Beauty, is off with an agent right now.

So, since I only have so many words in me per month, I may not have a lot of words left over for the blog in November.  If I don't write to the blog much, you'll know why.

To write 50,000 words in one month, one must hit 1,667 words per day, which is a lot.  I hope to get a good start, because we have to go to Boise this weekend.

Roxy is entered in a herding trial in Boise, but just for one day.  She's improving, but still gets a little crazy and "dives in" when she should be flanking the stock.  We keep practicing.  The winter weather may curtail our plans.

Roxy has really come out of her shell since Dylan left us.  She's demanding play, and she's downright snuggling with us at night.  Often I get the butt end, but beggars can't be choosers.

In fact, as I write this, Roxy and Annie are actually playing with each other, which is a rare event.

Trick and Treat

October Playmates

Pioneer Annie Visits the Indians

Roxy and Annie spent the evening greeting our Halloween visitors in costume.  Annie wore her skeleton costume, while Roxy selected the pea pod costume that goes with my Jolly Green Giant outfit. 

I've finally set a new goal for my running training.  I've decided to run the Catalina Marathon on Saturday, March 15.  This is ideal, because it's not too far away, and it comes at the end of our Spring Break so I can take a few days to travel and get accustomed to the island.  It's a trail run with a pretty substantial elevation gain, so it will require some training to get ready for, and toughness to get through.

I have a long-standing goal of hiking all over Catalina Island, so even though this isn't hiking, if I finish the marathon I'll call that one done.

Rosemary and I will also plan to travel up to Vancouver with the new puppy, if we have one, in May for the Vancouver Marathon.

Indelicate Arch

I have my spring planned out, as you can see.

Those who remember Pioneer Annie will enjoy this picture of Pioneer Annie visiting the Indians.  She refuses to wear her bonnet, but we know it's Pioneer Annie because she's hanging out in a teepee.

Delicate Arch, From Both Sides

Finished

Oct 26.   Catching up on the RoxyLog after a busy week.

Tuesday, my commentary was published in the local paper.  I apparently made someone angry. 

It's not every day you get compared to a conspiracy-theorist wingnut.

On Saturday, October 20, to celebrate my birthday and on my way out of town, I sent off a query to an agent, Christina Hogrebe, with the Jane Rogerson Agency.  I included a synopsis and few sample pages of my novel, Infectious Beauty.  I had attended the Eden Writers' Conference and I think we really hit it off.  I asked her in the buffet line, "would it be okay if I sent you a query?" and she said, "sure."  So in the mail it went. 

In my haste, I forgot to send an SASE (a huge faux pas) and so I sent one along in today's mail.  Oops.

As I told Rosemary, "I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but my hopes are up." 

My new Garmin Forerunner 101 GPS-based running calculator came in, and so I started back on training.  As my friend and marathon partner Babak said, "Now that you have the Garmin, you have to train."  I still haven't decided where my next big run will be, but I am aiming for a spring marathon in a really nice location, maybe Napa Valley or Vancouver.  Toward that end, I'm working on a new running calendar. 

I ran the "Other Half" half-marathon on Sunday, with a time just under 2 hours,  1:57:34.  That was 197/390 among all men, and 43/89 men 40-49.

After my race (in which I beat last year's time of 2:24:33 by about 30 minutes, so it was a success), we all went out to Arches National Park and did some hiking and driving around.  The picture above is a special favorite of mine.

Of course, we had to take pictures of the iconic Delicate Arch, both from close-up and from a viewpoint far away.

Look Out!

No Accounting for Accordions

Oct 20.  We're off today for what has become an annual trip to Moab so that I can run in "The Other Half" half-marathon down the beautiful red rock canyon of the Colorado River.  I haven't been training worth a lick (read: haven't run once since the St. George Marathon) but I am hoping my conditioning from the marathon will carry me through.

Then, when I get back, it will be time to set up new training goals and a new training plan.

We still mourn Dylan, but each day the good memories bubble up a bit and the pain we feel is mostly the pang of knowing the past is gone, never to be recovered.

Rosemary and I have independently come up with some images that made us laugh over the last few days.

The image at left was taken while I was driving down to St. George.  It is, of course, a semi being towed.  It reminds me of a funny practical joke I once heard about.

These two guys are driving down a lonely road at night and the passenger is dozing off.  The driver sees a truck being towed, just like in the picture.  So, he carefully creeps up on the towed semi, so that its grill fills the windshield, and then simultaneously screams and hits the brake.

The middle image is from the hotel where I attended a writers' conference this weekend.  It's meant to be kitsch, so it's not funny so much for being cheesy as in the way it's cheesy.  Dude took an accordion and his ice skates to the top of a mountain.  You realize, this is back in the days of rope tows (even before chair lifts) so he took his accordion and ice skates to the top of a mountain on a rope tow.  If the girl were just a tad pretty, you might be able to see why he would haul an accordion up a mountain to serenade her, but even in this artist's conception, she's just fugly.  The other two skiers are trying to flee the scene.

About the conference: I met a terrific agent and she is going to let me send her a query, which is not much, but I hope she'll like it.  She sounded interested enough from the pitch I gave her.  Here's hoping I can make some progress on getting my novel published. 

Also, National Novel Writing Month is coming up, so it's time to finish up the new novel I've been working on.  It only has about 5000 words so far, so it could use another 50,000 (or more) this month.  It's written up here [tapping head] but it needs to be converted to electrons.  I "won" in 2005 and 2006, and they tell me the sophomore year is the toughest, so this third time should be no problem.  Right?

Oct 7.  A sad day for us; Dylan was suddenly taken ill Wednesday night and was in pain.  He was not going to ever get better, so we had him put to sleep today.

I've set up a tribute page here.  Rosemary and I have selected some pictures which we think represent his life, and you'll find them there if you're interested.  Dylan had a lot of friends, and I know some of you will have things you want to say, so if you email me, I'll post them on his page as well.

He had a lot of personality.  He will be missed.

Oct 6.  I ran my third marathon today.  I posted a Personal Record (PR) time of 4:11:59 (we'll call it 4:12), which is about 22 minutes better than my previous PR on Sept 15. 

A running buddy who I met on the Internet joined me in St. George and we roomed together.  It was a good choice, because he and I ran about the same pace.  We had agreed that we would shoot for a 4:15 time. 

This is one of the races with the pace runners, so we found the 4:15 pacer and started with her.  (Thanks, Lori.)  We got a little ahead of her so I could take a bathroom break, and we just stayed with our group and finished out where we wanted.  There were about 6000 registered, and 5154 finishers overall.  I was 1895/2926 among males and 253/401 in my age/gender group (males 45-49).