Training and mental focus

Libidinous dirtbag watercolorist Charles Walter Stetson,
first husband of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Lately I've had plenty of time to run--it's not like there are a ton of daily interruptions and emergencies in, say, Henry James studies--but my mind has just not been in it.  I've been doing all the workouts, feeling pretty good, and at least my speed fitness is improving some.  But, at least until I watched the inspirational performances at London and Boston--both Mutais in London and Boston, Lel's come-from-behind second place sprint at London, Davila's gutsy second at Boston--running had lost its glory for me, its late nadir a pathetic half-marathon slog trudging through a painful cobblestone-riddled 21st kilometer here in Padua.  In all, it wasn't such a bad race--I went out to win it, but I lost.  After covering the first 5k in 17:18, and the second 5k in 18:00 flat, things blew up, I lost the pack and sank further and further behind.  It does lead me to question my fitness, though, and I can't blame the race entirely on reckless tactics. 

Before every breakthrough race I've had I have found myself equipped with an amazingly keen mental focus, a highly functional obsession where all the slack in my life--in every aspect of life from writing to diet--pulls taught; for a period of a month or so the race rearranges my mental furniture, dusts it off, puts it in order; it brings everything into my life in an efficient whole, which for a short happy time until race day, exceeds the sum of its parts.  Not this time.  I bagged Milan because I wasn't ready, and I'm not even sure which Spring marathon I'm going to run.  So much for compartmentalizing everything in my life, or trying to. 



The debaucher of nude models some years later,
youth and looks eclipsed by years.  He and Gilman
divorced in 1894, and critics justly attribute
the biographical origin
of "The Yellow Wallpaper"
to his failures as a husband.