Rachel Toor's Blog, page 16

Pre-Race Couture

Since I no longer have a webmaster (mother), I will be posting my updated publications here.

I just realized I have another Running Times column due soon; this is the one from March.

"Fanatical Scourge-like Tendencies"

My latest column came out today, Writing Like a Doctor, and there was a fabulous mention of it on the blog Critical Mass. I love being known as having "scourge-like tendencies" when it comes to writing about writing.[image error]

Change of Venue

I went to my 25th Yale reunion. When I slunk back to the dorm at 8am on Saturday morning, one of my (five, male, married-and-kidded) suite-mates for the weekend said: Rachel, you are living the life we all wished we'd lived 25 years ago. Yessirree Bob. It was a blast. Going back for the reunion was more fun than going to Yale. Here's what I wrote about the 20th reunion. The next installment will be juicier.

Then, last Sunday, I came home to an empty house.

Iris and I moved to Spokane three years

My Sweet Darling

Iris Toor
January 1, 2006--May 28, 2009









The Broccoli Dance[image error]

Marathons Can Be Fun

Two marathons in eight days. I realized that the only thing I feared about doing this--running marathons only to get in shape, to get in long runs, to be prepared to pace my friend Mike P at Western States--was the idea of being stuck in my head for four hours or so. To steal from poet Mary Karr, my head is a bad neighborhood; you don't want to go there alone.

As it turned out, right after the gun went off at Windermere, a guy came up to me. said something friendly, called me by my name. I asked

Windermuse

This evening I will be giving the pre-race speech at the inaugural Windermere Marathon in Spokane. While people are slurping down pasta and excusing themselves 18 times an hour to pee, I will be prattling on.

I was asked to do this a while ago, before last fall when I decided that I hated running (and it felt like a job). It seemed like a good way to promote my new book. Of course, I forgot that fifteen minutes after I have a book published, I lose all interest in talking about it (Ian McEwan: "

May column

In this month's column, I take on "Reading Like a Graduate Student." As my own grad professors can attest, I was myself guilty of this sin. In the most irritating way.[image error]

Chilly Scenes of Spring

When my friend Val called my brother--who will not respond to me directly, who will not accept apologies or talk to me, even now when I am on the edge of the abyss--he wondered aloud what I wanted from him.

"You're her brother," said Val, shocked. Chilled.

"What does that mean, other than consanguinity?" he wanted to know.

What, indeed.[image error]

Mother's Day

Really, I'm trying not to be pissy about this. But when my yoga instructor said last week in class that next Sunday was Mother's Day and everyone should bring their moms to class I wanted to hit her.

Some of my students have told me heart-hurting stories about losing their parents. I had my mother for a good, long time. I was closer to her than many people are to the ones they choose to have in their lives. I laughed harder with her than with almost anyone; she could make me feel better, and also

Bloomsday (not the Joycean one)

About a year and a half ago I confessed to my friend Candace that I no longer liked to run. It was feeling like a job, and like a job that I no longer enjoyed. Too much work for for too little pay-off--no money, awful business schedules, mean and crazy bosses. Could I just quit running, I wanted to know?

Candace, always practical, said No, not until my running book came out.

By then it was almost too late. I was starting to hate running. I hated traveling to marathons, having to work at the expos