Prologue

Over the years, I’ve worked harder and harder to find meaning in life. But the more I've looked, the more I’ve wondered if I was going about my search the wrong way.

I've been looking for meaning through experience, but I think now that I've always had it backwards. Life will never be defined by extravagant experience, but about finding extravagance in common experience. So for 2009, I'm going to focus less on living large, and focus more on living well. Each month I'll start a new month-long project (like trying to run 3 miles faster than George Bush), to find uncommon results from common experience. Each project will involve daily activity, so every day of 2009 you can check my progress on the monthly projects and see what I discover.

None of these projects will cost much—in fact, I think most will be free. So if you're looking for a year uncommonly rich, you can join me. There's no membership required, just participate and comment if you want. Either way, get ready for a year I hope is unlike any other.

Epilogue

I stumbled across the finish line, but I manage to complete 8 of the month-long projects successfully. Blogging is now over at Wonderfam!

 
 

It's February, and February was a …

A Month of Accomplishment (about)

 

~ or ~

 

Forcing myself to finish something (about)

 

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17

New shoes!

Written by Nathan on January 17, 2009 at 6:15 pm from A Month of Resolve.

Time and time again I heard the Track Shack, Orlando’s well-known running store, could fit me for my ideal pair of running shoes. Today I took my first run in the new Mizunos they helped me find, and I must say the Track Shack’s  reputation is well deserved. The shoes are great! I decided to continue to follow their advice and start in the shoes with a short run, so I only ran 1.5m (with an early 1.5m walk).

Now there were a few things I did wrong on this run. I didn’t remember my planned course, so I ended up actually doing 1.65m miles instead of 1.5m. I also took off incredibly fast, owing to my general excitement about the shoes. In fact, until 3/4 of the way through the first mile I was on pace for 5:30 mile. When I realized how fast I was going, I slowed down and finished my first mile at 5:30. (Why’d I slow down? There was no way I’d finish 1.5 at that starting pace…)

The last half mile I briefly aspired to push through and try to finish my run in less than 10 minutes. But that didn’t happen. Instead, I ended up doing 1.65m in 12 minutes.

After a few minutes of stretching, I played some soccer with my brother. While this could’ve been another of my many regrettable decisions this month, instead it was fun and relaxing. The leg pain I’ve been suffering was relatively slight and outside of my sister-in-law’s merciless mockery (I hobbled like an old man), I can’t really find any downsides to following up my run with soccer.

So in my brand new shoes, I ran a decent pace and didn’t suffer any overwhelming pain as a result. That enough will energize me to run hard and try to at least beat 24 minutes before Bush leaves office.

(1) Comment

One Response to “New shoes!”

  1. John-Erik says:
    January 19, 2009 at 12:07 am

    congrats on the new shoes! thinking about getting a pair when i get back.

    so while i have been in africa the last few days i have managed to be able to run twice with a really good 5k yesterday. the altitude takes a slight adjustment.

    hope to run again tonight . . .

    je

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