train – ~*LunaSea*~

Newby, Eric. Big Red Train Ride: a Ride on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Penguin, 1978.

Reason read: the first electric trains were introduced in the month of July.

Six thousand miles. Seven time zones. The big, red Trans-Siberian train ride took Eric Newby and his wife from Moscow to the Pacific.

Eric Newby and his wife, Wanda, embarked on an epic journey across Siberia back in the late 1970s. All along the way, Newby peers into the habitations of USSR locals with curiosity and humor. His words could be lyrical in addition to being sarcastic and humorous.
It is interesting to read Fear by Anatoli Ryabakov at the same time as The Big Red Train Ride. Reading about Stalin from the fictional and historical perspectives, especially during 1936 – 1938 and the rein of Great Terror. Both books report the arrest of seven million people (not including the criminals) and the death toll during Stalin’s time to be somewhere around twenty million souls. When talking about the Siberian exiles Newby did not mention the Russians who were perceived to have made fun of Stalin and were banished or murdered simply as a result of his paranoia.
It goes without saying that Big Red Train Ride is a bit dated. Written in 1977, there is a great deal of “this will be done” statements. For example, he used the future tense when talking about a railway to be finished in 1980. When Newby was trying to take photographs of certain stations I thought of my sister and her smart phone. She takes stealthy pictures of people all the time. Her subjects are none the wiser. Meanwhile Newby was getting yelled at left and right.
As an aside, I appreciated the humor in Big Red Train Ride. Newby was not a fan of knobbly knees.

Lines I liked, “It was certainly Saturday, unless sit was Sunday” (p 72). I get that way, too. Especially on Monhegan. Here’s another that reminded me of the island, “…a grey stretch of water on a rocky, fog-bound coast” (p 260).

As an aside, my papa loved trains. He died earlier this month so I cannot help but think of him and how he would have loved this journey.

Author fact: I have four books by Eric Newby on my list. Round Ireland in Slow Gear and Love and War in the Apennines are left to read. I am looking forward to Love and War because my friend has always wanted me to see the Apennines. I am planning a trip this spring.

Book trivia: there are some interesting black and white photographs included in The Big Red Train Ride.

Music: “Auld Lang Syne”, “One Day Over the Urals”, Judy Garland, and “Lord Dismiss Us with Your Blessing”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Making Tracks By Train” (p 138).

Fink, Don. Mastering the Marathon: Time-Efficient Training Secrets for the 40-plus Athlete. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press: 2010.

Reason read: the Toronto half marathon.

I picked up Mastering the Marathon because even though I am only running a half I thought the information couldn’t hurt. The unfortunate thing was I didn’t have time to use the “secrets”. The book is begins with the outline of “three magic bullets” and exactly how effective each “bullet” is to your training. The bullets are actually three different workouts designed to maximize your potential as a runner. They are as follows: marathon pacing sessions, long runs and higher-intensity repeats. I know what you are thinking – they sound like a variation of the three specific training runs you should already be doing to train for any distance. In other words, tempo, long and fartleks. The difference is Fink outlines training plans based on how fast you want to finish. The typical 16-week plans are broken down into finishing time and how much running you want to do throughout your training. Let’s say you want to finish 26.2 miles in 3-3.5 hours and you want your training to consist of only running. There’s a training plan for that. You want to finish in 3.5 – 4.5 hours and you want your training to consist of only running. There’s a plan for that. You want to finish in the same times outlined above but you want to do less running and add cross training – there’s a plan. Finally, you want to finish in the same times outlined above but you want to do the minumum bare-bones running. You guessed it, there’s a plan. A great deal is made about these training plans throughout the first part of the book. In chapters 1-4 Fink refers to them (in chapter 5) no less than a dozen times. By the time I got to chapter 5 I felt like I had reached Mecca.

But, Mastering the Marathon is not just about different training plans and the three magic bullets. Fink also includes success stories of runners who have improved their times with the help of his coaching. While they were a little repetitive (he predicts everyone will continue to get faster), I was more disappointed in the fact most of the stories were about seasoned runners than individuals who ran their first marathons after the age of 40. For every four stories about a seasoned runner there was only one about an over-40 new-to-marathons runner.