{10 a bold pace questions} for Rachel Toor author of “A Personal Record: A Love Affair With Running”

Six degrees of separation is at play in the running world… Jamie and I run and blog (and read). (1) Maven Jamie (a Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point kind of Maven–always an ear to the ground) lends me a book called Personal Record: A Love Affair with Running and we both are intrigued by the author’s sharp, sardonic wit and approach to running and racing.  We also have teenagers so we move on to her Admissions Confidential.  We love her refreshing look at the daunting process of college admissions and she talks about running. (2) Jamie thinks that Rachel is a hoot on Facebook and in her Running Times’ articles so I friend her because she cracks me up. (3) I think she will appreciate my humor so I send her a Remanents tee and she sends me an idea for one (I love it). (4) I see on Facebook that she is going to the expo for the NY Marathon.  I mention to my LDF Jane (who herself is an avid reader–and running the NY Marathon with her medical school buddy Denise) that if she happens to see the Moeben booth, she can get free arm sleeves if she buys Rachel’s book. (5) Jane meets Rachel and they share a fun “expo moment”–worlds collide! Here they are together, an admired author and a treasured friend. (6) Rachel was kind enough to be the first to answer our A Bold Pace running adaption of the Proust Questionnaire and we are thrilled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Running skirt: friend or foe? BFF

2. If you could run with any 3 people (they don’t have to be runners or alive) who would it be? Too overwhelming to answer; too many good people alive and dead to choose from.

3. What traits do you most value in your running friends? Most of all, good conversation not about running; people who can teach stuff and push me to run harder; those who are willing to listen to me whine about being cold.

4. The one running item (gear/sustenance/song) you cannot live without? Running bra. Seriously big ta-tas.

5. Describe your present state of (running) mind? After years of leading marathon pace groups, I’ve rediscovered how much fun it is to do a marathon and not give a hoot about your time. If I want to stop and get Ben and Jerry’s at mile 18, I can. If I want to negative split, I can. If I find someone really interesting to talk with, I’ll run at her pace. I’m in it for the fun and companionship these days.

6. What running superstition do you always heed? A good pre-race poop always helps.

7. Do you mantra? You’re latest? Nope. Maybe if I were a poet, but I’m a nonfiction writer.

8. How many students have you converted to maniacal distance runners? to maniacal writers? My students tend to be smarter and more measured than I. So while some will do marathons, or write prodigiously, they generally live pretty balanced lives. Unlike, um, other maniacal people.

9. What is the chapter of your book you are most likely to read at a book event and why? Depends on if I want to make the audience laugh or cry. For crying times, the one about pacing at Western States or my first unofficial pacing gig at the 2001 NYC marathon. For laughs, I tend to do “Speed Goggles.” I like to read “The Watch” chapter because it’s short and people often comment on the size of my watch.

10. Who are your favorite contemporary writers? Whoever’s written whatever good book I’ve most recently read. I just taught (for the third time) Thomas Lynch’s collection of essays, The Undertaking. (He’s a poet/undertaker in Michigan.) It is one of the most beautiful, profound, and funny books I have ever read, and my students respond to it as if I have given them a gift. Which, in fact, I have.

*Extra credit* Do you still only run with mostly men (because we would all like you to come run with us sometime)?! I run with whomever will have me.. Even after three years in Spokane I have yet to find a regular group, so I mostly run by myself these days. But in recent marathons I’ve hooked up with friends or strangers, and have enjoyed those races as if they were Sunday morning long runs. I like to be invited along by both men and women. Ask me. I’ll be delighted to run with you.

Thanks Rachel, you’re the best.   We are honored to have you as a new LDF!

Rachel Toor’s ambition, on graduating from Yale University, was to work on a dude ranch in Wyoming (never having been to a dude ranch — or to Wyoming). Moving to Missoula, Montana, for an MFA in creative writing is the closest she’s come. After a dozen years as an editor of scholarly books, at Oxford and Duke University Presses, she slid down the ladder of social mobility and did a stint in college admissions, quitting to write Admissions Confidential: An Insider’s Account of the Elite College Selection Process (St. Martin’s, 2001) in an attempt to demystify an arcane and brutalizing rite of passage. Her most recent book is The Pig and I: How I Learned to Love Men (Almost) As Much as I Love My Pets (Penguin, 2005) and the University of Nebraska Press will publish her next book, Personal Record: A Love Affair with Running. Rachel has a monthly column in The Chronicle of Higher Education and writes the “Finishing Kick” essay every other month in Running Times magazine, where she is a Senior Writer. Her work has appeared in The LA Times, Glamour, Reader’s Digest, Marathon&Beyond and a variety of other more academically-oriented publications. She is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the Inland Northwest Center for Writers in Spokane, the graduate writing program of Eastern Washington University.

Tagged as: NYC Marathon, Questionnaire, Remanents