Friday, June 1, 2012

I've been wanting to post this . . .

But haven't gotten around to it. Coming back from Blacksburg Va. late Sunday night (maybe it was early Monday morning by then) with D__ and B__, we listened to a podcast of an interview program targeting distance athletes. Someone asked Hunter Kemper, one of two U.S. representatives to the London Olympics in triathlon (and unquestionably the best ever from this country at the mid-course distance), "are you interested in running Ironman"? His answer was something like "never say never, but not soon."

The interviewer then paraphrased a statement by Greg Bennett, one of the all-time greats at mid-course triathlon. Bennett is said to have said "I'm not slow enough to go that far."

Here's a question: if writing an article is like training for and competing in a marathon or mid-course triathlon (a 2-4 hour race), is writing a book the long-distance analog?

1 comment:

  1. I've actually thought about this. It seems to me that it depends on what type of book you're writing. My buddy Jeff Ferriell has carried much of the water for our collaboration on "Understanding Bankruptcy." This is a long form 900 page descriptive treatise. Definitely Iron Man Distance. The sort of book that I've been thinking about writing on my own, though is more of the 200 page variety, split into 5 20-30 page sections. This seems more like a Ragnar . . .

    ReplyDelete