Book Read:
49. Instructions for a Funeral — David Means
Kilometres Ran:
week forty four: 27.3
To date: 2,193 KM
I received an advance copy of this new David Means book of short stories. I was previously unaware of him or his work and I am not sure that I’ll bother to pursue any more after trudging my way through this collection. I see that he branched out briefly from short stories to write a novel that was nominated for the Man Booker. Perhaps that one is worth a look. Means has quite the résumé and I feel like I should have liked this a lot more than I did. The title story was dark and funny and okay, and I also liked “The Terminal Artist” about a serial-killer nurse. But I spent so much time going through this collection like running in the pool. So much work for so little satisfaction and often seeming to get nowhere. Then one day I was clicking through the Guardian online and came across this Tom Gauld comic and thought yep. But what do I know. Anyway, thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the review copy.
I bicycled a lot less and ran a bit more this week. The bicycling less due to the torrential albeit prototypical rains that have arrived in Vancouver, well, let’s be honest, about a month later than usual. So October was spectacular and I ran a grand total of 72 KM so I feel rather ripped off. But things are starting to feel a bit better so on Hallowe’en I took a Mobi bike from the station around the corner from my place and rode down to Sunset Beach and (since I missed the actual one this year) I ran the Ghost Race segment from Burrard Bridge out to Third Beach and back and it didn’t suck. I was slow and exhausted but the pain was manageable and knees and stuff worked the way they’re supposed to work.
Now I just need to not rush stuff. And with that in mind I did not run the Fall Classic this year but instead after wasting my extra hour of sleep from daylight savings time change overnight I got up at the crack of dawn to watch the NY Marathon on television and then bicycled up to UBC (PS Arbutus to UBC up 16th sucks BTW) to catch the half marathon and 10K finishers and then bicycled back home plus a loop around Stanley Park Drive and then had a snack and a short nap and then went a ran a 10K loop around the Park and wondered why I was so exhausted that I barely ran it sub-50. I’m taking tomorrow off.