Author: Todd Nickel

2020 week five

Book Read
3. Vancouver After Dark – Aaron Chapman

Kilometres Ran
week five – 67.2

2020 to date: 302 KM

The latest offering from Vancouver historian Aaron Chapman explores “no fun city” through its nightclubs. I really liked Chapman’s other book The Last Gang in Town about the Clark Park Gang so I had high expectations for this. For the most part it lived up to them. It did get rather depressing when it seemed as though every story of a live music venue in this city ended with the date that it was demolished and the name of the condo or office tower that replaced it. The book has lots of great historical photographs too. I liked this book. Chapman tells a good story, even though it got a bit repetitious. There’s a copy of his book dedicated to the Commodore on our bookshelf here that I should probably get around to reading too.

Burrard Bridge, Vancouver, B.C.

On Friday, World Athletics released its ruling on the controversial Nike Vaporfly shoes. The decision brought that the current incarnation of the shoes would be fine but they outlined new rules for the future, rules that effectively banned the prototype Nike Alphafly that Eliud Kipchoge wore when he broke the two hour marathon in Vienna back in the autumn. The new rules limit stack height to 40 mm and limit to one carbon-fibre plate (the Alphafly is rumoured to have three). Those rules I don’t think surprised many people. Putting a limit on the stack height seemed to be what everyone was expecting. The more interesting decision was around prototypes. Beginning April 30, 2020, a shoe has to have been available to the general public for four months before it can be used in elite competition, ostensibly banning prototypes from elite competition. I’ll link to the release here. It means, though, that the Vaporfly is fine for the upcoming US Olympic Marathon Trials in Atlanta at the end of February (and for the Tokyo Olympics later this year). The US OMT is interesting because any athlete who shows up that day without the Vaporfly on their feet is already at a significant disadvantage over the rest of the field (who have the fancy shoes). For me, though, this is mostly meaningless. Or so I though until I actually thought about it. I’ve been asked why I don’t race in them, and my answer has always been that I want to see what I can accomplish without them, which sounds all noble except that I’m pretty firmly not a Nike guy and I am pretty firmly an Adidas guy and if Adidas had made them then I would probably have three or four pairs by now. But what I’ve thought a lot about lately is the effect of so many people around me who do wear them and what that has done for the sport. I have gone from competing against myself and only myself, to sort of kind of caring about where I place in my age group at an event, to working towards achieving a particular standard – a Boston Qualifying time. In the time since I started caring about a BQ (a very recent period of time one could call the Vaporfly era) the Boston Qualifying time has been cut by five minutes because more and more people are consistently running faster. It sucks to work so hard and have the goalposts moved. It also sucks to think that even in spite of the disastrous day at CIM in December, if everything else was the same and I was wearing Vaporfly shoes I might have run a BQ. It really would have felt a bit like cheating though.

2020 week four

Book Read
2. Agnes, Murderess – Sarah Leavitt

Kilometres Ran
week four – 71.6

2020 to date: 234 KM

Agnes, Murderess is a graphic novel written and illustrated by Sarah Leavitt that found its way into my stocking Christmas morning (it doesn’t actually fit in a stocking). It tells the embellished back story and retells the probably embellished story of Agnes McVee, who makes her way from an isolated upbringing in rural Scotland, to London, then to the interior of British Columbia where she became a notorious madam, robber and murderess. I grew up in the interior of B.C. and I’ve never heard of her. The author-illustrator’s only source material is a book that features Agnes, self-published in the 1990s. So it is probably not true, just like just about every single other novel ever written. The story is good, and the raw, scratchy illustration style has a gothic quality that really suits it. I liked this book quite a bit, not always rooting for Agnes, but the story is quite good. It could be true. It’s probably true. There’s probably some truth to it.

Caught watch watching at the Icebreak 8K finish from last weekend. Photo by Dave Mallari

This week in running was not especially eventful. After four weeks of 60 KM I added day number five and eased up to 70 KM where I’d like to linger for a couple weeks, maybe two or three. I’m back to running on Tuesday and Thursday evenings after the days in the office, and getting back into it was shockingly easy, especially with the weather in Vancouver being so especially Vancouver-like – dark and gloomy and pouring rain. On Thursday evening I hurt my hand near the beginning of my run when I punched a taxi. Sure we were sharing the crosswalk, technically, I guess, but that stop sign he ignored was all his and his alone. And before you ask, yes, I was wearing all black like I always do, and yes it was dark. But in my defence I was wearing these (embarrassing) bright, flashing LED lights on my wrists (so embarrassing, I would not be caught dead with them in the light of day…) and we made eye contact as I entered the crosswalk and he, I assume, thought, “I can beat him.” But I’m pretty quick for middle age and I figure that if I can touch your car in a crosswalk, it’s fair game. My hand is fine now, thanks for asking, and in case you’re worried I’m sure the cab is too. Two weeks until First Half!

2020 week three

Book Read
1. The Architecture of Happiness – Alain de Botton

Kilometres Ran
week three – 57.6

2020 to date: 163 KM

I’ve been a de Botton fan for a while but I have a few gaps in my collection. Then before Christmas SC and I spent a day shopping local on Main Street and Mount Pleasant, which never excludes a visit to Pulp Fiction Books. These visits take longer than they did back when I lived a few blocks away and I could come in and quickly peruse the new arrivals and then carry on my merry way. Anyway, on this visit I didn’t get much farther then the new arrivals and ended up at the cash register with a small pile, including this de Botton title that had been on my radar for a while. And it did not disappoint. I think my only complaint is that de Botton tends to use “which” sans preceding comma and in every single instance when “that” would suffice, which annoys me slightly more than the lazy use of the Oxford comma but not quite as much as the comma splice. Incidentally, I also quite like le Corbusier and if you don’t then you might not share my enjoyment of this book. Okay, I have two complaints. The second is that the book is chock-full of fantastic photographs, all in black-and-white. I wish that they were most or all in colour.

Apparently this was the week to quit, and the weather definitely cooperated. I was quickly reminded that once you just get outside and do it, it is almost always way less terrible than you thought it was going to be.

Strava says that today is Quitter’s Day – according to their data, January 19, 2020 is the date they predict most people will give up their fitness resolutions. I have mixed feelings. I think New Year’s resolutions are dumb because they so often fail but then they’re arbitrarily attached to a date that only comes around once a year so there’s a tendency to put off trying again until the arbitrary date comes around again. If you can get past the arbitrary date, then I think resolutions can be great. I have read that it takes 21 days to create a new habit, so tripping on or before day 19 and then not getting back up makes sense. But I also read that the 21 days thing is bullshit. Maybe if you want to make positive change, just decide to do it, be ready to fail, and also determined to learn from failure and move the fuck on.

Pre-Icebreaker 8K warm up strides in Steveston. First race of 2020.

So this morning I woke up and dropped some Nuun into the CIM Finisher bottle I got after failing pretty hard back at the beginning of December last year and I went and ran my first race since – my first race of 2020 – the Icebreaker 8K. After snowing all week the weather warmed and the rain washed most of it away, and then it rather miraculously cleared up a bit to provide a slightly damp but otherwise pretty perfect race morning. I had set a rather arbitrary goal to run 31:30. I’d never raced an 8K before so I wasn’t sure what to expect, or where my fitness was at coming into the new year. I ran my best 5K and 10K this past September and I was rather curious to see if I could run 3:59s for eight kilometres and not die. Well, I’m alive. I had a great start and felt really good going through the first couple kilometres, and I just focused on keeping a steady pace through seven and then finish strong. It didn’t quite go that way, because by six kilometres I was really feeling it. I managed to catch a couple people who’d been leading me for most of the race. With just under a kilometre to go I was passed back by one who had a better finish kick than me, but I did manage a bit of a kick down the last long straight to the finish, crossing the line in gun time 31:40 (31:38 chip time) for 3:58 /km average (and very even) pace and fourth in my age group. I am very please with that result. My body felt good and still does a few hours later sitting here typing this. I was very close to my arbitrary goal, and exceeded my other. I checked off my January race with a smile, and I’m really looking forward to my first goal race of the year: the RunVan First Half half marathon in just three weeks.

All smiles post-race – a few of us from the Mile2Marathon crew (l2r): Katie, Meaghan, Mel, Rose and me. iPhone button pressing provided by Raymond Cayas.

Last thing: during some step near the Icebreaker finish and my post race warm down jog my Strava running odometer clicked over 10,000 KM and I think that’s pretty cool.