Category: Read Run Write

2019 week forty three

Book Read
41. All This Has Nothing to Do with Me – Monica Sabolo

Kilometres Ran
week forty three – 49.0

2019 to date: 2,198 KM

I started reading a different book on my iPad this week and then forgot to put it onto my iPhone and I don’t get books through iTunes and I haven’t figured out how to sync stuff and frankly haven’t tried all that hard but anyway I opened my phone and then remembered that I a bit ago I was waiting around for something somewhere and started reading this Sabolo book and it was good and interesting but never finished so I started over and soon got more interested in it that the other book that I was reading, which I will probably finish reading this week. Maybe. The book tells the story of MS and her relationship with XX. It goes pretty much how you imagine, except it’s told through SMS, social media post, diary entries and other fragments. It’s dark and funny and sad and maybe not terribly original even in the experimental style that it’s told, but it’s just done so well that I was highly entertained. I liked this book. I also understand why many people do not.

Back in January 2018 I sent an email to RunVan suggesting that if they were to change up the start time of the Fall Classic half marathon to two hours before the 10 KM instead of 90 minutes that I suspected a few people would take a stab at running all three in a row – 21.1 KM then 10 KM then the 5 KM. I received a reply that read “We will take your suggestion under consideration….” Fast forward to the Fall Classic 2018, and it was status quo. But I was pretty lame after racing the Victoria Marathon, and attended the event on my bicycle and yelled a some friends. Fast forward again and low and behold the start times had changed, with two hours between the half marathon gun and the 10 KM, and then 90 minutes until the 5 KM. So I signed up for all three.

Fuzzy video frame at the start of the Fall Classic 10 KM, with fellow Hat Tricker Raymond Cayas.

Somewhere along the way some other people did too, it seems. After I signed up I was cautioned that I would DQ if I wore the wrong bib in the wrong race, or, as I was planning to do, wore all three stacked and shed one after each finish. I’m curious to know what happened because all of a sudden RunVan decided to start promoting a Fall Classic Hat Trick, and changed to registration to a package of all three races with a single bib. I don’t care why, but I’m very happy that they did. My plan going into the day was to run a pretty conservative half marathon around 5:00/km for a 1:45 finish, then a 15 minute refuel and wardrobe change for a 10 KM at marathon goal pace, and finish the day with a 5 KM cool down. The half marathon went exactly according to plan. The 10 KM less so. I went out way too quickly, averaging around 4:13/km over the first three kilometres and then crashed pretty hard. Goal marathon pace is around 4:30 and I finished 4:38 according to Strava. That still meant about a 40 minute wait until the 5 KM start. I put some compression sleeves on my calfs that were starting to cramp and added a t-shirt under my singlet because I was pretty chilled. The 5 KM went much the same as the 10 KM – I had a couple tempo kilometres to start, then finished at a Sunday jog. But this day was about finishing, not the really the clock (I will have more to write about this little factoid next week). I still haven’t checked my official 10 KM and 5 KM finish times. I don’t even care. I just wanted to run all three in a row, and I did it.

Pretty happy that is over. Half marathon, then 10 KM, then 5 KM for the Fall Classic Hat Trick. Photo by Dave Mallari

The other thing that RunVan changed up was the people running the Hat Trick wouldn’t get medals in the finish corral. Instead, they held a special awards after the 5 KM finishers awards at the end of the day, where they recognized the 23 women and men who’d completed the inaugural Hat Trick, and gave us each a really nice New Balance / RunVan hat and our three finishers medals on the awards stage. I am pretty damn proud to be amongst that group, and I especially love that it’s a pretty diverse group and one with a few friends and familiar faces from the running community. Would I do it again? I don’t know. The looped course is pretty but pretty brutal, and the thought of running it three-and-a-half times in a row again is a bit nauseating, but I recall finishing my first marathon – the RunVan BMO in 2017 – and saying, “Well, I never have to do that again.” Then signing up for another a couple weeks later. So never say never.

2019 week forty two

Book Read
40. Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan

Kilometres Ran
week forty two – 40.6

2019 to date: 2,149

I think that this book was a book that I was “supposed to” read before I went and spent eight days in Paris back in the spring and I hope that’s not the case because it has nothing to do with Paris and while I recognize that it is “good” it really did nothing for me and if it had been longer I am sure that I would have put it down long before finishing. Cécile is the seventeen-year-old narrator of a summer spent in the Riviera with her rather care-free (hedonist) father. She is about as reliable a narrator as a you might imagine from a teenage narrator with a father who behaves much like he’s a teenager still too. And good for him, but then along comes Anne and she does her best to straighten out both of them, which also goes about as well as you might imagine. I had to remind myself a few times that the ideas in the book seem rather juvenile but that might be because Sagan wrote it when she was eighteen. I didn’t particularly like it but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a decent novella, just not to my liking. Moving on.

As should come as a surprise to no one who’s been following along, my Marathon Photos from the Victoria Half Marathon on Thanksgiving were terrible. But here’s a pretty great photo by Matt Cecill featuring me in full float coming up Dallas Road a little past 16 km. Thanks Matt!

I’ve been biking a lot and in the course of that developed a bit of a weird stiffness in my right leg that I’ve been going to physio about, which is nothing that concerns me because it has had zero effect on my running but lately as my running has ramped up I’ve done less cycling and I’ve noticed that my knees have started to bother me again. I swear that the cycling kept them in check so it makes sense that less cycling would mean a recurrence of some knee niggles but i had also hoped that we were past that by now. Last Sunday I raced pretty hard at the Victoria Half Marathon and I took Monday off completely and then went for a long bike ride on Tuesday after not biking for over a week and then followed that in the evening with a pretty casual 10 km around the park and my right calf and knee were a bit of a bother but nothing of concern. Wednesday was regular physio for aforementioned leg thing and I mentioned the calf and knee and my physiotherapist, bless her, is an amateur poker player at best and suggested that I take it easy for a few days. She expressed more concern about my calf than my knee, but she put the ultrasound on my knee for a best and then told me no Wednesday night workout with the crew so I took the rest of the day off. Thursday and Friday I spun on the cycle trainer and I was feeling pretty good on Saturday morning so I went out for my scheduled 30 km training run. The run went fine, and the calf issue is gone, but holyshit my knee is not very happy with me and now I’m more than a bit concerned about the fact that I am pacing the 1:45 half marathon at the Fall Classic this weekend and then following that with the 10 km race at goal marathon pace and then following that with the 5 km race at easy pace for the first official Fall Classic Hat Trick – a dude did it a few years ago but back then you had to hammer the half because the 10 km gun went just 90 minutes after the half gun. This year RunVan adjusted the start times to make it a bit easier for us hackers – 10 km two hours after the half start, and 90 minutes before the 5 km start. Suffice it to say, knee better get its shit together, and not just because of the Fall Classic, but far more importantly I’m just 50 days away from toeing the line at the California International Marathon.

2019 week forty one

Book Read
39. The Nature Fix – Florence Williams

Kilometres Ran
week forty one – 68.4

2019 to date: 2,108 KM

I finally got around to reading this Alex Hutchinson recommended book and I thought it was mostly great but that’s the great thing about books put together like this, when they start to focus on kids you can just skip that part and it doesn’t take anything away from the plot. The really basic takeaway from this book is quite similar to the (also Hutchinson recommended) one I heaped acclamation upon earlier Running is my Therapy by Scott Douglas. If you were to distill both down they would say pretty much the same thing, and that is one way to decrease stress and increase happiness is to get outside, preferably with trees, even better near water. Douglas says to run while you do, and Williams for the most part agrees but is fine with some sort of activity.

So I chose for my activity reading, and the afternoon before the Victoria Half Marathon I took a couple hours and sat in a weather-beaten adirondack at Kitty Islet on the edge of McNeill Bay looking south across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and read a book about getting back to nature and watched seals bob and birds dive and got the inch-wide strip of bare skin between my pant cuff and my low cut socks absolutely ravaged by mosquitoes. But was I chill and ready to break my first sub-90 minute half marathon the next morning? Fuca!

I set this up to be my last chance to complete my goal to run a half marathon in under 90 minutes. My last 21.1 KM race was the Seawheeze back in August, which I ran on less than 12 hours notice and still nearly went under 90, finishing 1:31:43 and feeling like maybe it might come back to haunt me as a missed opportunity. But I was ready for Victoria and everything came together. I was a bit worried at the start, after a morning of race nerves in the stomach that lingered for a bit longer than usual. The gun went for the mass start of both the half and full marathon runners. My plan was to run a hair over 4:15/KM pace, which would get me to 10 miles in 1:08 and then run the last five (mostly downhill) with whatever I left. I went out a bit hot, splitting the first couple kilometres in 4:09*** and 4:04. I tried to let off the gas a little bit but I felt great, so I found a rhythm that felt just a bit uncomfortable that I could maintain. My goal pace at 10 km was 42:39, and my game plan was 42:30. I crossed 10 km at 41:30 and was still feeling pretty great. Other plan was to fuel at 6 km, 11 km and 16.1 km. First fuel was a wee bit late, and yet I felt a bit of fade coming on just past 11 km. Normally if you feel the need to fuel that means you’re too late. My experience with the two that I can stomach is Endurance Tap kicks in in 4-5 minutes, and Maurten in about half that time. I train with ET and I like it a lot, but I race with Maurten. I did falter a bit over the next few kilometres, but only compared to my pace to that point. I saw a 4:17 on my watch and thought I’d maybe blown my cushion but was still confident that 1:29:59 was within reach. I passed 16 km and when I didn’t see the 10 mile marker I checked my time. I wanted to be 1:08 but my watch said 1:07:30.

I took my last Maurten just before 17 km and hit the traffic jam. The course meets the mid point of the 8 km race, whose gun goes 50 minutes after the half and full, and everyone runs the last 4 km together to a shared finish. There are a lot of people running the 8 km race, and the ones I’m encountering don’t seem to know to stay to the right. I don’t think I lost any time, but it did get pretty crowded. I was able to pick it up and dodge my way down Dallas Road and still give a hard finish over the last 1,100 metres and finish 1:28:04 chopping 3:29 off of my personal best, and 2019 goal 5/6 achieved. Eight weeks until the California International Marathon and I have all of the confidence.

2019 Goals recap:
run 2,019 km – Oct 5th ✓
sub 6:00 Mile – 5:52 ✓
sub 20:00 5K – 19:40 ✓
sub 40:00 10K – 39:22 ✓
sub 1:30:00 HM – 1:28:04 ✓
marathon BQ – *pending*

***4:09 according to the Garmin app. I remember checking my Garmin watch and it read 4:08. According to Strava (which gets its information from Garmin) I ran either 4:10 (Strava iPhone app) or 4:11 (Strava browser).