Category: Read Run Write

2019 week thirty four

Book Read
33. The Story of My Teeth – Valeria Luiselli

Kilometres Ran
week thirty four – 59.9

2019 to date: 1,619 KM

I went to the dentist the other day and it was fine and then at the end of the cleaning the hygienist said that the dentist will want to refer you to a specialist to have a look at those lesions in the back of your mouth and I said haha what is it mouth cancer because I’m hilarious and the hygienist and dentist both put on that face. You know the one. Then the dentist said “biopsy.” So, anyway, a couple weeks later the specialist office calls and books an appointment for a couple weeks later and so after about a month of thinking that I’m probably dying of mouth cancer, which to be fair was kind of asking for it throughout most of my twenties and thirties, I went to the specialist and he said that it is 99.9% nothing to worry about; however, he would still like me to see the doctor of oral medicine in September. So I’m probably not dying. I mean, we’re all dying but mine is probably not that accelerated. So I picked up this copy of the Christina MacSweeney translated The Story of My Teeth and it was really good. It has absolutely nothing to do with oral cancer but is much more hilarious than any mouth cancer joke that I might make in a dental office. I look forward to reading more of Luiselli’s stuff.

I found Gordon’s photographs from last weekend’s Seawheeze on the Marathon Photos website and if you’re completely confused then go back and read last week’s post. I’ll wait. Anyway, to my shock a few are not that bad and so in spite of my hatred of Marathon Photos I bought them because apparently you get all nostalgic (or vain?) when you think that you might be dying. However, this upcoming Saturday I’m going to try to give myself a heart attack again as I attempt to better my one mile personal best time of 5:52 with four laps around the track up at UBC at the final instalment of the Vancouver Distance Track Series. This event on August 31 features an 800, 10,000 and one mile distances. I missed the 5,000 back in mid-May but ran my first and only timed mile on the track and immediately thought I can do that faster. So we’ll see on Saturday. Although I’m seriously considering taking on the 800 too, and then cheer on the crazies running 25 laps before the one mile event. It’ll be a day-of decision.

2019 week thirty three

Books Read
31. The Knockoff Eclipse – Melissa Bull
32. Speedboat – Renata Adler

Kilometres Ran
week thirty three – 53.6

2019 to date: 1,559 KM

I first encountered Melissa Bull a couple years ago when she was in town to read poetry for an Anvil Press event at the Railway Club downtown and then read her translation of Nelly Arcan’s Burqa of Skin and then her poetry collection Rue that maybe contained something from her Railway Club reading but I honestly cannot recall for certain. Anyway I picked up Knockoff at the East Van Publishers Christmas party and finally got around to picking through it. It’s Bull’s first collection of short stories and it’s good in that contemporary style of abrupt vignettes presented as stories, like flipping through weeknight primetime television and pausing on a program for a minute or two before moving on to the next one, back when television wasn’t all on-demand. I’ve written a few times here previously my finding short story collections a bit weird for various reasons and weird isn’t really the correct word. What would happen, for instance, if you took Bull’s collection and just smashed it all together (or is it altogether)? Well, something a lot like Speedboat. Adler’s first novel was the second ever recipient of the PEN/Hemingway Award back in 1977. The novel, if you can really call it that, follows journalist Jen Fain in first-person as she navigates contemporary upper-middle class American life. It takes a bit to get used to, but once you find your flow Speedboat is an exceptional novel that I am sure every editor working today would have chopped up into two dozen or more short stories.

In the Seawheeze start corral with Katie Gordon. We considered swapping bibs. I don’t know what Rose is doing either. Photo by Gary Franco.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about easing into fall marathon training and not racing in August and thereby forgoing my goal to race every month in 2019 but justifying it with the fact that I’ve already race 13 times this year and I have registered for seven more (actually eight but who’s counting…) and that I had won the entry lottery for Seawheeze but had declined it and now you’re all caught up. So Friday evening my youngest brother was in town because his partner and her sister and father were running Seawheeze and I said I planned to maybe try to take some photos along the route and then he asked where’s a good spot to watch and oh Gordon’s hurt and cannot run do you want his bib? So about eight hours before gun I decided to run Seawheeze. Fortunately I had earlier decided against shawarma for dinner, but I hadn’t exactly fuelled and rested properly, and if I’d had any inkling that I’d be racing I definitely wouldn’t have hammered my Wednesday workout with the Mile2Marathon crew.

That Burrard Bridge is exhausting…mid yawn midway through the Seawheeze Half Marathon 2019. Photo: Tim Nickel.

I went out fast at the start to get ahead of the crowd but nothing ridiculous. I had zero game plan except to run how I felt and have a good time, and I felt great for the first few kilometres. And then the next few too. At halfway I was still on sub 90 minute pace. But over and back on Burrard Bridge took a lot out of me and my started to slip. By 18 KM I was running on fumes and then faced the little hill at Lumberman’s Arch that took the remainder out of me. I gave one last shove from the top of the slope only to find that instead of turning left to the flat of the Seawall the course veered right and another slope up and over the pedestrian bridge over Stanley Park Drive. The Seawall wind through Coal Harbour was a bit of a death march but I managed to dig out a decent sprint along Harbour Green Park to cross the finish line in 1:31:43 – good enough for an eight second personal best and 122nd overall. So while it wasn’t a great performance (top 100 might have crossed my mind over the first 5K) it was still the fastest half marathon I’ve ever run, and I’m very please with my fitness level at the start of a new marathon build. Plus it was a whole lot of fun. Maybe next year I won’t decline the entry if my name’s drawn again.

2019 week thirty two

Book Read
30. The Nickel Boys – Colson Whitehead

Kilometres Ran
week thirty two – 48.4

2019 to date: 1,506 KM

I don’t remember why I was listening to Q on CBC Radio 1 the other day and post-creep what’s his name was interviewing Whitehead about this book and I had never heard an interview with him before nor had I read any of his books though The Underground Railroad has been floating on the periphery of my to read list / pile for a while but The Nickel Boys grabbed my attention and not just for the title. I read it in a couple days because (1) it’s more of a novella than a novel and (2) it’s completely captivating. It tells the story of two boys who end up being sentenced to Florida reform school during Jim Crow and the beginning of the rise of the Civil Rights movement. The Nickel Boys is a fictionalize account of the horrific treatment alleged to have actually taken place at the Dozier School for Boys. I recommend this book. I expect it to be on a few best of the year lists.

I have no new photos running this week or last week so please enjoy this photo documentation of why my knees hate me as I cross the finish line at Take the Bridge back in July, as captured by @gconnelie

Marathon build number four officially started this week and what’s become apparent almost instantly is that I’m going to struggle with balancing running and cycling and that is not something that I ever expected to have happen. But I also didn’t expect to be cycle-commuting to and from the office nearly everyday, weather permitting (and weather has permitted a lot this summer). The problem is that after an 80-minute, 34 KM bike ride home from the office each evening I’m not really in the mood to go for a jog around Stanley Park. I’ve come up with a few solutions. Best is that I go back to running a lunch time. The problem is that I can maybe squeeze in 40-45 minutes at the most and should probably be sticking closer to 30 minutes. I did this on Friday. It was okay, but I was pretty tired for the cycle home at the end of the day. Second best solution is to bike in a bit earlier and then run before starting work. I don’t think I could get more than 30 minutes in doing that, but I haven’t tried it yet. The rest are crap for various reasons. I could run the 11.5 KM from Braid Skytrain Station to the office but then I’m stuck riding transit all the way home in the evening (which is awful). I could drive the car, but I really like not driving, or perhaps hate driving, plus the car isn’t insured for to/from work so I could only do that six time per month anyway and frankly I really like how much my commute costs on a bicycle. What it really comes down to is striking a balance between getting the marathon build work done and my utter loathing having to take public transit from Port Coquitlam to the West End Vancouver. It’s awful, and I already dread that it’s my fate from mid-November until late March.