Category: Read Run Write

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.

2019 week thirty one

Book Read
29. No, Wait. Yep. Definitely Still Hate Myself – Robert Fitterman

Kilometres Ran
week thirty one – 42.3

2019 to date: 1,457 KM

I picked up this long poem expecting a bit of dark humour but instead found only dark. It’s not funny at all. Okay, there are accidental moments of humour sprinkled here and there, but over all it’s just banal, self deprecation that goes on for 88 pages. Fitterman trolls social media and blogs to compile a singular voice of abject sadness. Not this one though, as far as I could tell. The endeavour is interesting, and the way in which he manages to string it all together so that it seems to be coming from one voice is impressive, but otherwise it’s really rather meh. I mean, I’ve encountered the very real people whom Fitterman gives a mic with this work, and I’ve muted them. The (surprisingly?) out of print book is available for free as a PDF press proof here in case you’re in a fine, level mood or better (worse?) and have had just about enough of that shit.

Finish line sprint for a 40:40 at the 2019 VFAC Summerfast 10K. Photo by Taylor Smith (cropped).

So it happened that I was at Summerfast 10K to run around Stanley Park and I ran into local marathoner extraordinaire Walter Downey (PS this link will only work until his next marathon PB) and we got to talking about running and he asked me about what I was up to and I told him about my long goal to get into Boston #125 in 2021 and that meant running a late summer / early autumn 2020 marathon to go along with turning one year older and therefore ten minute qualifying time slower next year. If you’re confused, imagine moi. So Downey took pity on me and set me straight on how Boston qualifying actually works and then I said, “Oh.” And then, just to be sure, I asked, “So, what you’re saying is that I can run a marathon this fall that would qualify me for Boston #125 in 2021 and if things go terribly I won’t have proverbially put all my eggs in one basket?” and he said, “Yes.” So I asked, “What do you recom…” “CIM,” he replied. So I ran Summerfast and then for the next week I was basically that kid in The Wizard.

The Wizard California GIF from Thewizard GIFs

(Have you guessed my BQ age category yet?). So after a few days pondering and without confirmed time off approval from the office and with only about 4% space remaining I registered to run the California International Marathon in Sacramento, CA on December 8 and then booked a hotel and then booked a flight and then I met my past Mile2Marathon coach Kevin Coffey for coffee and asked if he’d be willing and interested in doing another marathon build with me and he said, “Yes.” Next week is sixteen weeks from CIM and Kevin and I start building on Thursday. I’m pretty damn excited.

2019 week thirty

Book Read
28. Altered States of Consciousness: Experiences Out of Time and Self – Marc Wittmann

Kilometres Ran
week thirty – 33.5

yeah but also 10.4 KM hike & 147.4 KM bicycling

2019 to date: 1,415 KM

This little book translated by Philippa Hurd explores consciousness and the experience of through three long essays (okay fine chapters) focusing on altered states of consciousness (i.e., drug use), mindfulness meditation, embodiment, and experience of time and timelessness. I don’t remember why I picked up this book but I’m happy that I did. I really enjoyed Wittmann’s intersecting literature, philosophy and psychology, making for an entertaining and accessible read, without too many trauma flashback to the directed study I did in undergrad on Edmund Husserl’s Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Many gems to pull completely out of context in here, especially this favourite from the third part: “Boredom actually means that we find ourselves boring. It’s the intensive self-reference: we are bored with ourselves. We are tired of ourselves.” Wittman goes on to quote Rudiger Safranski on Heidegger:

Pure time, its pure presence. Boredom – that is, the moment when no one notices that time is passing because it will not just then pass, then one cannot drive it away, make it pass, or, as the saying goes, fill it meaningfully. … It refuses to pass, it stands still, it holds one i inert immobility, it “thralls.” This comprehensive paralysis reveals that time is not simply a medium in which we move, but that it is something that we produce out of ourselves.

Wittman on Rudiger on Heidegger

We have all experienced time slowing to a crawl when we’re bored. Apparently, if you’re bored it’s because you are boring, and your boring ass’s boringness actually slows your own perception of the passage of time. But maybe I’m misinterpreting. Who knows? It’s worth reading it yourself to find out, I think.

At Eagle Bluffs

Another week and a low running score but no races to blame. Instead, on Saturday Stephanie and I hiked Cypress to Black Mountain and Cabin Lake and Eagle Bluffs with some people from her office and I use the term “with” loosely because apparently they thought that the hike up to the Bluffs was a race, and once we caught up and had a group photo the race was back on back down to the parking lot (and beer).

At the top of Black Mountain, with the birds.

We stopped again on the way back down and Stephanie got to feed the Whisky Jacks and I was thinking about taking a dive into Cabin Lake but ultimately decided it was a bit too chilly (the air, not the water, which seemed warmer than I’d expected it to feel). We had a good time in spite to getting pretty muddy trudging through the remnants from the downpour the night before. I would like to do it again, maybe not all the way to the Bluffs but I definitely see the appeal of Cabin Lake on a hot summer’s day. I’m in a bit of a running lull right now and that’s okay. I set out to run a race each month in 2019 and seven months into the year I have run thirteen races. So/but, I don’t have a race planned in August. Initially I figured I wouldn’t have any troubling finding one, but in reality not that many races happen in August, so it seems. I won the Seawheeze lottery but declined the entry. (And frankly, when I saw the vomit shorts for 2019 I knew I’d made the right decision.) If I decide that I need an August race my last minute option is the final of the Vancouver Falcons track series: a 10,000 on the oval up at UBC. However, the idea of 25 laps around a track a week and a bit before the Coho Run 14 KM (it’s a maybe) and a couple before the Eastside 10K (it’s a definitely) and a month before the North Van 10 KM (last 2019 chance for sub 40 minute 10 KM), the VFAC 10,000 seems unlikely. But who knows, I might get bored by then.