Category: Read Run Write

2019 week twenty six

Book Read
None

Kilometres Ran
week twenty six – 44.6

2019 to date: 1,245 KM

Even with a long weekend in hand I come ill prepared to write something here. I’ve been thinking a lot about reading and writing about it and sometimes I think that maybe it would be interesting to write about some of the interesting stuff that I read each week that is not in a book, and maybe not be so fixated on reading a book a week so that I will have a book to write about every week. I actually do have a book that I just finished that I have a few things that I want to write about just not today. But maybe I’m just lazy.

With my laziness in mind and today being Canada Day I decided to House to Grouse which I totally thought was a thing except I didn’t see a single person I follow on Strava do it today so I began thinking that maybe I thought it up and somehow managed to forget that I thought it up. Then I went to a Canada Day BBQ this afternoon and someone there had also done House to Grouse today (and I “did it wrong” apparently) and I mean I really should have known because “House to Grouse” is kind of a bit too clever for me to have thought up even accidentally. All that to say that this morning I woke up and biked (aka “did it wrong”) up to Grouse Mountain and then did the Grouse Grind and then biked back home. And it was fun. I mean, there was a section climbing up Nancy Greene Way when I thought, “this was a stupid idea.” But I was wrong because right now it feels sort of gratifying to have done it.

I’ve written I don’t know how many times on here about my terrible luck with race photos and wouldn’t you know it lightning struck again when I got my Marathon Photos from last Sunday’s Scotiabank Half Marathon. I flipped through the deck and as usual most are terrible and the others are just meh. Then I got an email from the race organizers Canada Running Series saying one of my photos was free! I figure that I would see what I could do with the least terrible one. However, I don’t get to choose my least terrible photo. Instead, Marathon Photos chose the free one for me. Have a look at the selection below and see if you can guess which one is my free photo.

As you can tell from the watermarks, I didn’t even bother downloading the free photo. Then I was on social media somewhere and found Dave Mallari who is a local photographer and he’d set himself up at around the 20KM point on the course and posted an album to his website. I had a look for anyone who I might know, not expecting to find me because I’ve already beaten the dead horse named Todd’s Photo Luck (it’s a weird name) and then I found this photo and I like it a lot and it’s so much better than any one from Marathon Photos so I gave Mallari my money instead.


2019 week twenty five

Book Read
25. Daisy Jones and the Six – Taylor Jenkins Reid

Kilometres Ran
week twenty five – 38.4

2019 to date: 1,201 KM

I spent the first dozen pages of this book wondering how I had never heard of any of these people and even Googling a couple before it finally sunk in that fiction means what it says it means, in case you were wondering how naive I am sometimes. I basically hide in the fetal position all day every April 1. But also, credit to Taylor Jenkins Reid. I really liked the style of this book – the story is told through interviews with people involved, without narration or even a voice to the interviewer (mostly). I really like how Reid wove in inconsistencies amongst the characters’ memories, and (sometimes wildly) different perspectives on shared events. I really liked this book a lot, in spite of not being very much of a Fleetwood Mac fan. I mean, they’re alright and I might have Rumours on vinyl but I’ve never actually spun it.

Scotiabank start line, 7 a.m. This face look like how I feel.

Today was the Scotiabank Half Marathon and I went in not feeling ready at all. I’d done little speed work, and, to be honest, not a lot of running, what with 45 KM bicycle commuting everyday that the weather allowed (all of them). Mix in some crap at the office and some crap in the house and not only am I not physically where I wanted to be, my head was just not in the game. But according to my race calendar it was also probably my last chance this year to run under ninety minutes. So I gave it a shot. The conditions were perfect as they rarely (never?) are for a race this late in June. Overcast and about 13 degrees at the start and barely a breeze. But I just wasn’t feeling it. So I went out pretty hard at the start, or what I thought and felt was pretty hard and knew I was in trouble pretty quickly. The 1:30 pacer caught me before the 2 KM marker and I tried to hold him but by 5 KM I was far at the back of the pack and really not feeling great. But I checked my cumulative average pace and I was right on the mark. I lost a bit of ground around UBC and made some up coming down the big Marine Drive hill. Goal pace of 4:15 means 42:30 for a 10K and I crossed at 42:26. The wheels never came off over the next 8.5 KM to the peak of Burrard Bridge. I just had a few bad splits.

Sprint finish photos thanks to Stephanie, who also chauffeured me to the start because she’s the best.

I managed a decent kick through the last 2,600 metres but it just wasn’t enough to make up for the losses. As I crossed the line I saw 1:31 on the clock. So it was not the 1:29 that I wanted, and that’s disappointing because the conditions were perfect for it and I feel like it’s an opportunity missed. But a new personal best. With all the other crap I still managed to gut out a new personal best, and finished in the top 5 per cent of the field, and Strava says new 15KM, 10 mile, and 20KM best efforts too. I’ll take all of them.

Does this angle make my feet look huge? and other commentaries on being conscious of perspective.

In other news, if you’ve been following along these past few weeks you know that I was also running to raise money to support the Capilano Review Contemporary Arts Society. I set a goal to raise $500 and when I exceeded that I bumped it up to $750, and just as I was crawling into bed last night an[other] anonymous donor pledged to get me to $750. I’m so very grateful to the friends and colleagues who made it happen, and I’m sure that The Capilano Review is as well. If you’re one of the three people reading this, thank you.