Category: Read Run Write

2018 week forty nine

Book Read:
52. Milk and Honey — Rupi Kaur
53. The Sun and Her Flowers — Rupi Kaur

Kilometres Ran:
week forty nine: 63.9

To date: 2,392 KM

I put off writing about these two books because around the time I read them some stuff happened and I wanted to write about that stuff but I just haven’t felt comfortable about it so I put it off and put it off and then (now) social media got downright stabby at a young woman because she may have plagiarized some other poets and in the midst of that mess was an aside that oh by the way Rupi Kaur may be a plagiarist as well. I clearly missed that Twitter Outrage moment. The concept of plagiarism is one that I find really really interesting. Blatant acts of plagiarism I think we can agree are bad, or wrong, or whatever, but there is an intentionality that is necessarily there in the act. Intention is one of the pillars of our criminal justice system. So what of unintentional plagiarism? To be good at one’s craft it is beat into you that you must study the craft i.e., to be a good writer you must read a lot of other writing. How easy, then, would it be to believe that you have a unique idea when in fact it is one that you read and unbeknownst to you your mind stored away somewhere. I think it happens all the time. I’m so sure that I’m sure that I’m not the only one to think so. I also think it’s possible to have a unique idea that someone else also has. In terms of banal ideas that a plethora of people share, I think that Kaur’s books are really great.

Crapple camera.

Hey you know when you’re all like I should get an advent calendar this year and then it’s a few days into December and you’re all damn it…. Back at the end of November I decided that for December I would try to record an activity in Strava everyday, whether it is running, cycling, or swimming, which I’m calling Every Dec Day. And then as I’m watching Strava I kept seeing people I follow posting Run Rudolph Run and wondered what’s that. So I found the Strava club and the Facebook page and the Google Docs page and it looks like fun but it is entirely run focused and I’m not really entirely run focused right now so I opted to try to keep it in mind for next year and continue on with my run / bike / swim for 31 days in a row and since then I have run every damn day. It simply hasn’t been bicycling weather, and while swimming is probably very good for me and gives my knees a break it is terribly boring. Throw in some pool jogging and my gawd I might just hope to drown. Today the weather was particularly awful and rather than go for a swim I got a different sort of soaked out on the Seawall and while it wasn’t the quickest loop of the park it was really rather pleasant.

On a side note WordPress updated its editor and while currently I hate it I’m sure that in a week or two I won’t remember what the old one looked like but I still really hate it right now.

2018 week forty eight

Book Read:
51. French Exit — Patrick deWitt

Kilometres Ran:
week forty eight: 39.7

To date: 2,328 KM

I don’t remember why I picked up this book. It was not because he wrote The Sisters Brothers because I did not clue in that he had written The Sisters Brothers because if I had realized that I would not have picked up French Exit because I hated first forty or fifty pages of The Sisters Brothers and did not finish it. It’s possible that I picked up French Exit because it subconsciously made me think of Jean Paul Sartre and it turns out there is a bit of an existential theme running through the novel. It tells the story of Frances Price and her son Malcolm who go from being wealthy New York socialites to poverty and relocating to Paris. It’s dark and funny and a fun, casual read that for some reason I will never understand was nominated for the 2018 Giller Prize. What do I know.

Stanley Park Seawall loop counter-clockwise AKA the last quarter or so of the BMO Marathon in reverse, as seen from iPhone AKA the worst night photography camera.

On Thursday I received an email letting me know that I am officially a Berlin Marathon lottery loser and what I realized almost immediately upon reading the email is that I cared a lot more about getting to run Berlin than I thought that I cared (which I thought was not so much). So I signed up for the North Van Run 10K which is on the same weekend as the Berlin Marathon and is of absolutely zero consolation and on the last day before prices increase I changed my registration from the half to the full for the BMO Vancouver Marathon here in May. I’m rather lured by the notion of having a sober second look at this race, and to see what I’m capable of on a course I know so well. I’m still looking out for a fun run that requires a flight to get to, though. So we’ll see.

2018 week forty seven

Book Read:
50. The Tiger Flu — Larissa Lai

Kilometres Ran:
week forty seven: 32.9

To date: 2,290 KM

I remember one of my instructors in journalism school who use to write book reviews who said that she wouldn’t write a review of a book she didn’t like and I thought “that’s a cop out.” And then this morning on CBC Radio One Michael Enright was talking to Margaret Atwood during a fundraiser for the Literary Review of Canada and the subject of book reviews came up and Atwood said she never writes reviews for books that she doesn’t like and there was something else about bloggers being hacks because they were essentially anonymous and couldn’t be sued but I’d zoned out by then. I really wanted to like this book and I really should have liked this book and I really, really tried really hard to like this book but I just didn’t. I really did not like Kirilow. But I did like Kora and the pandemic-induced post-apocalyptic theme and the sprinkling of Vancouver landmarks and locales. I don’t think I’ve ever felt bad about not liking a book before.

At the halfway point turn-around getting a beat down from Meredith MacGregor, who was the top woman in the 1 Mile race just 45 minutes earlier. Also, just like Meredith’s, that thing on my face came off very soon after the race.

Yesterday was the Moustache Miler and I raced the 5K and managed to raise a little over $614 for the Movember Foundation. It was a great event and I had a lot of fun with it. Facebook did not like it. At least that’s what I’m telling myself…it’s the algorithms, stupid! I still think that my “Movember Foundation: Men are dying young; Most of my social media feed: GOOD!” joke was pretty funny, but crickets on that post. I did get one person ask when I’m doing the Merkin Miler — which is a great question, btw. Anyway, I wanted to raise over $500 mostly just to see if I could, and as well to run faster than 20:09. I’ve never raced a 5KM before. My 20:09 PB is from what my watch says I ran the first 5KM of the Eastside 10K back in September of this year, where I set a personal best in the 10K (officially) and apparently the 5K (unofficially). I did not run a personal best time. I went out pretty quickly and then faded and finished in 20:28, which I still think is really great considering what these past two months have been like trying to get past this knee injury. Later when I checked my splits I was really surprised to see how consistent my times were for 2-3-4-5 kilometres. By 3KM I thought I was going to die but the clock seems to say it was all in my head. I finished third in my age group and 19th overall.