Category: Read Run Write

2018 week thirty nine

Book Read:
In progress

Kilometres Ran:
week thirty nine — 32.8

To date: 2,104 KM

I’m still reading Roger Robinson’s When Running Made History and it seems sort of fitting that I finish it and write about it next week. I haven’t read much this week but I did pick up a read a pretty great Haruki Murakami short story called “The Wind Cave” in the September 3 issue of the New Yorker and you can read it too here if you haven’t already used up your free articles this month however many that is (five?) but it’s also October tomorrow so new month! or you could clear your cache and browser history or you know get a VPN or something. Or get a subscription and then randomly pick up an issue from a few issues ago from your coffee table one night when the power has gone out and you’re sitting in your darkened apartment with a few bottles of slowly warming ginger beer and a Petzl headlamp. Or just read it online.

North Van Run by WestVanRun. Confused?

I’m tapering and by tapering I also mean trying to rehab a knee enough to convince it to work for just 194 minutes, give or take, next weekend. In spite of that, it was a busy week. I bought a new bicycle, one with more than one gear, which is nice. I decided to try out the indoor pool in my new-to-me building for a few laps of pool jogging and pool jogging sucks but it felt good so I’ll probably do it again (a lot again). And today I ran the North Van Run 10K and it was really great. This week has been a mental drag as I second guess myself on whether or not I’m going to meet my goals in the Victoria Marathon next weekend. Recap: Goal 1) run a BQ which means 3:14:59 or faster Goal 2) set a new PB which means 3:34:40 r faster Goal 3) don’t die. More on Goal 1 later. My plan for today was to run the first 5 KM at goal marathon pace and then run the second 5 KM faster. And it worked beautifully and was a lot of fun. At 5 KM I was right on 4:37/KM average pace and then I followed that with my third fastest 5 KM for a chip finish 43:46 good enough for 28 overall and 8 in my age group (my age group winner was the overall winner at who finished just over ten minutes before me). The weather was awful but I don’t mind running in the rain. The finish on this course, though, is ace. The last 1,500 metres are a nice downhill onto the straightway to the end of Burrard Dry Dock Pier looking out across the harbour to downtown Vancouver. I think it’s the best finish line I’ve run through.

I’m especially happy with my result today because of how everything felt at the start and throughout. Lately I’ve had to fight through pain for the first couple kilometres before everything loosened up but today I felt great through warm up and from the gun. It wasn’t easy to hold back and stick to my race plan; the NVR course is slopey but fast and I’m sure I could have set a new PB out there today. But I definitely didn’t want to blow a tyre a week before chasing a BQ in Victoria. I definitely got a confidence boost from today, but 3:14 is still very ambitious. Then the news this week: BQ times for 2019 are minus 4:52, and they’ve dropped the standard across the board by five minutes for 2020. I’m not interested in running Boston 2019 or 2020. But I want to run that BQ time. But I’m not running 3:09 in Victoria next weekend. But I want to end this somewhat positively so I’ll say that I’m still looking forward to crushing my first marathon time.

2018 week thirty eight

Book Read:
45. The Rule of Stephens — Timothy Taylor

Kilometres Ran:
week thirty eight — 52.5

To date: 2,071 KM

I read this book quite a while ago and I had a problem with it and I wanted to ask Taylor about it but then I didn’t and then I forgot about it and then I realized that I’d forgotten about it so I hadn’t added it here so now here I am adding it here, but without getting around to asking the author about it. Anyway, I really liked Taylor’s earlier book Stanley Park and apparently Taylor did too because Rule of Stephens feels very Stanley Park. The formula at least: struggling and flawed but likeable protagonist who is exceptional at this one very niche thing who ends up courting a wealthy investor only to find that they’ve made a deal with the devil. Within the first few pages I’ve grown an affinity for the protagonist Catherine Bach and I have this growing feeling of dread waiting to read what Taylor is going to do to them. It’s a good book and of course its fans will say that there’s so much more to it than the cursory glossing over (wait is that redundant? Hmmm…) that I’ve given here and that’s maybe true. But still.

The office hosted a conference at the Sheraton on 104th in Surrey which meant that I was the lucky duck that got to spend a couple nights at the Sheraton on 104th in Surrey. So I took a look at Strava Global Heatmaps for something fun to do Saturday evening. Downhill heading east on 104th approx. 5 KM from the hotel is a little ferry that carries two or three cars at a time over the Fraser River to Barnston Island, which happens to have a perfect 10 KM perimeter road. So that’s fun. The island is farmland complete with medium and large dogs behind fences that want to eat me, and medium and large dogs not behind fences that just lazily lay on the road as I run by. Free-range chicken farm. Herb farm. Cattle and sheep and donkeys. Abandoned and derelict houses. With my overactive imagination I spent the last couple kilometres expecting to run into (and then away from) the Sawyer family at any moment. A ferry ride back across Parson’s Channel to the mainland and then the long slow slog back up the 104th Avenue hill to Guildford. A nice change of scenery to usher in the beginning of my taper. Two weeks until Victoria Marathon.

2018 week thirty seven

Book Read:
44. Fear: Trump in the White House — Bob Woodward

Kilometres Ran:
week thirty seven — 69.8

To date: 2,019 KM

For some reason I decided to read this book because trainwreck / caraccident / apartmentfire and for some reason I thought that it being written by Bob Woodward would somehow make it different that the one I read earlier this year by that “hack” Michael Wolff but I think that if Sam Smith owes Tom Petty money then Wolff has a case against Woodward but of course it doesn’t work that way so I read about how Trump if utterly incompetent and insecure and corrupt and blah blah blah and that was a waste of my time. And nothing against Woodward. But I spent entirely too long reading this book while consciously, actively pondering my real time confirmation bias. So, moving on.

Not a bandit I swear. Thanks to Philip Finlayson for the photo. Check him out on Instagram and Strava

At the beginning of the week I faced the dilemma of whether or not to taper for a 10K race what with four weeks to go until the big race — the Victoria Marathon. So I solicited advice and received some really great perspectives and then was out for a 16 KM run on Wednesday and my left knee said just fucking nope around 13 and I hobbled home into a forced taper for a 10K. My goal for the Eastside 10K was to run my first sub-40 minute 10K. On Wednesday I postponed that goal, which means probably postponed until 2019. I’m okay with that. So I took Thursday and Friday off and then got up early Saturday and jogged the two and a half kilometres to the start line at SFU Woodwards. The weather was typical Eastside 10K wet. (Apparently last year it was a beauty day, but I wouldn’t know because I was in Denmark running the Copenhagen Half Marathon, which got all of the Eastside 10K’s share of rainstorm times ten, and I spent much of this week waxing nostalgic about it online and IRL.) After a ten minute delay, the race started. I got a good start and ran 3:57 / 4:04 / 3:54 over the first three kilometres. This was my first run on the new ES10K course, which traded a start/finish on the Dunsmuir Viaduct for a nightmare of a hill at 5KM up Templeton and around Pandora Park. I’d been warned that this was a tough course, so when I hit 5 KM in a new personal best time I didn’t expect much after that. The hill was hell but I survived without giving up too much pace and I still had a bit of kick left for the finish. I crossed in 41:23, which is not only a 1:02 improvement on my personal best, but my watch said 41:25 so my button pressing was on point too.

Stephanie met me at the finish with a change of shirt and shoes so I could take the long way home with a long slow jog around Stanley Park. I stayed up late to watch the Berlin Marathon and made it all the way until Eliud Kipchoge got to 30KM then fell asleep. So I missed him run a new World Record in under 2:02 and I also missed the Canadian women kick serious ass in Berlin with Rachel Cliff running 2:28:53 in her marathon debut, just 53 seconds off Lanni Marchant’s current Canadian marathon record. Lyndsay Tessier ran 2:30.47 for a new W40 marathon record, and Catherine Watkins ran 2:40:11 setting a new W45 record. After catching up on what I’d slept through I went out for an 18 KM loop around Crab Park and Stanley Park taking me past my 2018 goal of running 2,018 KM three and a half months early. Maybe I should go for 2,018 miles after all…. But for now, all focus on getting healthy. Three weeks until Victoria Marathon.