Category: Read Run Write

2018 week thirty one

Book Read:
39. We Have Always Lived in the Castle — Shirley Jackson

Kilometres Ran:
week thirty one — 69.1

To date: 1,584 KM

Another title from my pile of shorter works that took me a bit too long to read and then I forgot to write about it so here it is. Considered Jackson’s masterpiece, it was published a couple years before her death in 1965. I was surprised to find that it’s being made into a movie. Not surprised because Hollywood is out of ideas, but because it’s been out of ideas for a while and I wonder what’s taken so long. The story is unreliably narrated by Mary Katherine “Merricat” Blackwood, whom I thought for much of the book was a lot younger. A few years before the timeline of the book, the entire family is poisoned with only three surviving: Merricat, her sister Constance, and their uncle Julian. Constance was tied and acquitted, and the town believes she got away with murder, and generally hate them. Constance and Julian never leave the property. I liked this book quite a bit, with it’s gothic style, gloomy foreboding and curious ending. I haven’t added sugar to anything years. Don’t touch my salt.

Has a Grouse Grind ascent ever been accurately measured on a GPS device because I’ve never seen it. Actual time 59:03. Actual distance ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

With an extra long weekend I decided to overdo it a bit on Thursday with a bicycle commute from my office in Port Coquitlam through New West then Burnaby to the edge of Vancouver, then a sharp right turn north over the Iron Workers bridge into North Van and down to Lonsdale Quay to hop on a bus up to Grouse Mountain because I’ve done that ride up that hill once before and I’m never going to attempt that on a single speed bicycle again. Grouse Grind number three and my slowest yet, at 59 minutes and change. I could credit the 32 KM pedal to get there, but the time I actually pedalled all the way up Capilano Road and Nancy Greene Way I finished the Grind around five minutes quicker. Nine weeks to go before the Victoria Marathon and I’m having to remind myself that my first marathon I started training eight weeks out and then got sick and took all of week seven off and didn’t die. My head is further ahead than my body, or my head thinks my body is way behind. Or something. So I’m trying to trust the training plan that I made up based upon the plan I made up from the internet last time around plus some new stuff like going for long bike rides and walking up mountains. Trust is a funny thing.

2018 week thirty

Book Read:
38. Believe Me — Eddie Izzard

Kilometres Ran:
week thirty — 54.3

To date: 1,514 KM

This book took me too long to read and that’s probably because, as to be expected from an autobiography, there’s this whole bunch of stuff at the beginning about being a child and I don’t really like kids. I should have skipped it. It’s not as if there were any vital plot points that missing would leave me bewildered later in the book. But I trudged on through. I’ve been a fan of Izzard since a Dress to Kill DVD make the rounds of my friends sometime around the century change over. It’s funny(?) to think that in a small backwater town we didn’t even bat an eye at the notion of a transgender comedian. Izzard was very likely my first encounter and it all seemed utterly normal to me at the time, which has carried through to now to the point that I do not understand what the fuss is about. Reading this book reminded me of how many things Izzard has touched that I really like, many that he doesn’t mention in the book at all. Shadow of the Vampire is one of my favourite films and the NBC series Hannibal I will argue is one of the best TV series in ever and I generally hate network television. Maybe not generally. So anyway, it’s a good book.

Halfway through today’s recovery run, waiting my turn at the Third Beach water fountain.

Eight weeks out from the 2017 BMO Marathon I decided, yeah, I’m going to do that. As of today I’m ten weeks out from running my second. In July 2009, Eddie Izzard, decided to run around the UK. He writes, “Of course, I had no business running marathons–I wasn’t trained, I wasn’t particularly fit, and I had absolutely no experience in running anything that long, let alone running multiple marathons.” What I mean by run around the UK, I mean a marathon a day, six days a week, resting on Sundays. So with six weeks(!) until start, he decided he should maybe do some training. And he did it, running 43 marathons in 51 days and raised a few million dollars for charity. Then in February 2016 he ran 27 marathons in 27 days (including two marathons on the 27th day because he missed a day near the beginning, the loser…), all in balmy South Africa. And all I want to do is BQ at the Victoria Marathon in ten weeks. It seems so pedantic in comparison.

2018 week twenty nine

Books Read:
36. Nightwood — Djuna Barnes
37. The Book of Repulsive Women — Djuna Barnes
(Links to free PDF from Green Integer Press.)

Kilometres Ran:
week twenty nine — 45.8

To date: 1,460 KM

Back in June the Lit Hub Daily newsletter reminded me that 126 years ago Djuna Barnes was born, and of course I’m using reminded loosely, and I was reminded that I should probably get around to finally reading Nightwood and why not follow that up with some Repulsive Women. Nightwood is a rather dense peice of metafiction that primarily follows Robin Vote around Continental Europe during the years between the two World Wars. I made the mistake of underestimating its under 200 pages. I found this book to be a lot of work, but worth it in the end. At the polar opposite of the spectrum, and Barnes’ career for the matter (one if not her first book) is The Book of Repulsive Women, which is comprised of eight poems accompanied by five ink drawings. This you can read in a single coffee. The imagery and themes in the pages of Repulsive are fully fleshed out years later in Nightwood.

At the start line, with the pulp mill cloud maker on the hill hard at work.

This morning I woke at 4:30 a.m. to prepare for a short drive from downtown Kamloops over to the North Shore and MacArthur Island Park for the 6 a.m. start of the Kamloops Marathon half marathon because Kamloops is hot at the end of July and I happened to be in town and I was born and lived there for over 30 years so I thought it would be fun to run a race there. So let’s unpack that ramble. The race started at 6 a.m. because on a normal July weekend it would be nearly or over 30 degrees by noon. I assume they were aiming for a cool morning start. At 6 a.m. there are also fewest monster trucks on the road that the race shares. It was a perfect morning, clear, calm and about 14 degrees. Kamloops sits in the Thompson River valley and the mountains were still shading much of the course. The course loops out of MacArthur Island Park, through North Kamloops out-and-back along Westsyde Drive and along the shore of the North Thompson River to where it meets the Thompson and back into MacArthur Island Park. It’s a very scenic course, not to mention flat and fast. Well mostly flat. There’s one hill at 5 KM and I wouldn’t characterize the City’s infrastructure “well maintained.” There was some pothole dodging.
I thought the vintage Joy Division t-shirt was a nice touch.

I set a goal this year to run a sub 90 minute half marathon and after having to adjust and realign I decided to chase that in Kamloops today. It started well and I was having a good time and making good time for the first half or so and then things started to fall apart a bit. I’m not making excuses, because I’m chalking these up to learning experience. Two things: fuelling, and O2. Fuelling: This is my third race not at home. My previous two I’ve rented suites with a kitchen. This time around, I stayed in a hotel and I did not eat properly Friday and Saturday. I paid the price when I started to bonk. I set out to run 4:16/KM splits, and ran 4:33 at 12 KM. I tried to recover but my tank was mostly fumes. O2: I train at 0-50 metres elevation. Kamloops is around 350 metres. I thought it might be a factor, but I didn’t really think it would be a factor. Then at around 15 KM I started to feel like as asthmatic. I couldn’t catch my breath and by 17/18 KM I had a bit of a wheeze on my inhale. It was a really strange experience. I can fix the fuelling, but other than acclimatizing I’m not sure how to handle the O2 piece. If that’s even what it really was. Who knows?
Missed the ceremony to get back to Vancouver but still got the Gold AG Medal.

So I didn’t run sub 90 minutes. But I had a great time on a great course and in the midst of not doing what I had set out to do I did a some other firsts. I ran a new personal best, shaving a hair thin four seconds off my previous best time, and in the process I was first in my age category (my first award finish) and I finished 11th overall. I make fun of Kamloops, but this was a really great race. It’s very well organized and the course is pretty great. It’s a hidden gem. I will definitely run it again. Especially since I have both a title to defend and some unfinished business.