Category: Read Run Write

2019 week five

Book Read
5. Motherhood – Sheila Heti

Kilometres Ran
week five – 40.0

2019 To Date: 198 KM

I suppose it shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise that I did not really enjoy reading a couple hundred pages about someone trying to decide whether on not to have a child but while I am no fan of children (in spite of the fact that people seem really excited to point out that I once was one as if that is the best argument that they can come up with) I am a fan of Sheila Heti, going back to her telephone conversation with Thea Bowering that appeared in The Capilano Review Issue 3:22 along with a really great short story called The Girl Who Planted Flowers. There were times reading Motherhood that I enjoyed and other times that I did not and quite a few times when I wondered if I’d misplaced the bookmark because damned if I hadn’t already read this once before. I’m glad that I read it and I’m not surprised that it was shortlisted for the 2018 Giller Prize but I’m forced to wonder if I give this book a pass because I’m a Heti fan. It is probably true that I would not have picked it up if it was written by another author.

Lunchtime at the office.

When I met with my physiotherapist last she said that if stuff was going okay that I am allowed to start increasing distance so I’ve made the dramatic increase from 5 KM last Sunday up to 6.6 KM today. My achilles feels okay but not great but not painful just the comes-and-goes sensation of imagine your achilles feels like dragging a string of wool across sandpaper. Not painful, but rather uncomfortable or annoying. I’ve taken the instruction to run less far, more frequently, and now have a 5-ish kilometres per day streak of 16 days and I next visit my physiotherapist on Friday when I will find out if I’m allowed to run the First Half on Sunday, February 10. I am not confident permission will be granted. But I am really curious to see what will happen if I am allowed to race given that my farthest run of the past three weeks is 8 KM some 18 days ago and it’s been over three weeks since I last ran more than 11 KM. My biggest issue weighing heavily on my mind is that in it now 13 weeks until the BMO Marathon and running less than a marathon per week is definitely not going to get me across the finish line anywhere near my goal time. And as much as I like the Half course I really do not want to have to downgrade to the 21.1 again this year.

2019 week four

Book Read
4. The Third Hotel – Laura van den Berg

Kilometres Ran
week four – 30.1

To Date: 158 KM

This was a case of seeing this cover on a whole bunch of best of lists or best selling lists or some such case of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon so I picked up a copy and read it and oh boy ghosts again? That or Van den Berg’s protagonist Clair had her own BMPh for her recently-deceased husband but then they do it. Like do it do it. Like what Amethyst Realm claims to have done 20-something times IRL before settling down with one lucky spook. Except Clair is monogamous and I don’t know why I seem to be fixated on spectral sex right now either because this is a pretty great novel. Although rather surreal and I think I got lost a couple times following Clair following her dead husband around Havana, Cuba. (And re-tickled my travel itch.) This book seems rather polarizing, with people either loving it or really not. One thing everyone seems to agree on is that it is a weird work, extremely well written. And I agree. I think that once some of the best-of sheen wears off a bit The Third Hotel is going to get a lot of positive, non-popular attention. So watch for it in your kid’s kid’s Lit class assuming universities still have Humanities then.

So to recap, at the beginning of this year I set a goal to run a race per month and then I hurt my achilles and went to my physiotherapist who said “no running farther than 5K,” which meant no Icebreaker 8K race, which meant no January race, which meant my 2019 goal was, well, what Amethyst Realm would call “ghosted.” Then, in what can only be described as my own case of the BMPh I stumbled across the Try Events Chilly Chase, which featured a 5K distances. Armed with this new information I went to physio and asked for permission, and permission was granted. Hurray! Another goal for 2019 is to run a sub-20 minute 5K and I thought that, although I’m injured and not in optimal shape and currently my nose runs faster than I do, with a good day I had a chance. The race left the community centre in Olympic Village and followed the Seawall around Science World to David Lam Park, and then back. The 5K left at about 9:15 a.m. following staggered starts for the Half Marathon, 15K and 10K distances. I had a great start but quickly caught up to the slower 10K-ers whom it seemed had never been told to please not run six abreast, let alone stay to the right. So there was a lot of pylon dodging for the first two and a half kilometres. (Coming back was better.) I turned on my watch to record the run and then didn’t look at it until I crossed the finish line and turned it off to see it display 5.04 in 20:13. I didn’t sub 20 but I ran a new personal best in 20:09 official time, good enough for fourth place overall, and my best finish yet.

I wonder if I would have had just a bit more to give over the last kilometre if I’d checked my watch and seen how close I was to 19:59 and I’ve spent a lot of today thinking about it and I really don’t know the answer. What I do know is that sub-20 is well within my reach when I get my next chance at the WestVanRun 5K in March. I’m excited already.