Category: Read Run Write

On Overthinking Hat Tricks

Books Read:
32. Homage to Catalonia — George Orwell

Kilometres Ran:
week forty two — 0
week forty three — 10
week forty four — 33

To date: 2,342 km

A year and a bit ago I went to Barcelona and before I went I decided that I would pick up a couple books not necessarily about Barcelona but with some connection to there. I ended up with The Shadow of the Wind and Homage to Catalonia. I read Shadow and it was pretty awful. And Homage sat on my shelf and then suddenly Catalonia was in the news and so I figured it was a good time to get some back story. The book is pretty great, and so relevant to today, not least for the fact that the Left still cannot get its collective shit together and just work towards a common goal rather than fighting about every little nuance of disagreement. So some things never change.

I went to physio and the physio said, no more … well what actually happened is that I said that I was a bit concerned that I was going to run terribly at the Fall Classic and was feeling really out of shape and that I maybe wasn’t so concerned about my knee, because I have self-detrimental willpower when it comes to running (which is probably partly why I’m in this mess in the first place) and she said maybe you should switch to the 10 km. That’s what she said. So I did and for a little bit there I felt like a bit of a fraud claiming the RunVan Hat Trick because I wasn’t running the half but then I figured that if I’d run the BMO Half rather than the full marathon in the spring I wouldn’t think my hat trick was a fraud so I’ve managed to justify that BMO Full + Turkey Trot + Fall Classic 10KM does = legitimate hat trick. Still wanted to run the half though. Still disappointed.

Don’t Tell Me Not to Run

Books Read:
31. Don’t Tell Me What to Do — Dina Del Bucchia

Kilometres Ran:
week forty — 33 km
week forty one — 20 km

To date: 2,299 km

I loved this book. It’s a great collection and really deserves the positive critical reviews it is getting. I’m very happy for Dina. I’ve managed to have my name end up on the colophon page of a few books but never the acknowledgements. None that I’m aware of anyway. So the acknowledgements shout out to my old little Downtown Eastside gallery where Dina happened to be in the last show I was involved with there gave me all the feels.

Granville Island Turkey Trot

I Turkey Trotted, and it was a lot of fun and I set a new best for 10K shaving over 2:30 off my PB at the 2016 Eastside 10K, and I scored my first top 10 finish with a seventh in my age category. I was less excited when I saw the posted results at the finish, with me coming in seventh out of nine. But by the time all the results were in it was 7/153. My knee is still not very happy with me and my physiotherapist said no running if I want to be better by the Fall Classic and I do but I went out on Friday the 13th and did the Ghost Race because Don’t Tell Me What to Do (thanks Dina) even though I dislike Lululemon (but have somehow managed to justify Kit & Ace). But since then I’ve run none and I’m going a bit crazy even though I’ve put about 100 km on Mobi Bikes it’s just not the same. I’m still over 200 km ahead of pace to reach my goal of 2,600 km in 2017 but for my head’s sake I really need to go for a run.

Easing Into Autumn

Books Read:
30. Rue — Melissa Bull

Kilometres Ran:
week thirty eight — 51.3
week thirty nine — 55.5

To date: 2,247 km

A rather warm and lovely autumn day and I strolled on down to the Vancouver Public Library for the annual WORD festival and I ran into Brian Kaufman at the Anvil Press table and I think I called him Kevin and I picked up a copy of Melissa Bull’s Rue, which is really great, as well as a copy of the late Jamie Reid’s posthumous book A Temporary Stranger, which I’m told is really great, and I hope to get around to reading it soon. I stopped by Talonbooks’ table and said hello to Kevin Williams but I don’t think I called him Brian. The weather was really nice, especially for an otherwise cursed WORD and yet Elee Kraljii Gardiner managed to find a table in the shadows from which to shiver and hawk her new chapbook Trauma Head. And so another onto the to read pile. I made it to 30 at 39 weeks. I have 13 weeks to read 32 more books to beat last year. Or 65 to reach my goal. Neither seems likely.

However, surpassing my running goal does seem likely. At the end of 39 weeks I should be at 1,950 kilometres. So I’m about 300 ahead, which is good because my knee has been bothering me since Copenhagen and I finally went to see Timberly at City Sports & Physiotherapy today and she basically (not really basically, ahem…) told me that she doesn’t want me running for a couple weeks, which she also acknowledged with perhaps a slight sideways eye that I probably was not going to follow so maybe no more than 5 km no more than two or three times per week for the next couple weeks but she’d prefer I just ride a bike, which is all going to really throw off my plans to set a new 10 km PB at the Granville Island Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Monday morning. Also I think that this might be my last 10 km race. I don’t really like the distance, and I’m pretty slow. I much prefer the longer runs. But also if you’ve been following this you’ll probably have found that I tend to say I’m not interested in doing that and then doing it anyway *cough* marathon *cough* so who knows? To be honest I only signed up in order to get the RUNVAN Hat Trick.