Category: Read Run Write

week thirty four + thirty five + thirty six

Books Read:
49. The Missionary Position Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice — Christopher Hitchens
50. In the Garden of Beasts — Erik Larson (in progress)

Kilometres Ran:

week thirty four — 49.69
week thirty five — 35.21
week thirty six — 67.32

to date — 1,375.12

Last post I wrote that I really wanted to get back into writing weekly and less weakly. That is to say that I really wanted to break this habit of combining multiple weeks into single post. And then I decided not to write anything for three weeks. Weakly indeed. There are 16 weeks left in 2016. Let’s see if I can write 16 times. On Sunday, September 4 the Catholic Church made Mother Teresa a saint. So that pretty much trumps all the “cool pope” stuff that I have to read in social media and old-people media since Jorge Mario Bergoglio changed his name to Frank and started wearing silly(ier) hats. And who can avoid such an opportunity to revisit one of the greatest polemicists of our time. Not I. As for the Larson, well, suffice it to say that I’ve met a perfect storm of laziness in my reading habits of late, coupled with a book that is far denser than it appears on a book shelf. And I’m enjoying it, as much as you can enjoy reading about the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s and find it all eerily similar to Donald Trump’s rise in the political ranks in America. Rank indeed.
week-thirty-four-five-six
For all the concerns that I expressed in my previous entry about burnout or piquing or some other such nonsense it seems that the relevant word for the running part of this piece is the same as for the reading and the writing: laziness. I don’t know if it was complacency or boredom or what, and I don’t really know what changed, but since writing about how I seem to be getting slower I have achieved a successive string of personal bests at 10 km and 12 km and on a couple longer runs. The trick was to actually push myself rather than do entire laps of Stanley Park only breathing through my nose. Next weekend is the Eastside 10 km and I have a goal in mind that not long ago seemed ridiculous but now seems within the realm of possibility. I’ll let you know how that goes.

week thirty two + thirty three

Books Read:
47. Installations – Nicole Brossard
48. Hysteric – Nelly Arcan

Kilometres Ran:
these weeks — 73.4
to date — 1,222.9

I need to break out of this new habit that I’ve formed of coupling multiple weeks into single posts and get back into a habit of posting once per week. Though that depends as well on me reading enough to have something to write about reading. Running doesn’t seem to be a problem, although having something interesting to say about running on a weekly basis is getting a bit trying. Anyway, two weeks, and two books with nothing in common except that they are both excellent reads, by women, originally written in french, from Quebec, and in translation. And I swear I didn’t do it on purpose. I took the Brossard along for some fill between the shouting matches I was dutifully stenographing at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation offices, as is one of the things that I now do in order to purchase food and wine and housing and books. I don’t know why I chose to pick up the Arcan afterwards. It’s not a happy book, as none of them are, but her writing is so great. It’s a beautiful train wreck. I have two of her books left to get to and through. I just don’t think I can do them in a row.
week thirty two three
Week thirty three was really rather thin on the running side of things, partly because I’ve been really focusing on swimming and minutely because I went to Kelowna for the weekend for my sister’s wedding and didn’t run at all. A really terrible excuse. Anyway, for all the complaints that I have about the accuracy of Fitbit and Strava they do both seem to be relatively consistently inaccurate, which is interesting when I look at Strava especially, because Strava likes to do this subtle shaming thing (in my case) where it looks at similar runs/routes and shows an overall trend. And my overall trend in Strava is that I piqued sometime back in February and my pace has slowly but steadily declined ever since. It has made me wonder if this is a product of age or because I don’t actually train or because I’m wearing myself out by running 40 to 50 kilometres per week without really giving myself a break. So I’m giving myself a bit of a break and I’m going to see what happens. Take a few days off (I can’t remember when I last took more than two days off in a row) and then go out and just see what happens and how I feel and then try to interpret that result. I’m curious, though regardless of what happens I’m sure I’ll find a way to overthink what it means. I’m good at that.

week thirty + thirty one

Books Read:
45. Davie Street Translations — Daniel Zomparelli
46. Guapa — Saleem Haddad

Kilometres Ran:
these weeks — 98.83
to date — 1,149.5

Purely by accident or fortuitous coincidence I ended up spending Pride week and the week following immersed in Daniel Zomparelli and Saleem Haddad and in hindsight I would have it any other way. Puns and/or innuendos unintended. Daniel is one of my favourite people. I’ve never met Saleem. I spent the midday last Sunday standing at the corner of Robson and Nicola watching the Pride parade and noting that it’s a lot more family friendly and a lot more commercial than I recall from years past. Maybe it’s crept up on me; I don’t remember noticing before (mind you I was out of town last year and missed it). I’m not sure how I really feel about this, or how I’m supposed to feel about it, but I’m curious to know how people within the community feel about it. Maybe it’s not a big deal. I do think that Davie Street Translations is an important historical artifact, albeit only a few years old, that deserves widespread attention. Guapa is the book that I was expecting/hoping that (the comparatively mediocre) God in Pink that I lamented back in January on here (week two) would have been.
week thirty thirty one
I’ve become a sponsored athlete, just in time for the 2016 Rio Olympics. They have nothing to do with each other. And not really. Not really at all. My employer has decided to subsidize athletic activity on a monthly basis, so I got myself a membership to the Robert Lee YMCA that’s just about a block from my apartment, and I’ve been swimming nearly daily for the past couple weeks. And I’m terrible. But I like that I’m terrible. I also like that I’ve managed to maintain a decent average running session and distance throughout this additional activity, though I’m exhausted. Swimming now brings back memories of when I first started running and I could only last a couple kilometres; swimming, I can barely last beyond a lap. It’s humbling, and I’ve fallen in like with it. I might even sign up for a lesson or two. But I’ll probably just keep on with my spastic splashing.