Category: Read Run Write

2020 week thirteen

Book Read
14. The Plague – Kevin Chong

Kilometres Ran
week thirteen – 71.2

2020 to date: 809 KM

One of my favourite living writers (Alain de Botton) wrote this pretty great piece in the New York Times about one of my favourite dead writers (Albert Camus) and his (ahem, one of my favourite) book. You can read it here. I don’t completely agree with de Botton but it did get me thinking that now is as good a time as any to revisit The Plague. So I picked up this copy of Kevin Chong’s The Plague in which he rather deftly rehashes Camus’ classic, setting it in contemporary Vancouver. And I thought it was great, but maybe too great because it didn’t take long to conclude that now is, in fact, not as good a time as any to revisit any very plausible depiction of a pandemic locking down my home city while my home city is on the verge of being locked down. But maybe you’re a bit of a masochist too? (Follow the link above and find it 25 per cent off directly from the press, and between now and total lock down, they’ll deliver it too.)

Plague top and short shorts for Brockton Oval dirt loop laps.

I survived a week of self-imposed Seawall isolation and what I learned is that (a) avoiding the Seawall makes it near impossible to avoid hills, and (b) hills and I do not get along. My one day of hills reprieve was my virgin experience running laps on the Brockton Oval dirt loop. Coach gave me ten times 600 metres with 200 metre breaks and I nearly tapped at five, then six, then by eight I decided I was in too deep to quit. It was also my first time doing 600s so maybe they just suck? It was also also my first time doing a proper track workout completely solo and as much as I love the solo run, solo track workouts suck. I do not know how anyone manages to do this all the time. The rest of the time this week I spent running up and down hills and over and back on bridges and I came out the end of the week pleasantly surprised by how much beating my legs (knees especially) bared and how well I recovered, especially a 33 KM romp to and then through the worst parts of the BMO Marathon course. You know, just in case RunVan change their mind and postpone rather than cancel. Not holding my breath for BMO but still holding hope for Berlin. Scotiabank Half hasn’t announced yet, though, which seems weirdly optimistic to me but I’ll take it.

2020 week twelve

Books Read
13. My Year of Rest and Relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh

Kilometres Ran
week twelve – 62.2

2020 to date: 738 KM

I little while ago, back when we could and we did, we went to the Vogue Theatre to see and hear David Sedaris speak, and at the end he did a short Q & A and someone asked what books he had recently read that he would recommend. He replied with two: Less by Andrew Sean Greer and a debut novel called Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh. I picked up both, and then picked up Less and left Eileen in the to-read pile. Fast forward, and I cannot recall why or how I came across My Year of Rest and Relaxation but I did and then read the author bio to discover it was Moshfegh’s sophomore novel. I think most people would think, maybe I should finally read Eileen, but I’m not most people. My Year of Rest follows an unnamed young woman (or I missed it) in first-person as she sets out to do what I suppose a lot of us probably find rather appealing in this current, socially isolating pandemic – completely disengage from society, and with the help of a veritable plethora of pharmaceuticals eagerly prescribed by a less than scrupulous psychiatrist, sleep for four months straight in an effort to reset. I mean, it sounds rather delightful to be honest. I spent most of the novel trying to decide if I liked or hated the narrator, all the while both feeling sorry and rooting for her. I loved this book. I might even read Eileen now. No, not next, but sometime soon.

Sure I *only* ran 62 KM this week but that’s because I added some variety to my isolationing with 85 KM on the bicycle. I am way behind on my 2020 bicycling distance goal.

Running has become running for running’s sake again. Everything is cancelled, and I expect that running will be cancelled soon too, since every self-absorbed Gen-Z (stop calling them Millennials; Millennials are turning 40) thinks COVID-19 only kills old people so social distancing doesn’t actually apply to them. So while I’m out for a sanity run around Stanley Park, clouds of virus factories are having YOLO picnics together. (Let’s be clear – it’s not just Gen-Z or whatever they’re called. Post-Millennial?) Today I decided that I really don’t want to be caught in the next crowd shot of Sunset Beach to go viral (ahem) even though my thorough Gen-Xness means I am absolute pro at being socially distant. So I’m not running on the Seawall for the next bit or while or for some indeterminate amount of time that I’ll decide on later. All because people cannot stay the fuck home and flatten the curve.