forty two by forty two week four and five

Books Read[ing]:
11. Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse — Ed. John Joseph Adams
12. Everything is Awful and You’re a Terrible Person — Daniel Zomparelli
13. Ultramarathon Man — Dean Karnazes

Kilometres Ran:
week thirteen — 80.5
week fourteen — 60.2
To date: 788 km

I didn’t want to double up weeks and yet here I am doubling up weeks and I blame my reading or lack there of. I read a story, then put the book down for who knows how long and get distracted, usually by obsessively playing The Division on Xbox. I’m an addict. It’s not my only addiction. I was reading about history of The North Face and Patagonia clothing brands in an article I cannot remember where and somehow, I don’t remember how, Dean Karnazes came up and I thought that he was sort of interesting so I got a copy of his book and read the first half in which he writes about running the Western States ultramarathon. There were bits of his biography that were close to home. For instance, I ran track in high school and then didn’t run again for nearly 20 years. Ran track is not entirely accurate. I attended a small religious private school against my will and in my senior year I decided to “make the most of it” and I signed up for just about everything. Including the basketball team. I was quick, but shot bricks. In no real school would I have had the hopes of making the team, but at ol’ KCS there were barely enough boys in grades 11 and 12 to floor a team, let alone get choosy about who gets to play and who just doesn’t have the skilz. One spring day coach says hey you’re fast do you want to run track? And I say sure and he says well the district finals are tomorrow and if you place top three you can go to provincials. So I went. No coaching or training. I didn’t have a school track suit (there wasn’t one) so I wore my basketball jersey and shorts. Sometimes when I’m out for a run I wonder how much different my life would be if I’d attended a real school with a decent track program. With any track program. I ran the 400 Metre and placed last, and I ran the 200 Metre and placed well enough to make the finals, where I placed fourth.

So I didn’t win. But I am still a winner, as for the second year in a row Air France is covering my entry fee for the BMO Marathon. I like to travel and I get the Air France / KLM / Flying Blue propaganda in my inbox and I’ve grown suspicious that not very many people read through to the bottom of that one Air France email that shows up in March in which they talk about being a sponsor of the BMO Marathon and then somewhere near the bottom there’s a click here to enter to win your entry. Sure, I’d rather a flight to just about anywhere, but I think that a lot more people enter those draws. So I’ve four weeks to go until BMO. My head thinks it’s ready but it’s not so sure about my body. My last LSD is on Easter Sunday (which, if not for Halloween, would be my favourite zombie-related holiday). I’ve mapped out a 36 kilometre route that happens to match the last half of the BMO. Zombie Sunday indeed.

forty two by forty two week three

Books Read:
11. Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse — Ed. John Joseph Adams (in progress)
12. Everything is Awful and You’re a Terrible Person — Daniel Zomparelli (in progress)

Kilometres Ran:
week twelve — 71.6

To date: 646 km

So continuing on with the theme of reading collections of short stories, but breaking away ever so slightly from George Saunders, I stumble upon the apocalypse, and the gay male dating apocalypse. First impressions of course, because as you can see above both are still in the works. And that’s really the beauty of short stories. For my short attention span. Daniel launched his book last night at a fancy hipster donut shop in East Van that ran out of donuts. Before I arrived. Which makes it read as though I would have contributed to the selling out, which if you would have believed, you would be wrong. Consequently, I was under no peer pressure to consume deep fried dough. Just as well. Daniel read an entertaining story that involved a Bill Murray looking dude in a Hawaiian shirt but in the story it was a “tropical” shirt because, I assume, “Hawaiian” is trademarked or something. Probably by that old Global BC weather guy. I’m cognizant of the possibility that I wasn’t entirely fair earlier when I wrote “gay male dating apocalypse” but I’m a couple stories in and, well, maybe. It’s not quite cooking and eating dog or some near future neo-luddite theocracy.

I forced my cough to get back into running. It’s still lingering, but I don’t feel like it’s hindering. I went to Forerunners because I had a coupon and gawd knows I love a deal and it expired at the end of March and I wanted to have a conversation with someone about gels because I do not know anything about that sort of stuff and I’d rather have someone talk at me than Google. Most of the time. And I still have trouble wrapping my head around this because maybe I read too much about the apocalypse or dating or maybe having lived both in some form or another but the people at Forerunners are really nice and helpful. I learned a trick to put a gel into my Fuel Belt bottle and that worked out pretty well. Except that I have to actually wear my Fuel Belt. This week was supposed to be a milder week but I modified since I basically missed all of last week. So I did 30 kilometres today and it was awful. It was cold and it rained and by the time I hit 15 km right around the concession at Sunset Beach I had to use the washroom to thaw out my (soaking wet, gloved) hands under the hand dryer. I think it might be the most miserable run that I’ve ever done, that I can recall. But I did it. Onto the next one.