Tag: 95 Books

week twelve

Books Read:
24. The Shadow of the Wind — Carlos Ruiz Zafon (in progress)

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 36.31
to date — 379.04

I’m going to Barcelona for a week in a couple weeks and I wanted to read about Barcelona so I picked up The Shadow of the Wind and George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and, perhaps, made the mistake of starting with the Zafon book. It’s okay, but I’m finding it a slow read. Mind you, it is quite a bit longer than the average book I’ve been reading of late. But I’m not really getting into it so I find that I’m not looking forward to reading it as much as I probably should. By Jonathan Ball’s “rules” in 95 Books I probably should have just given up. The story is interesting but somewhat formulaic and some of the dialogue is patronizing. Maybe it gets better.
week twelve
I ran a half marathon this week not to see if I could but to see if I felt like dying in the hours and day or so afterward and it wasn’t that bad. My time was alright too. When I signed up back in December to run the BMO half I estimated that it would take me about two hours so I entered my time guess as 1:59 and it turns out that was rather conservative. But I’m not really sure what I should be aiming for. I don’t have a goal in mind at this point and I wonder if that’s not a good approach to be taking. I’m thinking that I should aim for something between 1:45 and 1:49 for the BMO and then try to beat whatever time when I do the Scotiabank half near the end of June. Though I’m really going to have to figure out hydration if I want to not die during a summertime half marathon. I’m really bad at the science of running. I liked running because I could just go do it and that was that but now I have to warm up and stretch after and eat and drink “properly” and pay attention to what I eat before I run (usually nothing, which is probably a problem too) and strength training between run days and blah blah blah. It’s more work than I’d anticipated. I didn’t really anticipate anything–just point my shoes and go. I’ve learned the hard way that there’s much more to it than that.

week eleven

Books Read:
22. The First Bad Man — Miranda July
23. Erec & Enide — Amy De’ath

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 42.62
to date — 342.73

I really liked Miranda July’s short story collection No One Belongs Here More Than You so I thought that I would like The First Bad Man and I didn’t to begin with and then I did later on towards the last third of the book. It had nothing to do with the fact that the entire time I was reading the book I was thinking that I know Cheryl Glickman in real life or at least I know someone that could convincingly play Cheryl in the film adaptation and it would be the easiest directorial project along the lines of you, you just be yourself. It’s the same way I felt watching Ben Affleck in Mall Rats. Kevin Smith just telling Ben to be his douchebaggy self and everything would be fine. Not that Cheryl is a douchebag, nor is the person I have in mind to play her. You know what I mean. I picked up Erec & Enide at an Amy De’ath & Anne Boyer reading at Or Gallery back in February. I’m a big fan of her and her work and I thought this was pretty great. De’ath is a British poet currently completing her PhD at Simon Fraser University under the supervision of Stephen Collis. I hope the Coast Salish territories gets to keep her around once she completes, though with her talent I’m not holding my breath.
week eleven
Running this week is bit deceptive because the number is decent but it includes a rather paltry 5.34 km today that followed a lunch at Nuba in Gastown. Suffice it to say Lebanese seasoned ground lamb and humous, though delicious, is not recommended pre-run meal unless running while carrying bricks in your stomach is your thing. It’s not my thing. I don’t believe in karma but sometimes when I’m out for a run and I get to (common for runners, so I’ve come to understand) wondering what exactly it is that I’ve done to deserve this feeling that I’m going to crap myself. The other day I was listening to Julie Moss talk about her first Ironman Triathlon in a Radiolab podcast. So I guess it happens to even the best of us.