Tag: April Fool’s Run

2019 week thirteen

Book Read
13. Vancouver Noir – Sam Wiebe (Ed.)

Kilometres Ran
week thirteen – 58.6

2019 to date: 600 KM

Last year I received a review copy of Nathan Ripley’s highly anticipated first novel Find You in the Dark and I had no idea who Nathan Ripley was but I read it and then I had no idea who was highly anticipating his first novel because I didn’t think it was very good at all and then I picked up this collection of noir featuring some local authors that I really like, like Carleigh Baker and Timothy Taylor to name two, and I was looking forward to reading Don English’s piece because I’d only ever read his non-fiction and along the way through this Sam Wiebe edited collection I got to the Nathan Ripley story and it was really, really great and then I got to the end of the collection and while Baker and English and Taylor did not disappoint I think I liked the Ripley story the best of the whole bunch, which made me understand why Find You in the Dark was so highly anticipated and yet made me wonder, oh boy, if I was disappointed imagine the people actually doing the highly anticipating. Anyway, Vancouver Noir continues the Akashic Books collection of noir set in major cities around the world. I liked it a lot. If I lived somewhere else and knew the city well enough I’d probably like that iteration too. Except Winnipeg. Fuck that place.

I am not an early morning runner but sometimes I get it and sometimes it’s the only way to get the work done between getting work done. Plus this shot is kind of noir-y no?

In the words of Al Jourgensen, this week was the way to suck eggs. It start out fine but job got in the way and by the time track Wednesday rolled around I was already exhausted. Wednesday is typically my day off but for most of March I’ve been embroiled in negotiations so after a day locked in a hotel meeting room in Surrey (like Winnipeg, but closer…) I drove to the track and managed to squeeze out six and a half 1,000s with 200 metre breaks out of a planned “between six and ten but try for eight.” Thursday wasn’t much better as it turned into a 15 hour day that should have resulted in a deal but to my frustration ended up in filing for federal conciliation and meant that I missed my Thursday run. Today’s long run was supposed to be 20K easy then a slow, gradual build to 8K at marathon pace and I just didn’t have it in me today. I misjudged my route, ending up at 28.4 and could have and should have gone the other 600 metres, but I’d only managed five of the 8K at marathon pace -ish and then a jog home and now I’m grumpy and perhaps slightly less confident in my goals at BMO in five weeks. Next weekend is the April Fool’s Half Marathon from Gibsons to Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast and it will be a real test to see where I’m at but after today the idea of setting a new personal best let alone going sub 90 minutes seems outlandish. So we shall see.

2019 week one

Book Read
1. 80/20 Running – Matt Fitzgerald

Kilometres Ran
80.6

Reading and writing goals for 2019

I’ve decided to aim steady and read 52 books again in 2019 and write about them weekly here. I’ve been doing this blog for three years now and I’m pretty happy to have found a rhythm that seems to be working, which is to write on Sundays about my week, or on Mondays on those weeks that have a holiday long weekend. Some weeks had multiple books and a couple weeks had no books. Some weeks I struggled to write about books I really didn’t like. I read a lot of stuff in addition to books, so this year I might write about interesting stuff I read on those weeks I don’t feel like slagging the book I read. But we’ll see how that works out. And perhaps this year I will go back to writing something for publication elsewhere, or as it’s commonly known, [actual] publication.

Running goals for 2019

Last year I set three really ambitious goals for running, and I didn’t achieve any of them. In 2018 I set new personal bests in 5 KM (new), 10 KM (by 1:02), 21.1 KM (by 6:07), and 42.2 KM (by 8:42). This year I want to beat all of those and when I look at by how much I set new bests in 2018, my 2019 goals seem attainable. What were really ambitious goals last year, this year seem they’re somewhere within the realm of possibility:
5 KM in 19:59
10 KM in 39:59
21.1 KM in 1:29:59
42.2 KM in 3:14:59

In order to achieve these times I’m going to need to train smart and stay healthy. In 2018 I read a lot of Alex Hutchinson and he seemed to write a lot about the seemingly counterintuitive importance of running slow in order to build endurance and speed so I picked up an epub of Matt Fitzgerald’s book 80/20 Running and he convinced me to give it a shot so SC picked up a hard copy for me because my iPad pencil is still a Staedtler and not an iPencil or whatever. When it comes to certain things I still prefer analogue.

The past two years I’ve traveled to a race (Copenhagen, 2017) and raced while travelling (Helsinki, 2018). (I don’t count Victoria as travelling to a race because I go there pretty often and it sort of feels like a Vancouver suburb.) I want to travel-to-race or race-while-travelling at least once again this year but I haven’t quite nailed down the one(s). (There’s a very high contender already, though.)

But in order to achieve my time goals I’m going to have to run more than a few races this year. Last year, I was surprised to find, I ran 10 races. This year I want to try to run at least one per month. I have most of them Staedtlered into my Moleskine calendar but I also want to keep my options open. For now, this is what I have on the horizon:
January – Icebreaker 8 KM
February – First Half Half Marathon
March – WestVanRun 5 KM + 10 KM
April – April Fool’s Half Marathon
May – BMO Marathon
June – Scotiabank Half Marathon

Final goal isn’t really a goal…I will run 2,019 KM in 2019. It’s not really a goal because it’s not even a challenge anymore. Unless I quit running or get really seriously injured. The first is pretty unlikely. The second is always possible (especially how Vancouver drivers respect a pedestrian crossing) but I feel pretty confident that I have the tools now to manage any misstep. I don’t want to set a lofty distance goal for a bunch of reasons. First, if I have a hope of chasing my time goals, I am going to have to put in a ton of milage. Second, last fall I started bicycle commuting to the office and I really liked it so I want to do that a lot more this year. I’m pretty fair-weather on my bike, but once it gets consistently nice out it is going to cut into my running (my office commute is 45 KM round trip). Finally, I feel like, from experience, having a lofty annual distance goal in the back of my mind spurs me to go run when my body is saying it needs a break and, in the past, has exacerbated some injuries. So I’m setting a lowball goal. Some people reading this probably think 52 books is a lowball goal. Whatever, let’s get going.