Tag: Barnston Island

2018 week fifty two

My year in running

My goal for 2017 was to run 2,600 KM. In the autumn I hurt my knee a couple hours before flying to Denmark to race the Copenhagen Half Marathon. An aggravated injury meant I didn’t meet my 2017 goal. I was still recovering at the beginning of 2018, so I set a more reasonable goal to run 2,018 KM. Then in August I hurt my other knee. Then in September, on a crap knee, I passed 2,018 KM. And then, in October, with a crap knee, I raced the Victoria Marathon and barely walked let alone ran again for a few weeks. In mid-December I was easing back into decent weekly milage and noticed that 2,600 KM for the year was within reach. So I went for it, and on December 29 I ran 11.8 KM around Oak Bay for 2,601 KM for the year.

Running races

I ran ten races in 2018, set a bunch of personal best (PB) times, and earned my first age-group podium finish.
First Half 21.1 KM – 1:43:04
West Van 10 KM – 44:06 (PB!)
BMO Half 21.1 KM – 1:34:52 (PB!)
Helsinki 21.1 KM – 1:39:09
Scotiabank 21.1 KM – 1:32:37 (PB!)
Kamloops 21.1 KM – 1:32:20 (PB! & Age group 1st!)
Eastside 10 KM – 41:23 (PB! + PB!)
North Van 10 KM – 43:46
Victoria 42.2 KM – 3:25:59 (PB!)
Moustache Miler 5 KM – 20:28 (PB?)
The Moustache Miler was two firsts for me: it was my first 5 KM race, and the first time I’ve raised money for charity. I expect more of both of those In spite of the Moustache Miler being my only 5 KM race to date, my fastest 5 KM time is 20:21 over the first 5 KM of this year’s Eastside 10 according to Sportstats.

Going places

I’ve drawn a circle around Stanley Park over 200 times and I still love that loop but this year I got to do a few new loops that were a lot of fun. These four are my favourite.

Final run in Helsinki. I thought this city was okay when I arrived and by the end of the week I didn’t want to leave. Some amazing running history there, too.
And then I fell in love with Tallinn. Didn’t hurt that the weather was unusually amazing the whole time we were there.
Stockholm is the first city I took my running stuff along on holiday, and I’ll never holiday without my running stuff again. I didn’t get a Sodermalm loop on that 2016 visit but I did this year.
Surrey?!? I KNOW! But this run was so much fun — down the hill then over a free ferry to Barnston Island. Plus I (currently) have the 3rd overall time looping Barnston Island (and it’s nowhere near my 10 KM PB). If I find myself marooned at the Surrey Sheraton again I’m definitely going for the crown.

Missing in action: the Helsinki City Half Marathon and the Victoria Marathon. I loved idea of racing Helsinki but the route just wasn’t my favourite. Victoria, in spite of setting a pretty huge personal best of over eight minutes, the race was a disappointment and I’m still bitter.

The numbers according to Strava:

Total Distance: 2,601.3 KM
Number of Runs: 226
Average KM/Run: 11.5 KM
Total Time Running: 212 Hours, 50 Minutes
Average Time Every Damn Day in 2018: 35 Minutes
At the beginning of the year I joined a group challenge to run the elevation of Mount Everest — 8,848 metres — and then forgot about it until I was crunching numbers the other night. I ran 38,419 metres of elevation in 2018, or the Everest summit 4.3 times.

Running’s free right?

When I first started running I bought a pair of adidas shoes at Costco for $40 or something, and Joe Fresh shorts and a top from the Superstore. I still wear adidas. JF not so much. I spend a lot more on running now. This year I decided to see how much.
Shoes: $1,434
Clothes: $970
Health: $619
Nutrition: $230
Race Entry: $724
Other: $665
TOTAL: $4,642
These dollars have caveats, of course. My shoe budget includes orthotics that I was not expecting, and I probably have shoes covered for 2019. I exhausted my extended health coverage and kept going to physiotherapy anyway. Race entry includes fees paid this year for races in 2019, but then excludes a few 2018 races paid for in 2017. Other includes a new Garmin watch, which had better not be an annual expense. The bloated Clothes expenditure is just embarrassing. I expect my 2019 total to be a lot less, but I’m a very recent convert to technical running socks.

Next week: New year — reading & running goals for 2019.

2018 week thirty eight

Book Read:
45. The Rule of Stephens — Timothy Taylor

Kilometres Ran:
week thirty eight — 52.5

To date: 2,071 KM

I read this book quite a while ago and I had a problem with it and I wanted to ask Taylor about it but then I didn’t and then I forgot about it and then I realized that I’d forgotten about it so I hadn’t added it here so now here I am adding it here, but without getting around to asking the author about it. Anyway, I really liked Taylor’s earlier book Stanley Park and apparently Taylor did too because Rule of Stephens feels very Stanley Park. The formula at least: struggling and flawed but likeable protagonist who is exceptional at this one very niche thing who ends up courting a wealthy investor only to find that they’ve made a deal with the devil. Within the first few pages I’ve grown an affinity for the protagonist Catherine Bach and I have this growing feeling of dread waiting to read what Taylor is going to do to them. It’s a good book and of course its fans will say that there’s so much more to it than the cursory glossing over (wait is that redundant? Hmmm…) that I’ve given here and that’s maybe true. But still.

The office hosted a conference at the Sheraton on 104th in Surrey which meant that I was the lucky duck that got to spend a couple nights at the Sheraton on 104th in Surrey. So I took a look at Strava Global Heatmaps for something fun to do Saturday evening. Downhill heading east on 104th approx. 5 KM from the hotel is a little ferry that carries two or three cars at a time over the Fraser River to Barnston Island, which happens to have a perfect 10 KM perimeter road. So that’s fun. The island is farmland complete with medium and large dogs behind fences that want to eat me, and medium and large dogs not behind fences that just lazily lay on the road as I run by. Free-range chicken farm. Herb farm. Cattle and sheep and donkeys. Abandoned and derelict houses. With my overactive imagination I spent the last couple kilometres expecting to run into (and then away from) the Sawyer family at any moment. A ferry ride back across Parson’s Channel to the mainland and then the long slow slog back up the 104th Avenue hill to Guildford. A nice change of scenery to usher in the beginning of my taper. Two weeks until Victoria Marathon.