Tag: BMO Marathon

2019 week fourteen

Book Read
14. There There – Tommy Orange

Kilometres Ran
week fourteen – 51.1

2019 to date: 651 KM

Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Novel among a host of other accolades and appearing on just about every best-of-2018 list that I came across I figured that I should probably read it because Hail to the Thief is my favourite / the best Radiohead album (don’t @ me) and then I read a bit and learned that the title is actually a reference to Gertrude Stein but by then I was already invested in the novel so I kept going. (A character does listen to the Radiohead song along the way as well, so, good taste.) There There starts out as a series of separate but interconnected short stories that come together over the course of the novel and culminate in the planned robbery of a powwow. This book doesn’t need me to heap any more praise onto it. It takes a bit to get going but it’s worth sticking around through the end. I look forward to the author’s next work.

Coming down the finish chute. Video frame from Stephanie ♥

Today was test day four weeks out from the BMO Marathon and the test I chose was the 42nd (fitting…) running of the Sunshine Coast April Fool’s Day half marathon from Gibsons to Davis Bay just south of Sechelt. I’d not run this race before, but saw a few people I follow on Strava post their results last year and I thought I’d give it a go. The course is a net downhill but they really make you work for it. This is the hilliest course I’ve run and a couple of the downhill sections were just as hard as some of the uphills. The race started at 9:17 a.m. with a bit of a hill off the bat then into a long downhill. I got off to a great start and got into a rhythm that felt really comfortable, rolling with the hills up and down, consciously trying to keep my heart rate steady. I hit halfway at 45:39 and was one second ahead of my goal pace of 4:20/km. The field had thinned out too; after some back-and-forth passing with a couple guys throughout the first half I checked my shoulder on a meandering corner at around 13.5 KM and there was no one in sight. The real challenge started at about 14 KM with the last big long hill that kept rolling up until about 17.5 KM, then it was all downhill to the finish. I got passed by an EVRC guy a bit before the peak, then almost caught him but couldn’t quite hang onto his pace. I finished 1:33:30 for a 4:25/km pace. It wasn’t the finish that I wanted, but I had a pretty strong finish, ending up with my third fastest half marathon time, on undoubtedly the toughest course I’ve run. I ended up 33rd overall for top 9% of the field, and 8th in my age group. It’s hard to not feel a wee bit disappointed with my result, but it’s a pretty great result for me, and as far as tests go I feel pretty good about where I’m at going into the marathon in May.

2019 week twelve

Book Read
12. Lullaby – Leïla Slimani

Kilometres Ran
week twelve – 62.6

2019 to date: 541 KM

Lullaby also know as The Perfect Nanny depending on whether the Sam Taylor translation of the original French novel Chanson Douce is from the UK or North America (respectively) tells the story of a well-to-do family who hire Louise—a seemingly perfect nanny to their two children. I’m not giving anything away revealing that she murders the children; it says so right on the book’s cover. I’m not sure what I expected exactly, but given that the death of the children is on the cover of the book I did not expect the death of the children to not happen until the end of the book. What started out as a book I was enjoying about as much as I enjoyed Motherhood gradually began to spiral downward into what could become the next Gaspar Noé film. The reader knows what’s going to happen but Slimani masterfully makes you work for it. I couldn’t look away until the end, and once I got there I wanted a bit more. I liked this book a lot.

Mile2Marathon Wednesday workout at the Point Grey track, Vancouver, March 20, 2019. Photo by Jody Bailey*

About seven weeks ago I made a pretty significant change that I’ve been alluding to on here for the past few posts and I think that maybe I’m sort of ready to write a bit about it. I’d recovered (mostly) from my knee issue from the fall and was really looking forward to taking a healthy second shot at the BMO Marathon in May, and then I overloaded and blew up my achilles. Frustrated is an understatement. Stephanie suggested I hire a coach, an idea that I’d been toying with for some time. I’d covertly explored a few options and had pretty much narrowed it down to a couple camps, one being Mile2Marathon. Still noncommittal, I completed the online questionnaire and hit submit.

Coach Kevin Coffey telling me what to do, and me taking it. Mile2Marathon at the Point Grey track, Vancouver, March 20, 2019. Photo by Jody Bailey*

I really don’t like being told what to do (or what not to do…). So that’s a problem. I received an email reply to my questionnaire from Dylan Wykes where he talked about next steps and getting me matched up with a coach. But I was still rather hesitant and skeptical. Dylan suggested a telephone call. Over the phone I explained that I was currently injured, that I was really tired of constantly getting injured, and that I was hoping that having some structure would help. I also explained that I feel like I have accomplished a lot on my own and I don’t think I’ve reached my full potential without any help. Asking for help is a pretty big deal for me, and I was still rather skeptical of the process. Dylan said he understood, and I believed him.

Kevin and me. Mile2Marathon at the Point Grey track, Vancouver, March 20, 2019. Photo by Jody Bailey*

I matched up with Kevin Coffey, whom I’d decided I wanted to work with after having put a lot of forethought. He started running “late” (not as late as me…), has a few full marathons completed, and has had his own share of injury setbacks so I figured that he has some insights grounded in personal experience. I’ve been following him on Strava for a while, and I recently remembered that he showed up briefly in a post on here a couple years ago, which in retrospect is rather entertaining. So far I feel like it’s going okay. It’s frustrating at times, mostly because he’s doing his job (i.e., telling me what to do) which means I’ve been running a lot less than I probably would on my own. But the time I am running feels more challenging, and I’ve been spending a lot less time in physio. I never imagined looking forward to running around a track once a week, so there’s that (I’m pretty sure in my questionnaire I answered nope to group workouts). I can’t say it has all been perfect (singlet? anyone? Bueller?), but I can say that the whole Mile2Marathon coaching team seems to really, genuinely care about their athletes. Six weeks until BMO Marathon and still lots of work to do, but I (cautiously) believe I made the right decision.

*I am very grateful to Jody Bailey for these photographs. You can check out the complete set from the Mile2Marathon track workout on March 20 here: gallery.jodybailey.ca/g/mile2marathon/oldblueinspring/
You can also find Jody on Instagram @3oh6 and @run.photography