Tag: BMO Vancouver Half Marathon

2018 week seventeen

Books Read:
21. Lost in Stockholm — Uwe Hasenfuss (ed.)
22. By Night in Chile — Roberto Bolaño

Kilometres Ran:
week seventeen — 60.5

To date: 764 KM

I going back to visit Stockholm in a couple weeks, and honestly one the the things I’m most looking forward to is running a complete loop of Södermalm. It’s about 10 KM. I normally wouldn’t consider Lost in Stockholm AKA Stockholm: Lost in City Guide AKA Lost In, Issue No. 10 a book insomuch as it counts towards an effort to read a particular number of books; however, (1) it is listed on Goodreads, (2) it has an ISBN, and (3) while only 68 pages, it has many more words than some (most?) of the poetry books I/we/they count as books. So it counts, I guess. It’s a very nice design, as one would expect for a periodical from Germany about Sweden. It gets me excited about going back. Following on the short reads, I picked up By Night in Chile. It reminded me of studying Beckett in undergrad. In a lecture on Molloy, the prof. Dr. Peter Murphy (!) suggest he read the first paragraph to the class and that I read the second. The similarities between Beckett and Bolaño extend beyond style, and I think that I should have liked By Night more than I did, or did not. It is one that I think I need to revisit, and it’s short enough that it wouldn’t feel like a waste my reading time (always a hazard). Plus I want to go to Chile one day.

Old kicks still have kick. Nearing 800 KM on these adidas Bostons.

One week until the BMO Half. Three weeks until Helsinki Half. All is coming together as well as I could have hoped. The weather for BMO Sunday looks ideal–sun with some cloud and morning temperature around 12 degrees (assuming today’s prediction holds). The BMO Half in 2016 was my first half marathon; I finished 1:46:00. I expect to crush that time next weekend. A great race and I could have a new PB, which will be bitter-sweet. I like that my current best is in Copenhagen last fall, and in the adventure that was less than ideal conditions. I have a chance to set personal bests twice in May. I’ve grown confident that it’ll happen next weekend. I think it’ll take an exceptional run in Helsinki on May 19. But anything could happen on race day.

2018 week fifteen

Books Read:
16. Steal It Back — Sandra Simonds
17. Further Problems with Pleasure — Sandra Simonds
18. Ariel — Sylvia Plath
19. My Ariel — Sina Queyras

Kilometres Ran:
week fifteen — 66.0

To date: 630 KM

It’s National Poetry Month. Why April, you may ask? I did. Seems it was started when in 1996 some members of the Academy of American Poets gave away copies of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land outside of a New York post office. Canada NPMed two years later, making this the 20th annual celebration of April cruelty. I’ve celebrated by reading less poetry than I have since I started keeping track of my annual failure to read 95 Books in one year. I’ve followed Sandra Simonds on social media for a while. The other day she suggested to me on Goodreads that I might like her new collection Orlando and I thought that maybe I should read some of her already published stuff so I picked up Steal it Back and Further Problems with Pleasure, both of which, I should add, come with five-star reviews on Goodreads from Simonds herself. Who am I to argue? As it happens, I like both very much. Last fall one of my favourite people I’ve never actually met Sina Queyras AKA Lemon Hound released My Ariel, which Coach House described as “a poem-by-poem engagement with Sylvia Plath’s Ariel” so I decided that I should revisit Plath (whom I haven’t read since undergrad a lifetime ago) and also decided (since no one could have possibly thought of this before me) that I would read Plath and then the corresponding Queyras, which lasted all of three poems since Coach House are liars. Not to take anything away from Queyras; these poems are pretty great. These aren’t happy poems, but neither are the referral materials.

Don’t call it a resolution but this year I wanted to at least try to once in a while be a bit social and over a quarter into 2018 I haven’t done a very well so I decided this week that I would join the Vancouver Running Co. Thursday night Flight Crew run which sets out at a very reasonable 6:15 p.m. from 1886 West 1st Avenue (which is a very reasonable 2.5 KM jog from my place), for a very reasonable 10 KM weekday evening run. Except that I got Translinked on Thursday and didn’t get home until 6:10 so I missed out. Except that I should have remembered from the two or three other times that I’ve ever joined a social run that social runs never start when they say that they are going to, as Strava let me know later Thursday evening that the Flight Crew took off closer to 6:30. So maybe next week. This week’s long run I did some reconnaissance on the second half of the BMO half and finished feeling very confident that I will new or near my PR on May 6. Less encouraging is that Garmin dropped for the second time in as many weeks. I believe in second chances, which is why I believe it may be time for a replacement.

2018 week fourteen

Book Read:
15. The Mars Room — Rachel Kushner

Kilometres Ran:
week fourteen — 81.0

To date: 574 KM

I loved The Flamethrowers so I was excited about this new Kushner book then I read what it was about and was less excited for no particular reason that I can put my finger on except that no matter how hard I tried and I did try I just did/do not like Orange is the New Black. Granted I only suffered through season one plus most of the way through S02E01 and maybe it got better. Who knows? All that to say nothing about whether liking one will or won’t ensure that you like the other, regardless of the fact that I, as it turns out, liked The Mars Room a lot. I found Romy Hall to be a compelling and sympathetic character, depicted vividly. The underlying commentary on the American justice system and prison–industrial complex equal parts frustrating and horrifying. I’m not thrilled with how the book ended for a couple of the characters that I had grown an affinity for, but this isn’t a happy novel, and no one should go into in expecting a happy ending, no matter how much ones sympathy for the characters grows through the 300-something pages. I will buy a copy of this to put onto my shelf next to Kushner’s others. The Mars Room will be released on May 1, 2018. Thanks to Simon & Schuster / Scribner for the advanced review copy.

Lots of time and distance on my feet and knee this week and it’s feeling pretty good — good enough that I ran yesterday and today without my knee brace without incurring disaster. A week ago I was beginning to think that the brace was mostly psychological at this point and I finally got the courage to put it to test. My speed is starting to get back to near what I could do at the end of last summer. But my endurance still needs work. My current hypothesis is that my endurance is tapped out thanks to those missing 700 to 1,000 extra calories from drinking the night before. I don’t I miss them but I’m having a bit of an adventure attempting to find healthy, palatable replacements. I’ll even sacrifice a bit on the “healthy”…no need to go from one extreme to the other. Today’s long run turned out pretty good, enough so that I tentatively may shoot for a new PR at the BMO Half. That felt impossible a week ago, but today (plus a session Wednesday and felt and turned in good results) and I’m feeling rather confident. Four weeks to go.