Tag: BMO Vancouver Half Marathon

2018 week eleven

Book Read:
11. This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life — Annie Grace

Kilometres Ran:
week eleven — 41.6

To date: 374 KM

Normally I would have woken up this morning hung over. Not because yesterday was Saint Patrick’s Day. Not even because yesterday was Saturday. Normally I would have woken up this morning hung over for no other reason than because I drank the night before. But this isn’t about why I used to drink. This is about that I don’t drink anymore. Sometime last summer Robin AKA thetattooedteetotaler posted the cover of This Naked Mind to her Instagram. I put a copy onto my iPad and promptly forgot about it. And then a few months later I woke up, hung over, and decided that I don’t want to anymore. So I read This Naked Mind and I quit drinking. I don’t know if I could have done it without the book. I’ve “quit” in the past: I got most of the way through “sober February” 2017, but not as far through as 2016; I got a late start to “sober January” 2015, but managed to stretch it a bit into February. Each time I desobered with the intention of moderation, which would last a week or two. My last drink was on January 1, 2018. I’m not sure I wanted to quit entirely. I’m still not sure. I do know that I quit cold-turkey (not recommended given the amount I drank and for how long I’d drank) and had no side effects, and I have zero desire to have a drink. Zip. Nadda. Well, not no side effects. I used to be pretty easily irritated; these past weeks I have given few fucks about anything other than my relationships and my running. I used to have G.I. issues that I chalked up to diet and genetics; they’re mostly gone. I used to spend 10 hours in bed each night and was always tired. Now I get six or seven of restful sleep and feel fine. I could write a lot about this book, its affect on me, my journey, get all preachy, start using crap terms like “journey”…. I’d rather not. There’s one point in the book that stands out that’s worth putting here, one that I used to wrestle with a lot: Does the idea of never drinking again bother you? That question is like an onion. I used to believe drinking made me feel better. Now I understand that my drinking made me feel awful when I wasn’t drinking. There’s a significant difference there. Maybe I’ll drink again but I currently have no desire to. At all.

On the early evening of Saturday, May 6, 2017 I poured myself a stiff gin + tonic to keep me company while I made dinner. Then I opened a bottle of red wine to go with dinner (for the antioxidants obviously). The bottle finished I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. After tossing and turning for an hour or two I got up and poured a few fingers (fist?) of Johnny Walker Black, which I took to bed with a book. I finished (the blend, not the book) and finally fell asleep. A few hours later, I was at Queen Elizabeth Park. Three hours and 34 minutes later I was on West Pender just east of Bute crossing the finish line of my first marathon. I wanted to run 3:29. Maybe if I hadn’t had a dozen drinks the night before, and the night before that, and before that…I would have. I don’t know. But I’m going to find out. My body is finally getting healthy, although it’s not coming along quite as quickly as I had wanted. I was looking forward to a sober second look at the BMO Marathon, but this week I took stock of time and training, and decided to downgrade to the half. And I’m fine with that. I have two big PR goals for 2018, and clear eyes set on those.

2018 week seven

Books Read:
7. American War — Omar El Akkad

Kilometres Ran:
week seven — 0

To date: 249 KM

Kilometres bicycled week seven: 103.4

When number forty-five was elected president I believed (hoped, maybe?) that the west coast states would secede. Or at least break out into civil war. It still could happen. I’m not so sure about British Columbia joining Cascadia but whatever. But now with this ridiculous trade war over wine and oil that B.C. is caught up in with the petulant, spoilt child that is Alberta, who knows. American War imagines America has finally caught up with reality and sees no future in fossil fuels but the South loses its mind being told it has to drive solar cars and so there’s a civil war. Sounds familiar, except wine. Or maybe sounds ominous. The book follows the life of Sarat Chestnut, not a northerner and not quite a southerner either. I really liked this book — a post-apocalyptic hellscape sans the nuclear winter. The scenario actually seems more plausible than the impending radioactive mass extinction that we’re currently potentially facing. For better or for worse (as far as reading is concerned, for worse) American War drew me back into playing Fallout 4. As if I needed another excuse. I thought this book was great, especially for being El Akkad’s first novel. His depiction of the war-torn South is vivid and the characters are very well developed. Plus a strong female protagonist that I cared about in spite of disagreeing with her. This is a good read.

Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment

I took the week off running after the knee twist and shout at the First Half last week. A trip to physio and for some ultrasound and electroshock therapy helped a bit. Dr. Physio and I had an honest and frank discussion. I have three races on the horizon: West Van 10K is one I’m not happy to but willing to burn. My eye is still on the BMO in May, but I’m starting to think half instead of full, and then a full in Kelowna or Victoria in the fall. Then Helsinki is towards the end of May and I really, really don’t want to be traipsing around Skandinavia on a reruined knee.

Good news is that Dr. Physio ruled out ACL or any tearing, but clearly my meniscus is not so happy. She said I can swim, but I hate swimming, and she said I can ride my bicycle. I don’t mind riding my bicycle so I did a fair amount of that. But I also went for a tour of the YWCA Health + Fitness Centre down on Hornby — the one I walk past going to and from physio. It seems nice, and SC has been going steady there longer than with me. She seems to like it, and it’s nearly half the cost of the Robert Lee YM on Burrard. So I’m considering forcing myself to go swim once or twice a week, hate it or not, and it will be nice to have access to bikes for those rainy days, even if those bikes go nowhere.

week nineteen

Books Read:
31. Ticknor — Sheila Heti
32. Pound @ Guantanamo — Clint Burnham

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 48.72
to date — 607.16

I read Ticknor in one round-trip transit ride to-and-from work. It’s pretty short. But short is good sometimes too. You’ve noticed the amount of poetry in these posts, yes? Ticknor was not what I was expecting. It’s nothing like How Should a Person Be?. There were times when I was reading Ticknor and it felt like I was reading Kafka. My edition has an introduction by Ben Lerner and I didn’t bother reading it and then I finished Ticknor and I was around Nanaimo Station and still had another four stops on the Skytrain to go so I decided to take a look at what Benny had to say about the book and he writes that Ticknor reminds him of Kafka’s “The Next Village”. I don’t recall reading “The Next Village” and there’s a good chance that I have not. Yet, anyway. Maybe I should. I mentioned a couple weeks/posts ago the Talonbooks launch. Clint Burnham reading “No Poems on Stolen Land” from his collection Pount @ Guantanamo was far and away the best part of the evening. And most of the evening was pretty good. I like this collection. There’s a rather odd little shout-out to Poetry is Dead in the acknowledgements that I’m a bit confused by. There’s maybe a story there. Or maybe not. I really like Clint; I miss @prof_clinty in my Twitter feed.
week nineteen
Until lately I’ve been grossly ignorant about all the races, and I was lamenting the other day that it would be nice if there was a list somewhere. Well, there are a few, and I was just grossly ignorant when it came to my Googling. Be that as it may, I learned from a Skytrain Station ad that apparently if I sign up for and complete the Granville Island Turkey Trot 8 km race over Thanksgiving and the Fall Classic at UBC in mid November (probably the half marathon) then, along with the BMO ten days ago, I’ll have the RUNVAN Hat Trick. I think I might give it a shot. Registration closes on May 31 so I’ve a bit of time to decide, but I think I should just sign up before I convince myself to back out. The word “trot” though. I really dislike that word. I broke 600 kilometres somewhere around the lighthouse under the Lions Gate Bridge today, so that’s exciting. I’m 30 per cent away from my goal of 2,000 kilometres this year and 36.5 per cent through the year. I’m pretty happy with those numbers.