Tag: David Sedaris

2020 week twelve

Books Read
13. My Year of Rest and Relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh

Kilometres Ran
week twelve – 62.2

2020 to date: 738 KM

I little while ago, back when we could and we did, we went to the Vogue Theatre to see and hear David Sedaris speak, and at the end he did a short Q & A and someone asked what books he had recently read that he would recommend. He replied with two: Less by Andrew Sean Greer and a debut novel called Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh. I picked up both, and then picked up Less and left Eileen in the to-read pile. Fast forward, and I cannot recall why or how I came across My Year of Rest and Relaxation but I did and then read the author bio to discover it was Moshfegh’s sophomore novel. I think most people would think, maybe I should finally read Eileen, but I’m not most people. My Year of Rest follows an unnamed young woman (or I missed it) in first-person as she sets out to do what I suppose a lot of us probably find rather appealing in this current, socially isolating pandemic – completely disengage from society, and with the help of a veritable plethora of pharmaceuticals eagerly prescribed by a less than scrupulous psychiatrist, sleep for four months straight in an effort to reset. I mean, it sounds rather delightful to be honest. I spent most of the novel trying to decide if I liked or hated the narrator, all the while both feeling sorry and rooting for her. I loved this book. I might even read Eileen now. No, not next, but sometime soon.

Sure I *only* ran 62 KM this week but that’s because I added some variety to my isolationing with 85 KM on the bicycle. I am way behind on my 2020 bicycling distance goal.

Running has become running for running’s sake again. Everything is cancelled, and I expect that running will be cancelled soon too, since every self-absorbed Gen-Z (stop calling them Millennials; Millennials are turning 40) thinks COVID-19 only kills old people so social distancing doesn’t actually apply to them. So while I’m out for a sanity run around Stanley Park, clouds of virus factories are having YOLO picnics together. (Let’s be clear – it’s not just Gen-Z or whatever they’re called. Post-Millennial?) Today I decided that I really don’t want to be caught in the next crowd shot of Sunset Beach to go viral (ahem) even though my thorough Gen-Xness means I am absolute pro at being socially distant. So I’m not running on the Seawall for the next bit or while or for some indeterminate amount of time that I’ll decide on later. All because people cannot stay the fuck home and flatten the curve.

2018 week twenty seven

Book Read:
34. Less — Andrew Sean Greer

Kilometres Ran:
week twenty seven — 78.6

To date: 1,367 KM

A few weeks ago I saw David Sedaris read at the Vogue Theatre here in Vancouver and after he read for a bit he took questions from the audience and someone asked him to recommend something that he’d read recently and he recommended two books, Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh and Less by Andrew Sean Greer. I haven’t gotten around to Eileen yet but I finally got around to Less and it was fine like 3.75/5 fine but I was probably expecting more from a Sedaris recommendation and Pulitzer winner. Less tells the story of Arthur Less, a writer who has a bit of a life-crisis as he turns 50 and takes on a trip around the world. Less is a likeable character. Well, pitiable. But for all his assumed misfortune I couldn’t help but think that he’s having a pretty good run of things. I kept expecting something spectacularly terrible to happen to him. The book is good but it’s just not really great.

I couple weeks ago I got to test the new On Running Cloudace for its launch and longest day, around-the-world relay run. The gimmick was the shoes would launch with a run at locations around the world on June 21, the longest day of the year. Each leg of the relay started at the same time in its own timezone, hence the relay across timezones. I’m explaining it poorly. Regardless, the second last timezone was Vancouver, and Forerunners on West 4th hosted the launch with a 5 KM loop. The Cloudace are their new long distance runners. They look very nice, but when I put them on it felt like I was lacing bricks to my feet. At 335 grams they are so much heavier than I’m used to. They have nice cushion and support, but I couldn’t get past the weight. I’m pretty staunchly on team Adidas since my first pair of Bostons. At 244 grams they’ve been my go to shoe. I currently have three pairs on the go. My option two are the Adios, which I train in sometimes and race in always. They’re just 226 grams. I want to like On shoes. I have a pair of On Cloud for walking around Scandinavia and the Baltics this spring, and I really like them. They’re just 230 grams, slip on like a sock, and have great bounce. I’ve run in them a couple times, but I wouldn’t for farther than 10 KM. I want a Cloud that can take me 42 KM. They do not exist, yet, so I’ll stick with my Adios.
And then this past week I got to take for a test run currently the lightest shoes in existence, the Reebok FloatRide Run Fast Pro at their Western Canada launch hosted by Vancouver Running Co. (the exclusive dealer). As you may have noticed weight is something that I seem to care about. These racing flats come in at just 99 grams. Which begs the question, perhaps, when does weight stop mattering? The answer, for me at least, is somewhere around 230 grams. I ran down to VRC for the test run in a pair of my Adidas Adios to try to really feel the difference. The Run Fast Pro didn’t feel especially lighter, nor did the Adios feel especially heavier when it came time to run back home. But the upper was a huge difference. I like Adidas (and many don’t) because they are a narrow, tight fit. The Run Fast Pro’s upper is narrow and tight but is ridiculously thin and has a bit more give than Adidas. It feels amazing. I was really impressed with these shoes. But they’re not going to take me 42 KM. Sure, Nicole DiMercurio placed 6th in Boston this year wearing these, but I’m not running a 2:45 marathon anytime soon/ever. The Reebok rep on hand suggested 5 to 10 KM races for these. I’m curious how they’d do chasing a sub 90 Half. But at $300 I do not expect to find out. What I am the most curious to see is how Adidas responds. If they bother to. I hope they do.

2018 week nineteen

Books Read:
25. Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls — David Sedaris
26. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary — David Sedaris

Kilometres Ran:
week nineteen — 58.7

To date: 875 KM

I’m going to see/hear Sedaris at the Vogue tonight. I’ll let you know how it goes. Probably not. Tickets came up and it made me realize that I haven’t really read anything of his (other than the odd New Yorker piece) since When You Are Engulfed in Flames a bit after it came out in 2008. So it’d been a while. Explore Diabetes is a collection of narrative essays, and it was fine. There’s that thing where you don’t necessarily feel like reading each and every essay but you don’t know which ones are the good ones and which are the skippables and you don’t want to miss the good ones so you end up reading every single ones of them anyway, which just leaves you somewhat resentful at the end of the collection. It happens a lot with short story collections too. Modest Bestiary is a collection of short stories as if the Grimm brothers had the internet. It’s a bit dark; I found it entertaining. Tonight should be entertaining.

I’m still riding a bit of a high from the BMO Half Marathon last weekend and in the midst of a deep spring clean of my studio and packing to fly off to Helsinki to run their namesake half marathon I signed up and paid money to run the Victoria Marathon in October. So no backing out now unless I want to essentially light $98 on fire, which is what probably more than a few people think I just did anyway. Anyway, my goal is to run a Boston Qualifier, which for me means sub 3:15:00. I realize that that won’t actually qualify me for Boston–to run 2018 the BQ times were minus 3:23, which dashed many a dream. I try not to dream. My goal is a BQ; actually running Boston, well, I’ve been sort of toying with the idea of the 125th Edition. For me to run a BQ I need an average pace of 4:37 per kilometre for an estimated finish time of 3:14:48. Yesterday I went out and ran 10 miles and aimed to run 4:37 and somehow, miraculously, finished 10 miles with an average pace of 4:37. There was a lot of watch watching. Next Saturday in Helsinki I want to run a 4:37 half marathon, for a finish time of 1:37:24, which is off my PB by a bit, but will be my second best. I also just want to have fun and not be dead afterward. Hey maybe a post-half-marathon sauna. I hear Finland has saunas.