Tag: Giller Prize

2019 week five

Book Read
5. Motherhood – Sheila Heti

Kilometres Ran
week five – 40.0

2019 To Date: 198 KM

I suppose it shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise that I did not really enjoy reading a couple hundred pages about someone trying to decide whether on not to have a child but while I am no fan of children (in spite of the fact that people seem really excited to point out that I once was one as if that is the best argument that they can come up with) I am a fan of Sheila Heti, going back to her telephone conversation with Thea Bowering that appeared in The Capilano Review Issue 3:22 along with a really great short story called The Girl Who Planted Flowers. There were times reading Motherhood that I enjoyed and other times that I did not and quite a few times when I wondered if I’d misplaced the bookmark because damned if I hadn’t already read this once before. I’m glad that I read it and I’m not surprised that it was shortlisted for the 2018 Giller Prize but I’m forced to wonder if I give this book a pass because I’m a Heti fan. It is probably true that I would not have picked it up if it was written by another author.

Lunchtime at the office.

When I met with my physiotherapist last she said that if stuff was going okay that I am allowed to start increasing distance so I’ve made the dramatic increase from 5 KM last Sunday up to 6.6 KM today. My achilles feels okay but not great but not painful just the comes-and-goes sensation of imagine your achilles feels like dragging a string of wool across sandpaper. Not painful, but rather uncomfortable or annoying. I’ve taken the instruction to run less far, more frequently, and now have a 5-ish kilometres per day streak of 16 days and I next visit my physiotherapist on Friday when I will find out if I’m allowed to run the First Half on Sunday, February 10. I am not confident permission will be granted. But I am really curious to see what will happen if I am allowed to race given that my farthest run of the past three weeks is 8 KM some 18 days ago and it’s been over three weeks since I last ran more than 11 KM. My biggest issue weighing heavily on my mind is that in it now 13 weeks until the BMO Marathon and running less than a marathon per week is definitely not going to get me across the finish line anywhere near my goal time. And as much as I like the Half course I really do not want to have to downgrade to the 21.1 again this year.

2018 week forty eight

Book Read:
51. French Exit — Patrick deWitt

Kilometres Ran:
week forty eight: 39.7

To date: 2,328 KM

I don’t remember why I picked up this book. It was not because he wrote The Sisters Brothers because I did not clue in that he had written The Sisters Brothers because if I had realized that I would not have picked up French Exit because I hated first forty or fifty pages of The Sisters Brothers and did not finish it. It’s possible that I picked up French Exit because it subconsciously made me think of Jean Paul Sartre and it turns out there is a bit of an existential theme running through the novel. It tells the story of Frances Price and her son Malcolm who go from being wealthy New York socialites to poverty and relocating to Paris. It’s dark and funny and a fun, casual read that for some reason I will never understand was nominated for the 2018 Giller Prize. What do I know.

Stanley Park Seawall loop counter-clockwise AKA the last quarter or so of the BMO Marathon in reverse, as seen from iPhone AKA the worst night photography camera.

On Thursday I received an email letting me know that I am officially a Berlin Marathon lottery loser and what I realized almost immediately upon reading the email is that I cared a lot more about getting to run Berlin than I thought that I cared (which I thought was not so much). So I signed up for the North Van Run 10K which is on the same weekend as the Berlin Marathon and is of absolutely zero consolation and on the last day before prices increase I changed my registration from the half to the full for the BMO Vancouver Marathon here in May. I’m rather lured by the notion of having a sober second look at this race, and to see what I’m capable of on a course I know so well. I’m still looking out for a fun run that requires a flight to get to, though. So we’ll see.