Tag: Half Marathon

2020 week fifty two

My year in review

Books Read: 31

Kilometres Ran: 2,591

Kilometres Cycled: 2,644

Times hit by a dumb fuck in a truck cycling: 1

Reading

When I started this blog a few years ago the goal was to read 95 books in the year and write weekly here about what I’d read. Since then I’ve read less and written more, until this year. This year my reading goal was 45 books “and other stuff” and I was doing okay until things went sideways back at the beginning of August. I ended up at 31 for the year, and I’m about half way through number 32, which I guess will be 2021 number one. In the past I’ve broken down my reading list and chosen a few highlights. This year I want to focus on just three. I read three books that, in spite of my biases going in, changed the way I think.

I wish that everyone would read these three books. I also know that the people who most need to read these three books probably won’t, or if they do, their brain will shut off while they read them. One can hope, though. Ordered by author.

Photo ordered by aesthetics.

Bikenomics by Elly Blue
All the anti-cycling greatest hits (and obscure favourites) decimated by facts. Whataboutism doesn’t even survive.

How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
It is not easy to casually believe you’re not racist only to be forced to confront all the ways that racism is systemic within society and it’s not enough to simply not be racists but you need to be overtly antiracist. And by you I mean me. But there’s hope.

The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale
What does “defund the police” actually mean? “Abolish the police” sounds terrifying. Read this and remap your brain. Also, ACAB.

Running (& Cycling)

It was quite the year, hey? Normally my year in review recaps accomplishments and sets goals for the year that follows. I did accomplish a few things this year worth noting. My top three:

I have raced the 5K with Courtney McEwan twice. Both times we finished seconds apart. This time over a minute faster than the first. This Dave Mallari photo is one of my favourite race photos all time.

1. Ran a new fastest 5K in 19:04 at West Van Run in March, then another in 19:02 in a solo time trial for the Mile2Marathon Virtual Race Series in May.

Staring down (hill) my fastest mile (so far).

2. Ran a new fastest Mile in 5:18 and then two days later tried again and ran 5:16 for the June leg of the Mile2Marathon Virtual Race Series. Unofficial, of course. Also, gloriously downhill all the way. Think you can do better? Here’s the Strava segment (hint: you definitely can).

For Halloween, I stitched back together the stinky, bloody (unwashed) jersey paramedics had cut off me, and went for a ride. Bit of a metaphor for 2020.

3. Didn’t die. If you’re new here and want to get caught up start here and just work your way forward.

This blog started as a public diary of sorts for my running (and reading) life, but then a couple people started actually reading along so I added a Subscribe plugin and a bunch of people (bunch is generous) actually subscribed. Feeling obliged helped keep me posting mostly weekly (weakly?) per my self-imposed social contract. Then I went for a bike ride and got hit by a truck. I’ve written about my experience and subsequent recovery trials four times in the twenty weeks since August 3. And I’m sure my lawyer is going to have fits about all four, plus this one. In B.C. you don’t sue the driver, you make a claim against their insurance, and the Insurance Corp of B.C. has a monopoly. And they’re awful (hence the need for a lawyer). They also have a well established propensity to troll the internet looking for reasons to limit or diminish a claim. It’s unlikely they have read this or my other post-crash posts, but it is absolutely certain that they will.

On December 19 – 139 days since I was clobbered cycling the Sea to Sky highway – I ran my first half marathon. It was a very big deal to me, and apparently to a few people who follow me on Instagram, Strava and Twitter. Normally I would have written about it here. I guess I am now. A journalist from Global News asked to do a story. I asked my lawyer all the while already knowing his reply. “No good will come of this,” he said. And he’s right, because Global would have wanted to turn it into a good news story, and it’s not a good news story. People on social media heaped congratulations upon my accomplishment and it felt really great but it was also fucking awful. I went deep to the well on that Saturday morning and came out with a half marathon that was nearly ten minutes slower than it *should have* been. It took me nearly three days to recover. I had a headache for over 48 hours. It sucked, and the whole time I was thinking fuck that guy (I’m so tempted to type his name) and also fuck ICBC who will try to turn this into some sort of win “for rate payers.” Meanwhile, I have gotten addicted to pain meds only to kick the addiction and then come out the other end with the realization that I now have chronic pain. As in all the time. I still can’t reach my armpit with the soap in the shower without (painfully) using the wall for leverage. So, yeah, I’m doing really great (ICBC stopped reading back at “fuck ICBC”).

Hurray for fast fashion. The other kind of fast fashion.

Stephanie and I were talking the other day and she commented that probably the weirdest thing to lose in all of this is this stupid vanity blog and I used to so enjoy writing, and apparently, shockingly, people enjoyed reading. But I’m not allowed to anymore. At least not until the dust settles from 2020, and I’ve been told to expect it’s going to take years. So is this the end of this? I don’t know, to be honest. I could continue writing about reading and running stuff sans anything personal but I’m not sure that’s all that interesting. I haven’t figured that out yet. Wait and see? I guess you could subscribe to see what I come up with (if you’re not a subscriber already). Really zero chance I’m going to spam you. Happy new year, and thanks for all your support so far.

2020 week twenty

Stuff Read
– Why Hard Exercise Feels Worse When You’re Alone – Alex Hutchinson
– We’re Betting on Athletes – Mark Gainey & Michael Horvath
– Strava Cuts Off Leaderboard for Free Users, Reduces 3rd Party Apps for All, and More – Ray Maker

Kilometres Ran
week twenty – 60.3

2020 to date: 1,280

I really didn’t need Alex Hutchinson to tell me that going hard solo is hard but there it is. I’ve missed the Mile2Marathon Wednesday night group workouts a lot. And while I’ve managed to pull together a pretty consistent solo workout Wednesday regiment with the help of my coach, I have noticed that I’ve under performed and more than a few times tapped out a rep or two early, which I would have never gotten away with on a “normal” Wednesday. If you’ve followed along on here at all, you probably know I’m a bit of a Hutchinson fan, so it was an extra special treat to have him come out for a Q & A on the M2M athlete’s Zoom Tuesday this week. Then this morning (Monday, because it’s a holiday long weekend), Strava dropped the anvil onto its millions of users by announcing that a swath of key features were going behind a paywall and I’ve been spending the afternoon trying to figure out what that all means. The DC Rainmaker blog (although cycling focused) provides probably the best run down that I’ve seen (I didn’t look too hard, but Ray Maker goes pretty deep dive on this one). The biggest changes are to Segments and Route Builder, the latter being that it’s no longer free (which is pretty huge). The Segments piece is a bit more nuanced. As I understand it, free-users will no longer see deep analytics into their own Segment achievements and will only see the Top OA and Top Women for each segment. So, no more clicking “People I’m Following” or selecting your club to see how you’re measuring up. Now you have to pay for that. And while that’s annoying, it’s less annoying for me…potentially. I’ve been a premium subscriber for almost as long as I’ve been running. It just seemed like one of those things that you just buck up for when you start getting serious about this stupid sport that everyone reminds you how free it is except for three or four pairs of shoes per year plus race entries plus that one time you happened to be in Paris almost exactly a year earlier and picked up a ridiculously overpriced running top because you saw it and while you’d never actually heard of Satisfy you had to have it and now you’re addicted to all of their gear. But I digress. My point is that since I’ve been paying for Strava for a while so I’m not sure that I’m going to notice except if this new paywall causes an exodus of the people I enjoy following. I’m already curious to see how many people never actually read the announcement, and won’t even notice the features they’ve lost. I’m just happy that Strava finally created an algorithm to auto-flag impossible segment efforts, because the amount of flagging I’ve done this pandemic has been exhausting. Now if only they could collate top 10 personal efforts (I’d be happy with top 3 to start…I mean, they’re already doing it anyway…just show it to me) and make Beacon actually reliable, I’d be reasonably happy. After all, it costs like two Maurten Caf gels per month. Speaking of which….

With the cancellation of the Berlin Marathon I suggested to Coach that I run a marathon time trial and he replied, “nah.” Well, not really. He replied with a few questions that I hadn’t thought about and that made me rethink a marathon casual, let alone a TT. So I decided to go try to PB the half marathon distance, and set Wednesday as the day. I treated the whole thing as much like a race as I could, proper taper, my typical fueling routine, neurotic weather app checking…I’d planned the route and set the race start time under the Burrard Bridge as 7 a.m. rain or shine. I took a warm up jog from my house and got there about ten minutes before. What looked like a drencher had stopped and conditions were what I find pretty ideal. It was damp but not raining, cool but not cold, bit of a breeze. A bit too humid (mid 90s) but I can’t have everything. At 7 a.m. on the nose I set out for a clockwise loop around Stanley Park, followed by a clockwise loop of Lost Lagoon, then back onto the Seawall for a counter-loop of the Park and finish on the Seawall south of Second Beach Pool around the 8.5 KM plaque. I had a great start and stuck to my game plan to hang around 4:05 pace, but I pretty much knew it wasn’t going to be my day before I got to halfway. I hit 10 KM and was right in between the 10 KM splits in my fastest and second fastest half marathons but I had a bit of a struggle looping the Lagoon. At 13 KM as I started into the counter-loop I took a Maurten Caf and then for the next three kilometres I tried to hold it down. It was awful. I know the run-till-you-puke feeling and this was something different that I’d only experienced once before…at CIM. It sucks to finally figure it out now but there it is. Between Brockton Point and the Girl in a Wetsuit I passed a cyclist out with his camera taking photos of a humpback whale in the harbour (I missed it). He would catch up and pass me a bit before Siwash Rock and we had a short chat as he did. He had a pretty nice Canon slung on his back, so I told him about where I expected to finish and said if he got a couple shots of me there I’d pay him for his trouble. I was struggling quite a bit by now but I managed to keep it together and not completely bonk. I let my watch roll over to 21.12 KM before clicking it off at 1:30:02 for my third fastest half marathon and fastest one solo.

Pandemic (AKA Stay TF Away) face needs a razor. Photos: Brian Powell

Brian Powell (Insta: vancouverotter) was there with his camera. He emailed a few shots to me (including one of the whale I’d missed) but wouldn’t accept any payment, so I asked him to choose a charity from the Scotiabank Half Marathon Charity Challenge and I made a donation in his name to CLICK per his selection. A few days before I’d received an email from those Marathon Photo shysters offering me 30% off photos from my 2019 races. I donated the undiscounted amount.

As I’m apt to do, I took a bit of a dive into my race and came away with a few insights. While I was disappointed to not get a new personal best, I was pretty happy with my performance, especially considering it was completely solo. I took a 20 – 30 second break at 10 miles to give my stomach a chance to settle, and that seems to have been the difference between this being my second (at First Half this year) or third fastest half marathon. This one had a bit slower start but a much better second half than First Half. The other thing I did was to turn this route into a Strava Segment, and I was a bit surprised to find that there are a few other people who have run it (or at least through it) including one name that I recognize (who is much quicker than me). But in making this Segment I also gave myself another Crown and I thought it might be fun to challenge some other M2Mers to take it away from me, what with the virtual RunVan BMO Half Marathon* race currently going on, and the virtual Scotiabank Half Marathon** coming up this summer. It is going to be very interesting to see how that pans out with Strava’s new business model launching today.

PS – I should also mention that I have *most of* a crate of Maurten Caf that expires at the end of September that I’d be willing to trade 1-1 for Maurten regular or Endurance Tap Caf if anyone is interested.

*I submitted this activity as my virtual BMO Half Marathon and as of writing I’m currently top in my age group and top 10 overall, which is weird because I’ve seen Strava activities a lot faster than mine tagged as their virtual BMO, but they aren’t on the leader board. I’ll take it for now, but I don’t expect to still be there when the virtual BMO window closes

**I am seriously considering taking another stab at this route for my virtual Scotiabank Half Marathon later this summer. I just need to find the right window amongst the M2M Virtual Race Series (that you should totally check out).