Tag: Helsinki City Half Marathon

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.

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.