Tag: Icebreaker 8K

2019 week three

Book Read
3. How Does A Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun? – Doretta Lau

Kilometres Ran
week three – 21.6

To date – 128 KM

I’ve written in the past my contemplations around whether you have to read every single short story in a short story collection in order to have “read the book” and I wonder if there’s a percentage, like at least 60 per cent or something but it doesn’t really matter because I read every single word of this Doretta Lau collection and loved it, which only made me wonder what the hell took me so long to get around to reading it. But then she drops a Landy / Bannister reference that if I’d read back in 2014 when the book came out I probably never would have gotten and it only made me love it more.

A taped up achilles to go with my first race bib of 2019.

Today was the first race of the year and the first race of my 2019 goal to run one race per month. I took it pretty easy this week, only running an 8 KM trial from the Stanley Park Seawall marker 0 KM to 8 KM (clever) with a few kilometres warm up and jog home. Then Friday morning I went to my physiotherapy appointment to check on my aggravated achilles and was told that racing today was not recommended, that I should stick to no farther than 5 KM and no hills but more frequently but I sort of stopped listening after no Icebreaker 8K race. I had been researching cycle trainers and thought that with the news Friday I might as well set up my bicycle to pedal to nowhere so I bought a gently use CycleOps Fluid2 off Craigslist for a deal and I still have a lot to learn because of course it didn’t include the adapter not that it matters since my Specialized Diverge has thru-axel mounts and not quick-release so I found an adapter online and ordered it and it might arrive by next Monday. No, not tomorrow, the other next Monday. The race that I care about, the First Half, runs three weeks from today. I’m not going to get much training on my feet but I’m hoping that if I mix in some time on the bike this year’s race won’t be as disappointing as last year’s. I’ve all but written off setting a new personal best – that would take a miracle (of which there’s no such thing). I only hope that I’ll get to race. It’s been a depressing couple days.

2019 week one

Book Read
1. 80/20 Running – Matt Fitzgerald

Kilometres Ran
80.6

Reading and writing goals for 2019

I’ve decided to aim steady and read 52 books again in 2019 and write about them weekly here. I’ve been doing this blog for three years now and I’m pretty happy to have found a rhythm that seems to be working, which is to write on Sundays about my week, or on Mondays on those weeks that have a holiday long weekend. Some weeks had multiple books and a couple weeks had no books. Some weeks I struggled to write about books I really didn’t like. I read a lot of stuff in addition to books, so this year I might write about interesting stuff I read on those weeks I don’t feel like slagging the book I read. But we’ll see how that works out. And perhaps this year I will go back to writing something for publication elsewhere, or as it’s commonly known, [actual] publication.

Running goals for 2019

Last year I set three really ambitious goals for running, and I didn’t achieve any of them. In 2018 I set new personal bests in 5 KM (new), 10 KM (by 1:02), 21.1 KM (by 6:07), and 42.2 KM (by 8:42). This year I want to beat all of those and when I look at by how much I set new bests in 2018, my 2019 goals seem attainable. What were really ambitious goals last year, this year seem they’re somewhere within the realm of possibility:
5 KM in 19:59
10 KM in 39:59
21.1 KM in 1:29:59
42.2 KM in 3:14:59

In order to achieve these times I’m going to need to train smart and stay healthy. In 2018 I read a lot of Alex Hutchinson and he seemed to write a lot about the seemingly counterintuitive importance of running slow in order to build endurance and speed so I picked up an epub of Matt Fitzgerald’s book 80/20 Running and he convinced me to give it a shot so SC picked up a hard copy for me because my iPad pencil is still a Staedtler and not an iPencil or whatever. When it comes to certain things I still prefer analogue.

The past two years I’ve traveled to a race (Copenhagen, 2017) and raced while travelling (Helsinki, 2018). (I don’t count Victoria as travelling to a race because I go there pretty often and it sort of feels like a Vancouver suburb.) I want to travel-to-race or race-while-travelling at least once again this year but I haven’t quite nailed down the one(s). (There’s a very high contender already, though.)

But in order to achieve my time goals I’m going to have to run more than a few races this year. Last year, I was surprised to find, I ran 10 races. This year I want to try to run at least one per month. I have most of them Staedtlered into my Moleskine calendar but I also want to keep my options open. For now, this is what I have on the horizon:
January – Icebreaker 8 KM
February – First Half Half Marathon
March – WestVanRun 5 KM + 10 KM
April – April Fool’s Half Marathon
May – BMO Marathon
June – Scotiabank Half Marathon

Final goal isn’t really a goal…I will run 2,019 KM in 2019. It’s not really a goal because it’s not even a challenge anymore. Unless I quit running or get really seriously injured. The first is pretty unlikely. The second is always possible (especially how Vancouver drivers respect a pedestrian crossing) but I feel pretty confident that I have the tools now to manage any misstep. I don’t want to set a lofty distance goal for a bunch of reasons. First, if I have a hope of chasing my time goals, I am going to have to put in a ton of milage. Second, last fall I started bicycle commuting to the office and I really liked it so I want to do that a lot more this year. I’m pretty fair-weather on my bike, but once it gets consistently nice out it is going to cut into my running (my office commute is 45 KM round trip). Finally, I feel like, from experience, having a lofty annual distance goal in the back of my mind spurs me to go run when my body is saying it needs a break and, in the past, has exacerbated some injuries. So I’m setting a lowball goal. Some people reading this probably think 52 books is a lowball goal. Whatever, let’s get going.