Tag: Kamloops Marathon

2018 week fifty two

My year in running

My goal for 2017 was to run 2,600 KM. In the autumn I hurt my knee a couple hours before flying to Denmark to race the Copenhagen Half Marathon. An aggravated injury meant I didn’t meet my 2017 goal. I was still recovering at the beginning of 2018, so I set a more reasonable goal to run 2,018 KM. Then in August I hurt my other knee. Then in September, on a crap knee, I passed 2,018 KM. And then, in October, with a crap knee, I raced the Victoria Marathon and barely walked let alone ran again for a few weeks. In mid-December I was easing back into decent weekly milage and noticed that 2,600 KM for the year was within reach. So I went for it, and on December 29 I ran 11.8 KM around Oak Bay for 2,601 KM for the year.

Running races

I ran ten races in 2018, set a bunch of personal best (PB) times, and earned my first age-group podium finish.
First Half 21.1 KM – 1:43:04
West Van 10 KM – 44:06 (PB!)
BMO Half 21.1 KM – 1:34:52 (PB!)
Helsinki 21.1 KM – 1:39:09
Scotiabank 21.1 KM – 1:32:37 (PB!)
Kamloops 21.1 KM – 1:32:20 (PB! & Age group 1st!)
Eastside 10 KM – 41:23 (PB! + PB!)
North Van 10 KM – 43:46
Victoria 42.2 KM – 3:25:59 (PB!)
Moustache Miler 5 KM – 20:28 (PB?)
The Moustache Miler was two firsts for me: it was my first 5 KM race, and the first time I’ve raised money for charity. I expect more of both of those In spite of the Moustache Miler being my only 5 KM race to date, my fastest 5 KM time is 20:21 over the first 5 KM of this year’s Eastside 10 according to Sportstats.

Going places

I’ve drawn a circle around Stanley Park over 200 times and I still love that loop but this year I got to do a few new loops that were a lot of fun. These four are my favourite.

Final run in Helsinki. I thought this city was okay when I arrived and by the end of the week I didn’t want to leave. Some amazing running history there, too.
And then I fell in love with Tallinn. Didn’t hurt that the weather was unusually amazing the whole time we were there.
Stockholm is the first city I took my running stuff along on holiday, and I’ll never holiday without my running stuff again. I didn’t get a Sodermalm loop on that 2016 visit but I did this year.
Surrey?!? I KNOW! But this run was so much fun — down the hill then over a free ferry to Barnston Island. Plus I (currently) have the 3rd overall time looping Barnston Island (and it’s nowhere near my 10 KM PB). If I find myself marooned at the Surrey Sheraton again I’m definitely going for the crown.

Missing in action: the Helsinki City Half Marathon and the Victoria Marathon. I loved idea of racing Helsinki but the route just wasn’t my favourite. Victoria, in spite of setting a pretty huge personal best of over eight minutes, the race was a disappointment and I’m still bitter.

The numbers according to Strava:

Total Distance: 2,601.3 KM
Number of Runs: 226
Average KM/Run: 11.5 KM
Total Time Running: 212 Hours, 50 Minutes
Average Time Every Damn Day in 2018: 35 Minutes
At the beginning of the year I joined a group challenge to run the elevation of Mount Everest — 8,848 metres — and then forgot about it until I was crunching numbers the other night. I ran 38,419 metres of elevation in 2018, or the Everest summit 4.3 times.

Running’s free right?

When I first started running I bought a pair of adidas shoes at Costco for $40 or something, and Joe Fresh shorts and a top from the Superstore. I still wear adidas. JF not so much. I spend a lot more on running now. This year I decided to see how much.
Shoes: $1,434
Clothes: $970
Health: $619
Nutrition: $230
Race Entry: $724
Other: $665
TOTAL: $4,642
These dollars have caveats, of course. My shoe budget includes orthotics that I was not expecting, and I probably have shoes covered for 2019. I exhausted my extended health coverage and kept going to physiotherapy anyway. Race entry includes fees paid this year for races in 2019, but then excludes a few 2018 races paid for in 2017. Other includes a new Garmin watch, which had better not be an annual expense. The bloated Clothes expenditure is just embarrassing. I expect my 2019 total to be a lot less, but I’m a very recent convert to technical running socks.

Next week: New year — reading & running goals for 2019.

2018 week twenty nine

Books Read:
36. Nightwood — Djuna Barnes
37. The Book of Repulsive Women — Djuna Barnes
(Links to free PDF from Green Integer Press.)

Kilometres Ran:
week twenty nine — 45.8

To date: 1,460 KM

Back in June the Lit Hub Daily newsletter reminded me that 126 years ago Djuna Barnes was born, and of course I’m using reminded loosely, and I was reminded that I should probably get around to finally reading Nightwood and why not follow that up with some Repulsive Women. Nightwood is a rather dense peice of metafiction that primarily follows Robin Vote around Continental Europe during the years between the two World Wars. I made the mistake of underestimating its under 200 pages. I found this book to be a lot of work, but worth it in the end. At the polar opposite of the spectrum, and Barnes’ career for the matter (one if not her first book) is The Book of Repulsive Women, which is comprised of eight poems accompanied by five ink drawings. This you can read in a single coffee. The imagery and themes in the pages of Repulsive are fully fleshed out years later in Nightwood.

At the start line, with the pulp mill cloud maker on the hill hard at work.

This morning I woke at 4:30 a.m. to prepare for a short drive from downtown Kamloops over to the North Shore and MacArthur Island Park for the 6 a.m. start of the Kamloops Marathon half marathon because Kamloops is hot at the end of July and I happened to be in town and I was born and lived there for over 30 years so I thought it would be fun to run a race there. So let’s unpack that ramble. The race started at 6 a.m. because on a normal July weekend it would be nearly or over 30 degrees by noon. I assume they were aiming for a cool morning start. At 6 a.m. there are also fewest monster trucks on the road that the race shares. It was a perfect morning, clear, calm and about 14 degrees. Kamloops sits in the Thompson River valley and the mountains were still shading much of the course. The course loops out of MacArthur Island Park, through North Kamloops out-and-back along Westsyde Drive and along the shore of the North Thompson River to where it meets the Thompson and back into MacArthur Island Park. It’s a very scenic course, not to mention flat and fast. Well mostly flat. There’s one hill at 5 KM and I wouldn’t characterize the City’s infrastructure “well maintained.” There was some pothole dodging.
I thought the vintage Joy Division t-shirt was a nice touch.

I set a goal this year to run a sub 90 minute half marathon and after having to adjust and realign I decided to chase that in Kamloops today. It started well and I was having a good time and making good time for the first half or so and then things started to fall apart a bit. I’m not making excuses, because I’m chalking these up to learning experience. Two things: fuelling, and O2. Fuelling: This is my third race not at home. My previous two I’ve rented suites with a kitchen. This time around, I stayed in a hotel and I did not eat properly Friday and Saturday. I paid the price when I started to bonk. I set out to run 4:16/KM splits, and ran 4:33 at 12 KM. I tried to recover but my tank was mostly fumes. O2: I train at 0-50 metres elevation. Kamloops is around 350 metres. I thought it might be a factor, but I didn’t really think it would be a factor. Then at around 15 KM I started to feel like as asthmatic. I couldn’t catch my breath and by 17/18 KM I had a bit of a wheeze on my inhale. It was a really strange experience. I can fix the fuelling, but other than acclimatizing I’m not sure how to handle the O2 piece. If that’s even what it really was. Who knows?
Missed the ceremony to get back to Vancouver but still got the Gold AG Medal.

So I didn’t run sub 90 minutes. But I had a great time on a great course and in the midst of not doing what I had set out to do I did a some other firsts. I ran a new personal best, shaving a hair thin four seconds off my previous best time, and in the process I was first in my age category (my first award finish) and I finished 11th overall. I make fun of Kamloops, but this was a really great race. It’s very well organized and the course is pretty great. It’s a hidden gem. I will definitely run it again. Especially since I have both a title to defend and some unfinished business.