Tag: Kate Atkinson

2019 week eleven

Book Read
11. Transcription – Kate Atkinson

Kilometres Ran
week eleven – 60.5

2019 to Date: 479

I liked this book a lot more than I liked A God in Ruin, which I did not like very much at all but I at least finished it, ahem, but I did not like it nearly as much as I liked Life After Life, which is one of my favourite books in ever and that I’m a bit afraid to reread because I wonder if it really is as good as I remember it being. I still believe that it’s one of the more interesting takes on Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence – much more interesting than, say, Russian Doll on Netflix, unfortunately. But this is supposed to be about Transcription. The book follows Juliet Armstrong, at 18 years old in 1940 London with the Second World War raging in Europe, she is recruited into a super-secret branch of MI5 helping to spy on home-grown Nazi sympathizers within British society. Think Killing Eve but more typing and less stabbing. I thoroughly enjoyed watching (reading?) Juliet go from naive teen to strong independent woman who gives zero fucks. It’s a good enough novel. Worth the effort at least.

This weekend I got my third shot to break 20:00 in the 5K this year and I was pretty confident going into it, not least for the fact that the course didn’t cross train tracks (see 2019 week nine if you missed that one…). Anyway, I glanced at the course and saw Stanley Park but I didn’t actually look at the course until an acquaintance online suggested it was a tough one to be chasing a new personal best let alone pull off something miraculous (i.e., sub 19:00, which was my super (read: stupid) long-shot goal). I just assumed that the course followed the Stanley Park Seawall (read: dead flat) but it ran along Stanley Park Drive, which doesn’t have mountains, but has some pretty significant rolling hills for a 5K sprint. The race doubled as the BC Athletics championship and there was a pretty impressive elite field on hand, which was cool. Us weekenders and once-a-yearers started about 30 seconds after the elite field. I’d corralled myself where I thought I should be given some of the familiar faces around and ahead of me, but once the gun went off it became abundantly clear that a lot of people did not know or care how chip timing works. As such, I spent for first 50 metres or so trying not to run people over. My first kilometre was good once I got some space and some rhythm and I crossed one mile in 6:10 but then the little hill up to the Brockton Lighthouse and then again up at Lumberman’s Arch took their toll. I crossed 4K with sub 20:00 in my grasp but just couldn’t hold onto it for the climb up Pipeline Drive to the finish line. I crossed with a chip time 20:03 for a new personal best and fifth in my age group and I’m proud of that but just not very happy if that makes sense. So today, with seven weeks to go, it’s back to marathon training with a long run around most of the Seawall.

2018 week thirty two

Book Read:
40. The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle — Stuart Turton

Kilometres Ran:
week thirty two — 76.7

To date: 1,660 KM

I received a review copy of this book back in June, which was followed by a note a bit later in a Fight Club like tone that I was not to talk about the book until a month before publication. Which is in about a month from now. More or less. Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life is one of my favourite novels. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are two favourite philosophers. Groundhog Day is one of my favourite films. But enough about me. In 7½ Deaths Aiden Bishop is stuck in a loop he cannot escape until he solves the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle. The twist is that he lives the same day seven times from seven points of view and if he cannot solve the murder then he has to start all over again, with no memory of the previous attempt. It’s a new twist on an old idea. Why 7½ deaths? It seems the half was added due to some confusion in the US around this and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo because I know how simple it is to confuse husband with death…. I liked this book’s gothic elements and its relatively fresh take on the repetition concept. Unfortunately, I just did not like Aiden Bishop very much for no particular reasons I can give without spoilers, and I found the conclusion a bit dissatisfying. That said, it a pretty great debut novel from Stuart Turton, and I will look forward to more work from him.

There’s this park in Hastings Sunrise that has, I think, one of the nicest views in the city. This photo doesn’t do it justice obviously.

Yesterday was long run number three on the road to my BQ at the Victoria Marathon in October. I set out to run 32KM and decided to mix it up a bit; rather than a long, slow, slog I would run 5KM easy and then 5KM at race pace and repeat that three times, then finish with a 1KM sprint and a 1KM jog home. But by 30KM there was nothing left to sprint 1KM so the final jog ended up being a little less under a mile. Afterwards analysis and all in all it went pretty well. My goal race pace for Victoria is 4:37/KM. My first five at race pace I managed to average 4:38/KM, second at 4:31, and the third was right on 4:37. I had no idea at the time; I felt like my pacing was all over the place. And it was to a degree, but it all averaged out in the end. So that felt good, even if not much else did. I spent a few hours afterwards thinking about my long runs last year while training for my first marathon and trying to remember if at the end of them I wanted to die then, too. If that’s the case, and I’m sure [hopeful] that it is, I seem to have blocked that part out. Eight weeks to go.