Tag: Lit Hub Daily

2019 week fifteen

Book Read
15. Goya, The Terrible Sublime – El Torres & Fran Galán

Kilometres Ran
week fifteen – 76.2

2019 to date: 727

I came across this book in the Lit Hub Daily newsletter and didn’t bother reading the Lit Hub article but ordered a copy of the book because I like Goya and I liked the idea of a graphic novel biography of an artist I like. I don’t read a lot of graphic novels but I don’t pooh-pooh them either since most have as much text as a typical poetry collection and the artwork can be spectacular. This book was okay. I thought Fran Galán did a beautiful job illustrating, but the story didn’t do much for me. El Torres’s story of Goya’s later years is inspired by the artist’s biography. Some of Goya’s most interesting work is the stuff he did as he descended further into mental illness. El Torres focuses on the descent, but not so much the art that resulted. I felt like that was a bit of a miss, considering the format is so image dependent.

I skipped the Vancouver Sun Run again this year and instead went for a leisurely jog along about 87 per cent of the BMO Marathon route. I rode the Skytrain to 41st street and basically ran the race course, minus the first bit and last bit and the out-and-back around 14KM. I’m going to over-analyze this run until the actual race (and probably beyond). I’ve had mixed feelings about it all day. I posted it to Strava as “demoralizing” and it definitely was over the last 8 or 9 KM as I completely gassed out in the flats around the Stanley Park Seawall. But there were some positives, too. I thought that the dreaded Camosun hill wasn’t as bad as the hype. Granted I wasn’t running race pace, but I thought a couple of the hills at last weekend’s April Fools Run half marathon on the Sunshine Coast were harder. The other positive was that my breathing and heart rate were both pretty casual over the whole 192 minutes, which I think it a great sign. Unfortunately, my legs do not have the same fitness as my heart and lungs. It’s hard not to second guess the process right now. I’m trying not to. But I’m concerned that my overall fitness just isn’t where it should be with just three weeks to go until the marathon.

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.