Book Read
30. The Nickel Boys – Colson Whitehead
Kilometres Ran
week thirty two – 48.4
2019 to date: 1,506 KM
I don’t remember why I was listening to Q on CBC Radio 1 the other day and post-creep what’s his name was interviewing Whitehead about this book and I had never heard an interview with him before nor had I read any of his books though The Underground Railroad has been floating on the periphery of my to read list / pile for a while but The Nickel Boys grabbed my attention and not just for the title. I read it in a couple days because (1) it’s more of a novella than a novel and (2) it’s completely captivating. It tells the story of two boys who end up being sentenced to Florida reform school during Jim Crow and the beginning of the rise of the Civil Rights movement. The Nickel Boys is a fictionalize account of the horrific treatment alleged to have actually taken place at the Dozier School for Boys. I recommend this book. I expect it to be on a few best of the year lists.
Marathon build number four officially started this week and what’s become apparent almost instantly is that I’m going to struggle with balancing running and cycling and that is not something that I ever expected to have happen. But I also didn’t expect to be cycle-commuting to and from the office nearly everyday, weather permitting (and weather has permitted a lot this summer). The problem is that after an 80-minute, 34 KM bike ride home from the office each evening I’m not really in the mood to go for a jog around Stanley Park. I’ve come up with a few solutions. Best is that I go back to running a lunch time. The problem is that I can maybe squeeze in 40-45 minutes at the most and should probably be sticking closer to 30 minutes. I did this on Friday. It was okay, but I was pretty tired for the cycle home at the end of the day. Second best solution is to bike in a bit earlier and then run before starting work. I don’t think I could get more than 30 minutes in doing that, but I haven’t tried it yet. The rest are crap for various reasons. I could run the 11.5 KM from Braid Skytrain Station to the office but then I’m stuck riding transit all the way home in the evening (which is awful). I could drive the car, but I really like not driving, or perhaps hate driving, plus the car isn’t insured for to/from work so I could only do that six time per month anyway and frankly I really like how much my commute costs on a bicycle. What it really comes down to is striking a balance between getting the marathon build work done and my utter loathing having to take public transit from Port Coquitlam to the West End Vancouver. It’s awful, and I already dread that it’s my fate from mid-November until late March.