Tag: Marathon Training

2018 week thirty eight

Book Read:
45. The Rule of Stephens — Timothy Taylor

Kilometres Ran:
week thirty eight — 52.5

To date: 2,071 KM

I read this book quite a while ago and I had a problem with it and I wanted to ask Taylor about it but then I didn’t and then I forgot about it and then I realized that I’d forgotten about it so I hadn’t added it here so now here I am adding it here, but without getting around to asking the author about it. Anyway, I really liked Taylor’s earlier book Stanley Park and apparently Taylor did too because Rule of Stephens feels very Stanley Park. The formula at least: struggling and flawed but likeable protagonist who is exceptional at this one very niche thing who ends up courting a wealthy investor only to find that they’ve made a deal with the devil. Within the first few pages I’ve grown an affinity for the protagonist Catherine Bach and I have this growing feeling of dread waiting to read what Taylor is going to do to them. It’s a good book and of course its fans will say that there’s so much more to it than the cursory glossing over (wait is that redundant? Hmmm…) that I’ve given here and that’s maybe true. But still.

The office hosted a conference at the Sheraton on 104th in Surrey which meant that I was the lucky duck that got to spend a couple nights at the Sheraton on 104th in Surrey. So I took a look at Strava Global Heatmaps for something fun to do Saturday evening. Downhill heading east on 104th approx. 5 KM from the hotel is a little ferry that carries two or three cars at a time over the Fraser River to Barnston Island, which happens to have a perfect 10 KM perimeter road. So that’s fun. The island is farmland complete with medium and large dogs behind fences that want to eat me, and medium and large dogs not behind fences that just lazily lay on the road as I run by. Free-range chicken farm. Herb farm. Cattle and sheep and donkeys. Abandoned and derelict houses. With my overactive imagination I spent the last couple kilometres expecting to run into (and then away from) the Sawyer family at any moment. A ferry ride back across Parson’s Channel to the mainland and then the long slow slog back up the 104th Avenue hill to Guildford. A nice change of scenery to usher in the beginning of my taper. Two weeks until Victoria Marathon.

2018 week thirty six

Book Read:
43. Katerina — James Frey

Kilometres Ran:
week thirty six — 80.2

To date: 1,949 KM

Oh hey look another book about a self-destructive struggling author. I’ve never read any James Frey before. I had a copy of Million Little Pieces on my book shelf for many years, though I think it was because someone left it at my house or I picked it up from a free pile somewhere because I saw the Oprah’s Book Club sticker on the cover, obviously. Katerina is that sort of banal, masculine romance novel where the romance is mostly narcissistic. But I was entertained, so there’s that. The most interesting part for me was noticing that past me would not have been able to read this without drinking along with Jay, whereas if present me woke up with a headache it was from all the eye-rolling the night before. This book felt out of time. It felt like what Chuck Palahniuk or Irvine Welsh were writing twenty years ago. Maybe my age is showing. I felt a bit guilty liking this book. Perhaps it was the nostalgia for a more self-destructive time. Regardless, I appreciate the advanced, review copy from Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books.

I broke 80 KM in a week for the first time since April without doing an especially long run this week. My knees have been less than happy with the effort of late, which is a huge concern with just a month to go before the Victoria Marathon. So I’m trying to balance workout and rest, and trying and doing a not very good job of self care before and after running. So I bought a TENS/EMS unit to shock my knees and thighs. I don’t know if it’s helping but I like it. I do really need to stretch and use the roller more often. And now this has taken a banal turn towards confessional. Next week I run the Eastside 10K and I was hoping to sub-40 minutes and I am not terribly confident since my focus has been so dialled on 42.2. Right now I’ll be surprised to run a new personal best, but I’ve said that a couple times already this year and ended up surprising myself. So we’ll see which me shows up at the start/finish line on Saturday.