Tag: Marathon Training

2018 week thirty one

Book Read:
39. We Have Always Lived in the Castle — Shirley Jackson

Kilometres Ran:
week thirty one — 69.1

To date: 1,584 KM

Another title from my pile of shorter works that took me a bit too long to read and then I forgot to write about it so here it is. Considered Jackson’s masterpiece, it was published a couple years before her death in 1965. I was surprised to find that it’s being made into a movie. Not surprised because Hollywood is out of ideas, but because it’s been out of ideas for a while and I wonder what’s taken so long. The story is unreliably narrated by Mary Katherine “Merricat” Blackwood, whom I thought for much of the book was a lot younger. A few years before the timeline of the book, the entire family is poisoned with only three surviving: Merricat, her sister Constance, and their uncle Julian. Constance was tied and acquitted, and the town believes she got away with murder, and generally hate them. Constance and Julian never leave the property. I liked this book quite a bit, with it’s gothic style, gloomy foreboding and curious ending. I haven’t added sugar to anything years. Don’t touch my salt.

Has a Grouse Grind ascent ever been accurately measured on a GPS device because I’ve never seen it. Actual time 59:03. Actual distance ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

With an extra long weekend I decided to overdo it a bit on Thursday with a bicycle commute from my office in Port Coquitlam through New West then Burnaby to the edge of Vancouver, then a sharp right turn north over the Iron Workers bridge into North Van and down to Lonsdale Quay to hop on a bus up to Grouse Mountain because I’ve done that ride up that hill once before and I’m never going to attempt that on a single speed bicycle again. Grouse Grind number three and my slowest yet, at 59 minutes and change. I could credit the 32 KM pedal to get there, but the time I actually pedalled all the way up Capilano Road and Nancy Greene Way I finished the Grind around five minutes quicker. Nine weeks to go before the Victoria Marathon and I’m having to remind myself that my first marathon I started training eight weeks out and then got sick and took all of week seven off and didn’t die. My head is further ahead than my body, or my head thinks my body is way behind. Or something. So I’m trying to trust the training plan that I made up based upon the plan I made up from the internet last time around plus some new stuff like going for long bike rides and walking up mountains. Trust is a funny thing.

2018 week thirty

Book Read:
38. Believe Me — Eddie Izzard

Kilometres Ran:
week thirty — 54.3

To date: 1,514 KM

This book took me too long to read and that’s probably because, as to be expected from an autobiography, there’s this whole bunch of stuff at the beginning about being a child and I don’t really like kids. I should have skipped it. It’s not as if there were any vital plot points that missing would leave me bewildered later in the book. But I trudged on through. I’ve been a fan of Izzard since a Dress to Kill DVD make the rounds of my friends sometime around the century change over. It’s funny(?) to think that in a small backwater town we didn’t even bat an eye at the notion of a transgender comedian. Izzard was very likely my first encounter and it all seemed utterly normal to me at the time, which has carried through to now to the point that I do not understand what the fuss is about. Reading this book reminded me of how many things Izzard has touched that I really like, many that he doesn’t mention in the book at all. Shadow of the Vampire is one of my favourite films and the NBC series Hannibal I will argue is one of the best TV series in ever and I generally hate network television. Maybe not generally. So anyway, it’s a good book.

Halfway through today’s recovery run, waiting my turn at the Third Beach water fountain.

Eight weeks out from the 2017 BMO Marathon I decided, yeah, I’m going to do that. As of today I’m ten weeks out from running my second. In July 2009, Eddie Izzard, decided to run around the UK. He writes, “Of course, I had no business running marathons–I wasn’t trained, I wasn’t particularly fit, and I had absolutely no experience in running anything that long, let alone running multiple marathons.” What I mean by run around the UK, I mean a marathon a day, six days a week, resting on Sundays. So with six weeks(!) until start, he decided he should maybe do some training. And he did it, running 43 marathons in 51 days and raised a few million dollars for charity. Then in February 2016 he ran 27 marathons in 27 days (including two marathons on the 27th day because he missed a day near the beginning, the loser…), all in balmy South Africa. And all I want to do is BQ at the Victoria Marathon in ten weeks. It seems so pedantic in comparison.