Books Read:
25. Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls — David Sedaris
26. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary — David Sedaris
Kilometres Ran:
week nineteen — 58.7
To date: 875 KM
I’m going to see/hear Sedaris at the Vogue tonight. I’ll let you know how it goes. Probably not. Tickets came up and it made me realize that I haven’t really read anything of his (other than the odd New Yorker piece) since When You Are Engulfed in Flames a bit after it came out in 2008. So it’d been a while. Explore Diabetes is a collection of narrative essays, and it was fine. There’s that thing where you don’t necessarily feel like reading each and every essay but you don’t know which ones are the good ones and which are the skippables and you don’t want to miss the good ones so you end up reading every single ones of them anyway, which just leaves you somewhat resentful at the end of the collection. It happens a lot with short story collections too. Modest Bestiary is a collection of short stories as if the Grimm brothers had the internet. It’s a bit dark; I found it entertaining. Tonight should be entertaining.
I’m still riding a bit of a high from the BMO Half Marathon last weekend and in the midst of a deep spring clean of my studio and packing to fly off to Helsinki to run their namesake half marathon I signed up and paid money to run the Victoria Marathon in October. So no backing out now unless I want to essentially light $98 on fire, which is what probably more than a few people think I just did anyway. Anyway, my goal is to run a Boston Qualifier, which for me means sub 3:15:00. I realize that that won’t actually qualify me for Boston–to run 2018 the BQ times were minus 3:23, which dashed many a dream. I try not to dream. My goal is a BQ; actually running Boston, well, I’ve been sort of toying with the idea of the 125th Edition. For me to run a BQ I need an average pace of 4:37 per kilometre for an estimated finish time of 3:14:48. Yesterday I went out and ran 10 miles and aimed to run 4:37 and somehow, miraculously, finished 10 miles with an average pace of 4:37. There was a lot of watch watching. Next Saturday in Helsinki I want to run a 4:37 half marathon, for a finish time of 1:37:24, which is off my PB by a bit, but will be my second best. I also just want to have fun and not be dead afterward. Hey maybe a post-half-marathon sauna. I hear Finland has saunas.
Pacing is the issue. Thus ends week one of marathon training. SC introduced me to Hal Higdon (no not actually introduced me jeeze) while I was looking for training plans. The appeal of the one I chose is that all the technical mumbo-jumbo is nadda. It’s an 18 week plan, but week nine was pretty close to the same as what I’d done last week so it seemed reasonable to jump in. Plus I wouldn’t need to learn WTF a tempo and a fartek is. Maybe one day. Today was long run day, and until probably yesterday I did not know that LSD means something far different to people that run. And I’m not very good at it. Following Hal’s advice I tried to stick to a pace of around 5:30/km but ended up being quite a bit quicker: 5:16/km over 30.6 km (19 miles), which on one hand I was rather pleased about since I’d never run more than 25 km before today, but on the other hand I’m really trying to follow the training plan…something that I am not very good at in any situation, running or otherwise. Next week I’m staring down 80 km with a 32 km run on Sunday and already there’s a part of me that wants to do the 32 at 5:10.