Book Read
41. All This Has Nothing to Do with Me – Monica Sabolo
Kilometres Ran
week forty three – 49.0
2019 to date: 2,198 KM
I started reading a different book on my iPad this week and then forgot to put it onto my iPhone and I don’t get books through iTunes and I haven’t figured out how to sync stuff and frankly haven’t tried all that hard but anyway I opened my phone and then remembered that I a bit ago I was waiting around for something somewhere and started reading this Sabolo book and it was good and interesting but never finished so I started over and soon got more interested in it that the other book that I was reading, which I will probably finish reading this week. Maybe. The book tells the story of MS and her relationship with XX. It goes pretty much how you imagine, except it’s told through SMS, social media post, diary entries and other fragments. It’s dark and funny and sad and maybe not terribly original even in the experimental style that it’s told, but it’s just done so well that I was highly entertained. I liked this book. I also understand why many people do not.
Back in January 2018 I sent an email to RunVan suggesting that if they were to change up the start time of the Fall Classic half marathon to two hours before the 10 KM instead of 90 minutes that I suspected a few people would take a stab at running all three in a row – 21.1 KM then 10 KM then the 5 KM. I received a reply that read “We will take your suggestion under consideration….” Fast forward to the Fall Classic 2018, and it was status quo. But I was pretty lame after racing the Victoria Marathon, and attended the event on my bicycle and yelled a some friends. Fast forward again and low and behold the start times had changed, with two hours between the half marathon gun and the 10 KM, and then 90 minutes until the 5 KM. So I signed up for all three.
Somewhere along the way some other people did too, it seems. After I signed up I was cautioned that I would DQ if I wore the wrong bib in the wrong race, or, as I was planning to do, wore all three stacked and shed one after each finish. I’m curious to know what happened because all of a sudden RunVan decided to start promoting a Fall Classic Hat Trick, and changed to registration to a package of all three races with a single bib. I don’t care why, but I’m very happy that they did. My plan going into the day was to run a pretty conservative half marathon around 5:00/km for a 1:45 finish, then a 15 minute refuel and wardrobe change for a 10 KM at marathon goal pace, and finish the day with a 5 KM cool down. The half marathon went exactly according to plan. The 10 KM less so. I went out way too quickly, averaging around 4:13/km over the first three kilometres and then crashed pretty hard. Goal marathon pace is around 4:30 and I finished 4:38 according to Strava. That still meant about a 40 minute wait until the 5 KM start. I put some compression sleeves on my calfs that were starting to cramp and added a t-shirt under my singlet because I was pretty chilled. The 5 KM went much the same as the 10 KM – I had a couple tempo kilometres to start, then finished at a Sunday jog. But this day was about finishing, not the really the clock (I will have more to write about this little factoid next week). I still haven’t checked my official 10 KM and 5 KM finish times. I don’t even care. I just wanted to run all three in a row, and I did it.
The other thing that RunVan changed up was the people running the Hat Trick wouldn’t get medals in the finish corral. Instead, they held a special awards after the 5 KM finishers awards at the end of the day, where they recognized the 23 women and men who’d completed the inaugural Hat Trick, and gave us each a really nice New Balance / RunVan hat and our three finishers medals on the awards stage. I am pretty damn proud to be amongst that group, and I especially love that it’s a pretty diverse group and one with a few friends and familiar faces from the running community. Would I do it again? I don’t know. The looped course is pretty but pretty brutal, and the thought of running it three-and-a-half times in a row again is a bit nauseating, but I recall finishing my first marathon – the RunVan BMO in 2017 – and saying, “Well, I never have to do that again.” Then signing up for another a couple weeks later. So never say never.
