Tag: North Van Run

2019 week thirty

Book Read
28. Altered States of Consciousness: Experiences Out of Time and Self – Marc Wittmann

Kilometres Ran
week thirty – 33.5

yeah but also 10.4 KM hike & 147.4 KM bicycling

2019 to date: 1,415 KM

This little book translated by Philippa Hurd explores consciousness and the experience of through three long essays (okay fine chapters) focusing on altered states of consciousness (i.e., drug use), mindfulness meditation, embodiment, and experience of time and timelessness. I don’t remember why I picked up this book but I’m happy that I did. I really enjoyed Wittmann’s intersecting literature, philosophy and psychology, making for an entertaining and accessible read, without too many trauma flashback to the directed study I did in undergrad on Edmund Husserl’s Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Many gems to pull completely out of context in here, especially this favourite from the third part: “Boredom actually means that we find ourselves boring. It’s the intensive self-reference: we are bored with ourselves. We are tired of ourselves.” Wittman goes on to quote Rudiger Safranski on Heidegger:

Pure time, its pure presence. Boredom – that is, the moment when no one notices that time is passing because it will not just then pass, then one cannot drive it away, make it pass, or, as the saying goes, fill it meaningfully. … It refuses to pass, it stands still, it holds one i inert immobility, it “thralls.” This comprehensive paralysis reveals that time is not simply a medium in which we move, but that it is something that we produce out of ourselves.

Wittman on Rudiger on Heidegger

We have all experienced time slowing to a crawl when we’re bored. Apparently, if you’re bored it’s because you are boring, and your boring ass’s boringness actually slows your own perception of the passage of time. But maybe I’m misinterpreting. Who knows? It’s worth reading it yourself to find out, I think.

At Eagle Bluffs

Another week and a low running score but no races to blame. Instead, on Saturday Stephanie and I hiked Cypress to Black Mountain and Cabin Lake and Eagle Bluffs with some people from her office and I use the term “with” loosely because apparently they thought that the hike up to the Bluffs was a race, and once we caught up and had a group photo the race was back on back down to the parking lot (and beer).

At the top of Black Mountain, with the birds.

We stopped again on the way back down and Stephanie got to feed the Whisky Jacks and I was thinking about taking a dive into Cabin Lake but ultimately decided it was a bit too chilly (the air, not the water, which seemed warmer than I’d expected it to feel). We had a good time in spite to getting pretty muddy trudging through the remnants from the downpour the night before. I would like to do it again, maybe not all the way to the Bluffs but I definitely see the appeal of Cabin Lake on a hot summer’s day. I’m in a bit of a running lull right now and that’s okay. I set out to run a race each month in 2019 and seven months into the year I have run thirteen races. So/but, I don’t have a race planned in August. Initially I figured I wouldn’t have any troubling finding one, but in reality not that many races happen in August, so it seems. I won the Seawheeze lottery but declined the entry. (And frankly, when I saw the vomit shorts for 2019 I knew I’d made the right decision.) If I decide that I need an August race my last minute option is the final of the Vancouver Falcons track series: a 10,000 on the oval up at UBC. However, the idea of 25 laps around a track a week and a bit before the Coho Run 14 KM (it’s a maybe) and a couple before the Eastside 10K (it’s a definitely) and a month before the North Van 10 KM (last 2019 chance for sub 40 minute 10 KM), the VFAC 10,000 seems unlikely. But who knows, I might get bored by then.

2019 week twenty nine

Book Read
27. Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain

Kilometres Ran
week twenty nine – 29.9

2019 to date: 1,382 KM

On or around the first anniversary of Bourdain’s death I dusted off my copy of his first book. I admired him very much and his death struck me harder than most other celebrity deaths. But his passion for food is lost on me. I understand it, but I don’t get it. My relationship with food is not so great. I eat because I need to stay alive. I read a book earlier this year about eating and obesity and in it was described a study in which the participants consumed a liquid diet that has all the necessary nutrition and I thought that sounded pretty much perfect. I don’t even remember what the study was about. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy a good meal. I have also noticed that many of the good meals I used to enjoy were merely a catalyst for the consumption of massive quantities of alcohol (mostly red wine). You see things differently when the food has to stand on its own.

Checking the Take the Bridge checkpoint map that was release an hour before race gun.
Photo by Marlon Soriano

On Thursday was Take the Bridge. Forty men and then 40 women racing to two check points however they choose to get there and back. The registration sold out in, I’m told, one minute. I was lucky enough to secure an entry. Turns out that some of the fastest people in this city are also pretty quick on a computer because when I saw that start roster my hope went from be competitive to don’t be last. We all met at Vancouver Running Co. for check in and at 8 o’clock they released the map. The men went out first at 9 p.m. I’d scouted the first checkpoint with fellow Mile2Marathoner Matt Diederichs and figured I knew my way around well enough to just wing it on the second. Beginner’s naiveté. The mass start was chaos—below the Burrard bridge we ran down a gravel pitch with plenty of divots towards the boat launch at Vanier Park. I hung back and found a decent rhythm and reached the first check point near the back of the pack. The race back to and then over Burrard was my first mistake, taking a trail through the brush next to the bridge that added some extra distance. I got onto the bridge and started to pass a few people, then made my second mistake taking by avoiding the stairs at the north and an opting instead to take Pacific. Making it worse, I took a right on Howe instead of Hornby, meaning that I missed the cut through May & Lorne Brown Park completely on the way to checkpoint two under the Granville Bridge. I was faster than a few of the guys ahead of me, but they made better route decisions. Coming back over Burrard Bridge I managed to catch and pass a few more guys. Then I got to the south end and turned the corner back to the finish line under the bridge and as I did I saw two leap the railing thereby cutting a couple hundred metres and getting them both across the finish before me. I finished 20th out of 40 and I am fine with that especially because I had so much fun. I hope that this is a taste of more to come because I will definitely do it again given the opportunity.

Fun fact: I’ve always hated the RHCP. Under the Burrard waiting for the inaugural Take the Bridge Vancouver to start. Photos of me racing didn’t make the cut so this blurry selfie will have to do. I’m used to it by now.

With Take the Bridge done I had a rest day on Friday and then got up bright and early Saturday morning for the Vancouver Falcons Summerfast 10K around Stanley Park. I’d been sickly for the week and while TTB ended up being only 4 KM I ran hard and it’s taken a lot more out of me than I figured. Excuses be damned, I still wanted to finally get under 40 minutes and this was the course to do it. Flat, fast and familiar. According to Strava I’ve run this loop now over 250 times. I got off to a great start and at 3 KM I was still under pace with a few seconds to spare, but I already knew that I wasn’t going to be able to hold it. I did the best I could and hit 5 KM at Lumberman’s Arch 20:06 and took a Maurten. I felt it kick in at 6 KM (a weird feeling that I have never really, consciously noticed before). It didn’t do any miracles but I believe it curbed the downward spiral that would have come otherwise. I hit 8 KM at 4:16 pace; I knew that sub 40 was not going to happen but I figured I might have enough left to get over the finish in eight minutes. Nine came and went and I emptied the tank on ten, crossing the finish at 40:40 (chip time).

Still from the 2019 Summerfast 10K finish line video posted to YouTube.

It’s not sub 40 and it’s 11 seconds off my personal best. But it’s my personal second best over 10 KM, and I’m absolutely confident I could have gone sub 20 over 5 KM if that was the distance, and my fastest two kilometres were the first and the tenth (3:51/3:56). It wasn’t the goal day I’d wanted, but it was a pretty great day anyway. I have two more chances to run under 40 minutes coming in September: the Eastside 10K and the North Van Run. It feels very doable.

And for the third year Mile2Marathon took home the cake as the fastest team. Check out this story in the Vancouver Sun while the link still works. Photo by Debra Kato

I could write a lot more about running this week, but this post is already a day late and probably too long. See you next in week thirty.