Tag: Pacific Road Runners Vancouver First Half Marathon

Fall Classic and Falling Behind

Books Read:
33. Running: A Love Story — Jen A. Miller
34. Notes from a Feminist Killjoy — Erin Wunker

Kilometres Ran:
week forty five — 38.2
week forty six — 16
week forty seven — 0
week forty eight — 8.3
week forty nine — 20.5
week fifty — 32.6

To date: 2,458 km

I haven’t written anything here in a month and a half and I wanted to get one more post in before my end of the year review that will probably come out on January 1 or 2, or whenever I motivate myself to review this year that was. I thought that Miller’s memoir was light and entertaining, though some reviews online were less than please with the amount of attention spent on her multiple failed relationships. The two of you that have been reading this blog since its inception will know about my own correlation between a toxic relationship demise and transforming from casual jogger into runner, and then the subsequent self-admission much later on. I don’t recall focusing on it much and I will not regale here. Suffice it to say I found Miller’s memoir hit close to home on some points but not in a PTSD sort of way. I wanted to read the Wunker and then won a copy at the season wrap of the Real Vancouver Writers Series. People complained in reviews that Notes is, well, notes. I liked it. I found it very pithy and wise with a Nietzsche-Gay-Science-esque quality of style. I was less attracted to the third part about feminist parenting because I have no interest in parenting. At all.

I ran the Fall Classic 10 KM and completed the RunVan Hat Trick, and while my time I cannot call disappointing I did run several minutes slower that the Turkey Trot 10 KM just a few weeks earlier. It is equally amazing and amazingly frustrating how quickly my stamina has diminished since cutting then quitting running while trying to nurse my knee back to not-hurting-all-the-time-except-when-running. If losing my endurance is the most frustrating, the annoyance that my knee hurt all the time since mid September except when I’m running, is a very close second most. I ran twice after the Fall Classic and then went to physio and ended up back at square one and I think my physiotherapist was as frustrated as me. So I took the rest of the month off. I’m slowly easing myself back into it. Slowly as in way to slow for my head, but a bit more quickly than my physiotherapist would like. I’m trying to find the balance of the two. That means that I’m not going to meet my goal of 2,600 KM in 2017, but I’m okay with that. I’m not great with that, but I’m already looking forward to 2018. The Vancouver First Half is just eight weeks away, and then the BMO Marathon is 12 weeks after that. Time to get my legs and lungs back.

snowed in in harrison

Books Read:
5. Inside of a Dog — Alexandra Horowitz
6. On Bullshit — Harry Frankfurt
7. The Last Gang in Town — Aaron Chapman
8. How Proust Can Change Your Life — Alain de Botton

Kilometres Ran:
week four — 40.9
week five — 12.1

To date: 228 km

It seems like I’ve been reading a lot when I put it here, but it doesn’t seem like a lot in real life (this isn’t real life this is the internet). Inside of a Dog was pretty good. It wasn’t really well written in that I think that it could have been maybe half its length, but it had a lot of information that I didn’t know, and I learned a few things that I thought I knew about dogs are, in fact, myth. I still don’t think I’ll get a mutt, but I’m closer to being talked into the idea. On Bullshit should be required reading for our time. Last Gang is about as much fun as nostalgia can be, I suppose. Proust didn’t change my life, but de Botton/Proust left me with some stuff to think about.

Running was pathetic, as you can see. I’m annoyed. I don’t know what I’m doing with this thing that I’m supposed to be doing called a “taper”. I’m probably doing it wrong. Week four was fine and then in week five I had planned to run Wednesday (and did) and then on Friday run over to Forerunners on West Fourth to pick up my race package for the Vancouver First Half, which I did not because it was a wet blizzard. Then I was going to do a short five-to-eight on Saturday but because I didn’t go to Forerunners on Friday I was going to do that on Saturday instead but the weather again was terrible and the weather doesn’t really bother me that much but the roads and sidewalks were predominately impassable. And then the news came that the Vancouver First Half was canceled. So I didn’t run this morning. I ran 12 kilometres this week and now I’m sitting in my hotel room that smells like vomit (not mine) at Harrison Hot Springs (that also has such terrible wifi that I’ve had to tether to my phone tor write this) for a week of CLC Winter School and it looks as though the only running I’m going to get to do this week is on a treadmill. I’ve never ever run on a treadmill, so that should be interesting. But I want to run to Sasquatch Park at least once. So we’ll see.