Tag: Paris

2020 weeks fifteen + sixteen

Books Read
17. Why Did I Ever – Mary Robison
18. Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry & Prose

Kilometres Ran
week fifteen – 70.8
week sixteen – 74.7

2020 to date: 1,022 KM

I went to Costco the other day and as I arrived a busybody announced to everyone waiting to pay for parking that we might was to check the line to get in because it was an hour and a half long and they damn sure weren’t waiting in that nonsense but I was sure I had a book or twenty on my phone so standing around for 90 minutes didn’t sound terrible and besides I was sure they were type who believe that two metres is six feet so I wasn’t going to take their word for it. Why Did I Ever is the perfect book to read while waiting in line because it’s basically like reading through a moderately interesting person’s Twitter timeline except at the end of it you get to flout that you read an actual book rather than wasting your time endlessly scrolling on social media even though most of the time you have no clue what the fuck Robison is talking about. For instance:

65
I say to myself, “Stop it.” Or so I say. It doesn’t work.

Or:

165
I say to myself, “Damn you, damn you, God help you, help you, help.”

I liked this book in spite (or out of spite?) of not really knowing what the hell was going on. But it’s poetry month and also Easter came and went so to celebrate the resurrection I woke up Easter Sunday and pulled out my copy of the collected works of Wallace Stevens and flipped through to “Sunday Morning” as the warm spring morning sun shone in through my apartment window and it was perfect. Everybody loves WC Williams or (that Nazi sympathizer) Ezra Pound and don’t get me wrong because I like Williams a lot but Stevens is my guy. Frost? The guy who overthinks a hike? GTFO.

On a my long run yesterday out along the Central Valley Greenway to Burnaby and up Willingdon to Confederation trail and then back under the Iron Workers Memorial Bridge through Strathcona and then home somewhere along the way I passed 1,000 kilometres so far in 2020 and while I’ve been conscious that it was coming up rather quickly it was still a bit of a surprise just how quickly it came up. So I checked. Last year I made it to one thousand on May 24 while I was on vacation in Paris.

In 2018 I made it to one thousand on May 27 while I was on vacation in Tallinn, Estonia.

This year I made it to one thousand on April 18 while I was running through Burnaby.

Today was the day that the Vancouver Sun Run was supposed to go but was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I had no intention of running it. I did have a goal to run a time fast enough to get a seeded bib (sub 38:00) but I knew it wasn’t going to be this year so I didn’t even sign up. Today after a mid-long bike ride to recover from yesterday’s long run, I set out for an easy jog over Lions Gate Bridge and back. My intention was to run 9 KM to get to 200 KM for April, but I hit 4.5 heading out in the middle of the bridge I wasn’t going to turn around mid span. So I jogged to the end then back home for a pretty casual 10KM in 48:53 reminiscing most of the way about running my very first race five years ago today when I Sun Ran and finished in 52:57 and thought I was going to die. Nostalgia weekend for sure.

2019 week forty two

Book Read
40. Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan

Kilometres Ran
week forty two – 40.6

2019 to date: 2,149

I think that this book was a book that I was “supposed to” read before I went and spent eight days in Paris back in the spring and I hope that’s not the case because it has nothing to do with Paris and while I recognize that it is “good” it really did nothing for me and if it had been longer I am sure that I would have put it down long before finishing. Cécile is the seventeen-year-old narrator of a summer spent in the Riviera with her rather care-free (hedonist) father. She is about as reliable a narrator as a you might imagine from a teenage narrator with a father who behaves much like he’s a teenager still too. And good for him, but then along comes Anne and she does her best to straighten out both of them, which also goes about as well as you might imagine. I had to remind myself a few times that the ideas in the book seem rather juvenile but that might be because Sagan wrote it when she was eighteen. I didn’t particularly like it but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a decent novella, just not to my liking. Moving on.

As should come as a surprise to no one who’s been following along, my Marathon Photos from the Victoria Half Marathon on Thanksgiving were terrible. But here’s a pretty great photo by Matt Cecill featuring me in full float coming up Dallas Road a little past 16 km. Thanks Matt!

I’ve been biking a lot and in the course of that developed a bit of a weird stiffness in my right leg that I’ve been going to physio about, which is nothing that concerns me because it has had zero effect on my running but lately as my running has ramped up I’ve done less cycling and I’ve noticed that my knees have started to bother me again. I swear that the cycling kept them in check so it makes sense that less cycling would mean a recurrence of some knee niggles but i had also hoped that we were past that by now. Last Sunday I raced pretty hard at the Victoria Half Marathon and I took Monday off completely and then went for a long bike ride on Tuesday after not biking for over a week and then followed that in the evening with a pretty casual 10 km around the park and my right calf and knee were a bit of a bother but nothing of concern. Wednesday was regular physio for aforementioned leg thing and I mentioned the calf and knee and my physiotherapist, bless her, is an amateur poker player at best and suggested that I take it easy for a few days. She expressed more concern about my calf than my knee, but she put the ultrasound on my knee for a best and then told me no Wednesday night workout with the crew so I took the rest of the day off. Thursday and Friday I spun on the cycle trainer and I was feeling pretty good on Saturday morning so I went out for my scheduled 30 km training run. The run went fine, and the calf issue is gone, but holyshit my knee is not very happy with me and now I’m more than a bit concerned about the fact that I am pacing the 1:45 half marathon at the Fall Classic this weekend and then following that with the 10 km race at goal marathon pace and then following that with the 5 km race at easy pace for the first official Fall Classic Hat Trick – a dude did it a few years ago but back then you had to hammer the half because the 10 km gun went just 90 minutes after the half gun. This year RunVan adjusted the start times to make it a bit easier for us hackers – 10 km two hours after the half start, and 90 minutes before the 5 km start. Suffice it to say, knee better get its shit together, and not just because of the Fall Classic, but far more importantly I’m just 50 days away from toeing the line at the California International Marathon.

2019 week twenty one

Book Read
None

Kilometres Ran
week twenty one – 44.6

2019 to date: 1,020 KM

TLDR: I didn’t read anything. I found some race photos from the 3Laenderlauf Half Marathon in Basel, Switzerland, and passed 1,000 KM so far in 2019 whilst running around Paris.

I thought that there was a chance that I would sit in a café sipping espresso or on the bank of the Seine with a bottle of Badoit and a baguette reading a book but non! We did stuff instead. After the 3Laenderlauf half marathon on Sunday I took Monday off, then one last run in Basel, Switzerland on Tuesday before getting onto a train for Paris. After arriving photographs from the Basel race appeared on its website.

3Landerlauf Half Marathon start line. I found me; I’m in there.
3Laenderlauf Half Marathon, at the first corner heading for Mittlere Brücke (Middle Bridge).
#Laenderlauf Half Marathon at about 18 KM coming south along the Rhine on Uferstrasse. After starting with the 85 crowd I faded pretty hard. Here I’m alone between the 1:40 pack behind me, and the 95s I can just see up ahead.
3Laenderlauf finish line sprint! Looks like I’m fighting some Gs coming through that corner. Finished 1:37:43 OT – over five minutes off my personal best, but set a new fastest-in-Europe beating Helsinki (1:39:09 -May 2018) and Copenhagen (1:38:27 -September 2017).

Our first day in Paris I didn’t run. I intended to, but got up in the morning and hadn’t planned a route and the got frustrated trying to plan where to go in a completely new city. I thought that I’d run the approx. kilometre south of our flat in Belleville on the north edge of the 20th Arrondissement to Père Lachaise Cemetery an run through there, but no running allowed in the cemetery. Day two I took a 20 minute metro ride down the 11 Line to Hôtel de Ville and ran around Île Saint-Louis and Île de la Cité and then along the Seine and up Canal Saint-Martin back to home.

Seine in the morning.

I liked the Seine and the Canal but not having to take a metro, or the traffic, or the number of people on the narrow sidewalks. For day two I decided to give the Canal another look, but taking it further north and coming back through a park that has a lot of activity on Strava Global Heatmap. Along the way I passed 1,000 so far in 2019.

Along the locks of Canal Saint-Martin in Paris I passed 1,000 KM so far in 2019 (and a couple days earlier than 2018, in spite of spending most of January and February this year on the disabled list).

The Canal was fine but the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont was excellent. I decided to go back the next day, and I’ve been back every day since. I went once around clockwise, then once counter, and have gone counter since. The outside loop is 2,320 metres. There’s a bit of a climb coming south-west and a nice downhill in the north-east, for 34 (or 39 depending on Strava’s / Garmin’s mood) metres elevation difference in the loop. It is so much fun.

One kilometre to the south park entrance then four loops.

I like Paris a lot but I’ve fallen in love with running loops of Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. My plan was to run the banks of the Seine one last time before we leave but I have a feeling that instead I’ll be chasing Strava segment PRs on Grand tour Buttes sens inverse aiguilles entrée Sud.