Tag: Personal Best

2019 week thirty seven

Book Read
36. If You’re Not Yet Like Me – Edan Lepucki

Kilometres Ran
week thirty seven – 66.0

2019 to date: 1,817 KM

This book could have been an episode of Girls. And just like Girls I liked the first bit and then lost interest really quickly once I realized that I really dislike all of the characters. Then, because I get petty when I’m annoyed, there was this line in particular that I hated, “my menstrual cycle is like a German train: always on time.” I always hate it when writers do this. No, not write the word menstrual. I hate it when writers use simile and/or metaphor and then immediately afterwards, (often with a colon but sometimes a dash) feel the need to explain it to writer’s readers because we are clearly too dumb to understand how clever writer is. Anyway, the story was nearly done so I hate-finished it. And then to rinse the bad taste from my mouth a decided to read this article that people were yammering about online by a woman named Natalie Beach all about her relationship with Instafamous influencer (barf) Caroline Calloway in The Cut and now all of a sudden I’m supposed to have a strong opinion about Yale plates. And while I sort of feel for Beach and she sure seems like a pretty good writer and definitely makes me dislike Calloway but it turns out a dislike them both.

Mile2Marathon Eastside 10K takeover. I’m in the middle somewhere.

I blame the weather. The week was pretty wet, which sucks because my mental health of late seems to be tied to my bicycle commute as much as my running, and I am definitely a fair weather cyclist. But you cannot live in Vancouver and hate running in the rain. I raced my first Eastside 10K in 2016, in the pouring rain. It was the last one run with the start and finish at the top of the Dunsmuir Viaduct. I ran 44:56 for 20th in my age group and I was ecstatic. I missed 2017 (for an epic half marathon in Copenhagen, in the pouring rain…I made the right decision…). Last year I ran the new course in the pouring rain and a knee brace and set a PB (at the time) 41:23. I set two goals for this year: run faster than last year, and sub 20 minutes the first 5 KM. (I’ve been chasing an official sub-20 5K all year, and I knew that there is an official timing mat at this course’s midpoint just before its dreaded hill.) I woke up Saturday morning and it was wet but it wasn’t raining, downed downed four shots of espresso and jogged the two-and-a-bit kilometres to the Woodwards building. After a group photo and a few strides I got into the start corral. I don’t know if the PA wasn’t working but all of a sudden there was a 10-9-8- countdown to start and we were off. I lost a bit of time dodging people who’d no business being at the front of the corral and then the crowded, tight turn around from Cordova onto Water Street but you would’t know it from my pace splits. I got into a just slightly uncomfortable groove, with the 40:00 pace about 25 metres ahead of me. I could tell he was building a buffer for the hill that comes just after 5K. My watch buzzed 5K a bit early (as usual) and I checked the time as I crossed the mat – 19:40 – and goal number one was in the bag. Next was to finish the rest of the course in 21:43 or sooner.

I took the hill and lost a bit of time but felt pretty good coming down and just settled back into a groove and held on. The eighth kilometre felt really rough but I took a peek at my watch as I crossed nine and saw I was on pace for well under 41 minutes. I probably could have given more kick at the finish but the only kick I gave is to myself for not checking in on my time more frequently. I crossed the finish line 40:19 for not just a new course best, but fastest 10K yet. I think I could have gone under 40 if I’d known how close I was but I’m still elated with this result. I took a handful of seconds off my personal best, and over a minute off my course best, and achieved an official sub-20 5K along the way. My sub 40 minute 10K is coming soon – NorthVanRun 10 is just two weeks away.

2019 week thirty three

Books Read
31. The Knockoff Eclipse – Melissa Bull
32. Speedboat – Renata Adler

Kilometres Ran
week thirty three – 53.6

2019 to date: 1,559 KM

I first encountered Melissa Bull a couple years ago when she was in town to read poetry for an Anvil Press event at the Railway Club downtown and then read her translation of Nelly Arcan’s Burqa of Skin and then her poetry collection Rue that maybe contained something from her Railway Club reading but I honestly cannot recall for certain. Anyway I picked up Knockoff at the East Van Publishers Christmas party and finally got around to picking through it. It’s Bull’s first collection of short stories and it’s good in that contemporary style of abrupt vignettes presented as stories, like flipping through weeknight primetime television and pausing on a program for a minute or two before moving on to the next one, back when television wasn’t all on-demand. I’ve written a few times here previously my finding short story collections a bit weird for various reasons and weird isn’t really the correct word. What would happen, for instance, if you took Bull’s collection and just smashed it all together (or is it altogether)? Well, something a lot like Speedboat. Adler’s first novel was the second ever recipient of the PEN/Hemingway Award back in 1977. The novel, if you can really call it that, follows journalist Jen Fain in first-person as she navigates contemporary upper-middle class American life. It takes a bit to get used to, but once you find your flow Speedboat is an exceptional novel that I am sure every editor working today would have chopped up into two dozen or more short stories.

In the Seawheeze start corral with Katie Gordon. We considered swapping bibs. I don’t know what Rose is doing either. Photo by Gary Franco.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about easing into fall marathon training and not racing in August and thereby forgoing my goal to race every month in 2019 but justifying it with the fact that I’ve already race 13 times this year and I have registered for seven more (actually eight but who’s counting…) and that I had won the entry lottery for Seawheeze but had declined it and now you’re all caught up. So Friday evening my youngest brother was in town because his partner and her sister and father were running Seawheeze and I said I planned to maybe try to take some photos along the route and then he asked where’s a good spot to watch and oh Gordon’s hurt and cannot run do you want his bib? So about eight hours before gun I decided to run Seawheeze. Fortunately I had earlier decided against shawarma for dinner, but I hadn’t exactly fuelled and rested properly, and if I’d had any inkling that I’d be racing I definitely wouldn’t have hammered my Wednesday workout with the Mile2Marathon crew.

That Burrard Bridge is exhausting…mid yawn midway through the Seawheeze Half Marathon 2019. Photo: Tim Nickel.

I went out fast at the start to get ahead of the crowd but nothing ridiculous. I had zero game plan except to run how I felt and have a good time, and I felt great for the first few kilometres. And then the next few too. At halfway I was still on sub 90 minute pace. But over and back on Burrard Bridge took a lot out of me and my started to slip. By 18 KM I was running on fumes and then faced the little hill at Lumberman’s Arch that took the remainder out of me. I gave one last shove from the top of the slope only to find that instead of turning left to the flat of the Seawall the course veered right and another slope up and over the pedestrian bridge over Stanley Park Drive. The Seawall wind through Coal Harbour was a bit of a death march but I managed to dig out a decent sprint along Harbour Green Park to cross the finish line in 1:31:43 – good enough for an eight second personal best and 122nd overall. So while it wasn’t a great performance (top 100 might have crossed my mind over the first 5K) it was still the fastest half marathon I’ve ever run, and I’m very please with my fitness level at the start of a new marathon build. Plus it was a whole lot of fun. Maybe next year I won’t decline the entry if my name’s drawn again.

2019 week twenty five

Book Read
25. Daisy Jones and the Six – Taylor Jenkins Reid

Kilometres Ran
week twenty five – 38.4

2019 to date: 1,201 KM

I spent the first dozen pages of this book wondering how I had never heard of any of these people and even Googling a couple before it finally sunk in that fiction means what it says it means, in case you were wondering how naive I am sometimes. I basically hide in the fetal position all day every April 1. But also, credit to Taylor Jenkins Reid. I really liked the style of this book – the story is told through interviews with people involved, without narration or even a voice to the interviewer (mostly). I really like how Reid wove in inconsistencies amongst the characters’ memories, and (sometimes wildly) different perspectives on shared events. I really liked this book a lot, in spite of not being very much of a Fleetwood Mac fan. I mean, they’re alright and I might have Rumours on vinyl but I’ve never actually spun it.

Scotiabank start line, 7 a.m. This face look like how I feel.

Today was the Scotiabank Half Marathon and I went in not feeling ready at all. I’d done little speed work, and, to be honest, not a lot of running, what with 45 KM bicycle commuting everyday that the weather allowed (all of them). Mix in some crap at the office and some crap in the house and not only am I not physically where I wanted to be, my head was just not in the game. But according to my race calendar it was also probably my last chance this year to run under ninety minutes. So I gave it a shot. The conditions were perfect as they rarely (never?) are for a race this late in June. Overcast and about 13 degrees at the start and barely a breeze. But I just wasn’t feeling it. So I went out pretty hard at the start, or what I thought and felt was pretty hard and knew I was in trouble pretty quickly. The 1:30 pacer caught me before the 2 KM marker and I tried to hold him but by 5 KM I was far at the back of the pack and really not feeling great. But I checked my cumulative average pace and I was right on the mark. I lost a bit of ground around UBC and made some up coming down the big Marine Drive hill. Goal pace of 4:15 means 42:30 for a 10K and I crossed at 42:26. The wheels never came off over the next 8.5 KM to the peak of Burrard Bridge. I just had a few bad splits.

Sprint finish photos thanks to Stephanie, who also chauffeured me to the start because she’s the best.

I managed a decent kick through the last 2,600 metres but it just wasn’t enough to make up for the losses. As I crossed the line I saw 1:31 on the clock. So it was not the 1:29 that I wanted, and that’s disappointing because the conditions were perfect for it and I feel like it’s an opportunity missed. But a new personal best. With all the other crap I still managed to gut out a new personal best, and finished in the top 5 per cent of the field, and Strava says new 15KM, 10 mile, and 20KM best efforts too. I’ll take all of them.

Does this angle make my feet look huge? and other commentaries on being conscious of perspective.

In other news, if you’ve been following along these past few weeks you know that I was also running to raise money to support the Capilano Review Contemporary Arts Society. I set a goal to raise $500 and when I exceeded that I bumped it up to $750, and just as I was crawling into bed last night an[other] anonymous donor pledged to get me to $750. I’m so very grateful to the friends and colleagues who made it happen, and I’m sure that The Capilano Review is as well. If you’re one of the three people reading this, thank you.