Tag: Public Washrooms Vancouver

2019 week twenty seven

Book Read
26. The Incomplete Book of Running – Peter Sagal

Kilometres Ran
week twenty seven – 51.5

2019 to date: 1,297 KM

Stephanie introduced me to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me… on NPR and I’ve been a fan since. Then heard Wait Wait host Peter Sagal’s story about running the Boston Marathon in 2013, which if you know your running history is a pretty significant year for not running reasons. Anyway, she tried to find a copy of this book for Christmas but it was another one of those cases of published in America and then a few months later published in other markets. So she got me a gift certificate to Pulp Fiction Books on Main Street, which I used to order the book once Simon & Schuster got around to publishing it in Canada. I feigned aghastment that PFB had never heard of Sagal in spite of the fact a couple years ago I hadn’t either. Anyway, the book arrived and I promptly read it and rather enjoyed it. The book coincides (neither correlating nor causing) Sagal’s running with the end of his marriage, which was interesting to me since I started taking running seriously as therapy to deal with my own longterm relationship demise. He writes about the time that he bandited a race and the backlash that drew after he wrote about it for Runner’s World, and his subsequent attempts at penance. You can read it here. I haven’t read it there because I read it in his book instead. I agree with the general consensus that bandits are douchebags, but I think (and I don’t know if he has or not) Sagal deserves much more vehemence for something else he talks about in his book. Pooping. (Though he cannot bring himself to type the word, so uses “egress.” Maybe it was his editor. Who knows.) Running can be an extremely effective laxative. Runners already know this. Non-runners or just-starting-out runners, now you know. Sagal writes, “I know where every public restroom is and what gyrations need to be accomplished to get to it” and yet he seems rather fine with going “behind the nearest bush” and that’s just not very neighbourly, especially if you “know where every public restroom is.” I too know where every public restroom is, and as a public service I made a map of every public restroom along or nearby my favourite running routes. And I have never had to go “behind the nearest bush.” Gross, Peter.

I expect that this map might come in useful for tourists, too. When I travel I always take my running shoes (and hope that I happen to come across a public restroom if one is needed). I’ve had to cut a run short, but I have never used a bush. Seriously, Peter, gross. Some cities are better than others, and to be honest Vancouver seems to be one of the better free-restroom-stocked cities I’ve run in.

2018 week twenty two

Books Read:
28. Hunger — Roxane Gay
29. Ayiti — Roxane Gay

Kilometres Ran:
week twenty two — 67

To date: 1,065 KM

I received an advanced copy of Ayiti from Grove Press. It came out in 2011 but now Roxane Gay is a pretty big deal so Grove is rereleasing it with two additional stories, which begs the question whether it’s an advanced copy or not. Regardless it seemed as good a time as any to finally read Hunger. I’ve wanted and not wanted to read it since it came out, so it has just sat and stared at me as I pick up other books. I didn’t find it difficult to read but I do find it difficult to write about. It’s probably too cliché to quote Atticus Finch but I do feel like I took a jog in Roxane Gay’s point of view. The memoir explores her relationship with food as the result a way to deal with trauma from rape. It’s a heavy book, no pun intended. In early 2014 I went through my own trauma when my partner of a decade decided she’d rather be with another person, then a bit later told me. I can see how I could have eaten through it. Instead I drank through it. And started running through it. Hindsight is a funny thing. A question arose in my mind while reading Hunger, which was to wonder its fate if it had not been written by Roxane Gay. Perhaps another way to look at it is that Ayiti makes way for Hunger. Ayiti is Roxanne Gay’s debut short story collection featuring fifteen pieces, opening with “Motherfuckers” and never lost my attention. The writing is excellent, the stories humorous and tragic. This is an excellent debut that is worthy of reissue. I really like this collection and recommend it. Thanks to Grove Press for the advance copy.

Stockholm City Hall,  and me repping the old Eastside 10K tee, before the UA sell out.

Last week I wrote about travel running but I didn’t write about public toilets. Probably the first thing I learned about running, before “no, shoes are not all the same” and “don’t wear cotton” was that running can lead to needing to find a washroom. I flew home from Sweden yesterday after running nearly 130 KM (plus a 21.1 KM race) around Helsinki, Finland, Tallinn Estonia, and Stockholm, and one thing that I noticed is a dearth of public washrooms. Sometimes just noticing that there are ample facilities along the route is reassuring, whether they’re needed or not. On that note Helsinki was not so bad. Tallinn was not great. In Stockholm though, and this surprised me, the only public WC I saw was 200 metres from the flat I’d let. (Stockholm is also, incidentally, the only place I ended up having to, ahem, cut a run short.) This morning I ran just over 18 KM over a couple bridges and around Stanley Park and I passed eight washrooms (one twice). In fact, on the various routes that I run there are around 35 public washrooms. So I created a map in Google Maps and mapped them. I’m going to embed it on this blog somewhere, but in the meantime you can view/copy/share it here: Vancouver Washrooms.