Tag: RUNVAN Hat Trick

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.

On Overthinking Hat Tricks

Books Read:
32. Homage to Catalonia — George Orwell

Kilometres Ran:
week forty two — 0
week forty three — 10
week forty four — 33

To date: 2,342 km

A year and a bit ago I went to Barcelona and before I went I decided that I would pick up a couple books not necessarily about Barcelona but with some connection to there. I ended up with The Shadow of the Wind and Homage to Catalonia. I read Shadow and it was pretty awful. And Homage sat on my shelf and then suddenly Catalonia was in the news and so I figured it was a good time to get some back story. The book is pretty great, and so relevant to today, not least for the fact that the Left still cannot get its collective shit together and just work towards a common goal rather than fighting about every little nuance of disagreement. So some things never change.

I went to physio and the physio said, no more … well what actually happened is that I said that I was a bit concerned that I was going to run terribly at the Fall Classic and was feeling really out of shape and that I maybe wasn’t so concerned about my knee, because I have self-detrimental willpower when it comes to running (which is probably partly why I’m in this mess in the first place) and she said maybe you should switch to the 10 km. That’s what she said. So I did and for a little bit there I felt like a bit of a fraud claiming the RunVan Hat Trick because I wasn’t running the half but then I figured that if I’d run the BMO Half rather than the full marathon in the spring I wouldn’t think my hat trick was a fraud so I’ve managed to justify that BMO Full + Turkey Trot + Fall Classic 10KM does = legitimate hat trick. Still wanted to run the half though. Still disappointed.