Tag: Seawall

2020 week thirteen

Book Read
14. The Plague – Kevin Chong

Kilometres Ran
week thirteen – 71.2

2020 to date: 809 KM

One of my favourite living writers (Alain de Botton) wrote this pretty great piece in the New York Times about one of my favourite dead writers (Albert Camus) and his (ahem, one of my favourite) book. You can read it here. I don’t completely agree with de Botton but it did get me thinking that now is as good a time as any to revisit The Plague. So I picked up this copy of Kevin Chong’s The Plague in which he rather deftly rehashes Camus’ classic, setting it in contemporary Vancouver. And I thought it was great, but maybe too great because it didn’t take long to conclude that now is, in fact, not as good a time as any to revisit any very plausible depiction of a pandemic locking down my home city while my home city is on the verge of being locked down. But maybe you’re a bit of a masochist too? (Follow the link above and find it 25 per cent off directly from the press, and between now and total lock down, they’ll deliver it too.)

Plague top and short shorts for Brockton Oval dirt loop laps.

I survived a week of self-imposed Seawall isolation and what I learned is that (a) avoiding the Seawall makes it near impossible to avoid hills, and (b) hills and I do not get along. My one day of hills reprieve was my virgin experience running laps on the Brockton Oval dirt loop. Coach gave me ten times 600 metres with 200 metre breaks and I nearly tapped at five, then six, then by eight I decided I was in too deep to quit. It was also my first time doing 600s so maybe they just suck? It was also also my first time doing a proper track workout completely solo and as much as I love the solo run, solo track workouts suck. I do not know how anyone manages to do this all the time. The rest of the time this week I spent running up and down hills and over and back on bridges and I came out the end of the week pleasantly surprised by how much beating my legs (knees especially) bared and how well I recovered, especially a 33 KM romp to and then through the worst parts of the BMO Marathon course. You know, just in case RunVan change their mind and postpone rather than cancel. Not holding my breath for BMO but still holding hope for Berlin. Scotiabank Half hasn’t announced yet, though, which seems weirdly optimistic to me but I’ll take it.

week ten

Books Read:
20. Men Explain Things to Me — Rebecca Solnit
21. Lemon Hound — Sina Queyras

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 34.48
to date — 300.11

I didn’t plan for the one-two punch of you should really read some Virginia Woolf that came with reading Rebecca Solnit’s collection of essays followed by Sina Queyras’ poetry collection but I have the two literary black eyes to show for it and I don’t mind. I don’t have any excuses. None come to mind except that I just haven’t bothered to yet. I will probably rectify the situation in the near future. I’m not quite sure how I managed to avoid Woolf so completely throughout my undergraduate degree in English literature. I also didn’t know that Lemon Hound was a book of poems before(?) it was the formidable force in Canadian/feminist poetics that is the (sadly, defunct) blog lemonhound.com though the blog started in 2005 and the book was published in 2006. Defunct isn’t the right word, either, since the site is still alive, though with no new material since May 2015. I recall reading Queyras’ to social media announcing that she was moving on to other endeavors and the wave of ugh that swept through the community. It left a hole that has yet to be filled that I’m aware of at least. Maybe I’m out of touch. It happens.
week ten
I’ve been trying to keep my running interesting by mixing up my routes but it’s not really working all that well since I really only have two routes and they’re approximately the same distance but with dramatically different scenery and my decision to turn left or right is usually decided by the position of the sun in the sky when I leave my building. With Daylight Savings on the near horizon about to push the sun away from its horizon that could change, but for now it’s left for the lit path if the sun sets before I finish, and right if it’s a morning or midday run. They look like this.
Turn Left
This one takes me over the Burrard Bridge the then down (up?) Cypress Street connecting to the Seawall path at the Maritime Museum then around Science World and back to English Bay. It’s a nice, flat run with the exception of the climb to the middle of the bridge, and it’s lit from the bridge all the way back to English Bay (except for that part through Vanier Park). I have a headlamp for the short dark section from the north side of the Burrard Bridge to Bute Street that has garnered me a couple “TOO BRIGHT!” comments. I highbeam people. I’m a jerk.
Turn Right
This is my lit-by-the-sun option. Although I have said headlamp, I prefer to use it sparingly. Not glaringly? [groan…] This route is straight down Barclay and then under West Georgia and onto the Stanley Park Seawall. I like this run, and it’s probably my favourite especially in inclement weather when the Seawall is mostly deserted. The one part that I still find slightly deflating is when rounding Brockton Point under the lighthouse and seeing the Lions Gate Bridge way off in the distance. It looks a lot farther than it is.