Tag: Stanley Park

2019 week ten

Book Read
10. The Hungry Brain – Stephan Guyenet

Kilometres Ran
week ten – 54.4

2019 to Date: 418 KM

I was interested in this book after seeing it on an Alex Hutchinson (Sweat Science) “not a best-of-2018” list, rather the books he liked in 2018. (Sounds familiar….) It’s safe to expect a couple more from his list to appear here in the future. The subject interests me in a cursory way. Guyenet is a respected, though not uncontroversial, obesity and neuroscience researcher who subscribes to the “calories-in-calories-out” model, which has always made the most sense to me anecdotally. I say not uncontroversial because for reasons I don’t know calories in/out is not universally accepted, and as you can imagine when it comes to things like obesity, there’s a lot of yelling from the differing sides. In The Hungry Brain, Guyenet explores the many reasons why the “calories-in” part is so damn hard for a lot of people, and the socio-economic structures that don’t help very much at all. This is a good book but I think it could have been shorter.

I have consistently terrible luck with race photos. I would much rather have a few decent race photos than a(nother) t-shirt or finisher’s medal. Then this year WestVanRun took like 5,000 photos over the two days and I found this one that I don’t appear to have body dysmorphia or I’m stuck behind some dude or dudette, and I kind of like it.

Eight weeks until BMO Vancouver Marathon. I’m not much of a social runner but one of the resolutions I made in 2018 was to be a bit more of a social runner. It went okay. Coach proposed I join the group workouts and after a couple Wednesdays on the alternative (cycle-trainer to nowhere) I relented (self-deprecating revisionist history is fun). As luck would have it, Wednesday ended up being a wet snowstorm. I showed up exhausted mentally and physically, made it through a 3K warm up, then hit the track for 8 x 600 / 200 and to someone who knows what they’re doing that seems pretty simple but I had naddaclue. (In case you’re like me, it’s 600 metres hard (1.5 loops) then 200 metres easy (half loop) eight times.) So I did my first set not with the fastest group but the second fastest and pretty quickly realized that I’m not that fast so I joined the third for two through eight. And it went okay but I was dead by the end and while everyone was friendly and supportive I still found it a rather humbling experience. I’m looking forward to next week. For two reasons, the second being that I signed up for a bit of redemption after the WestVanRun 5K train fiasco. The St. Patrick’s Day 5K goes Saturday morning in Stanley Park and while the course isn’t quite as flat as West Van the only train anywhere nearby is the kids’ one and I’m pretty sure the course doesn’t cross those tracks. Another crack at an official sub 20:00 in a 5K race, no luck required.

2018 week eighteen

Books Read:
23. The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances — Matthew Inman
24. How to Lose a Marathon — Joel Cohen

Kilometres Ran:
week eighteen — 52.3

To date: 816 KM

I’m a fan of The Oatmeal so it makes sense that I liked The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances. I used to like The Simpsons. I thought How to Lose a Marathon was meh. Inman’s book is good because in the midst of all its Oatmeal stuff there’s some decent thought put into the stuff that got me hooked on running in the first place: the mental stuff. You can read a version of it online (for free) here. Before I read How to Lose a Marathon I couldn’t identify a Cohen-written Simpsons episode if my life depended on it. Now I could at least make an educated guess that if the episode tries really really hard to be funny but just isn’t all that funny and actually gets pretty annoying what with how hard it’s trying (and failing) to be funny then there are decent odds said episode is written by Cohen. I think that when I was first starting out running I would have liked Cohen’s book if it was funny. I just didn’t think it was funny.

This morning I woke up at 4:45 AM and made coffee and prepared to race 21.1 KM and checked Facebook On-This-Day because I’m a masochist who likes coffee. Sometimes there’s a gem. This would be my second run of the BMO Half Marathon, the first being 2016, which was also my first half marathon. I remember not really knowing what I was doing. If only I’d read a book…. Back then I wanted to run 5 min/KM for a nice round 1:45 and then worry about the last 100 metres later. Stephanie was kind enough to have explained to me what a pace bunny is (and tapering, which I recall thinking seemed ridiculous). So with around 7 KM to go the 1:45 pacer passed me, which was demoralizing at the time. I hung on for a bit before finishing 1:46:00. Fast forward to this morning. I really wanted to set a new personal best; I aimed for 4:37/KM— that would get me a new PB with a minute to spare and is my Boston Qualifying marathon goal pace. Then I saw the 1:35 pacer in the start corral, and thought, sure, what the hell. The course starts out fast with nearly 100 metres of descent over the first 4 KM. I passed 5 KM over a minute and a half ahead of goal pace. By 10 KM I’d stopped checking splits, but there’s a timing mat and gun-time clock. It read 43-something*** and I knew I was still well ahead of my goal, but wasn’t sure where the 1:35 pacer was. We entered Stanley Park and passed Lost Lagoon and started the climb up Pipeline Road and he passed me. Pipeline peaks at 15 KM then descends to Stanley Park Drive. I checked my time at 15 KM. My personal best I was chasing I’d split 15 KM at 1:10:00. My watch read 1:06. The seconds didn’t register the math did. I could run the last 6 KM at 5:00/KM and set a new personal best. And let the pacer beat me. Again. So I passed him back and held on with all I had left. Just before the lighthouse at Brockton point, with just over 3 KM to go, he passed me again. I fought to keep him in reach as we exited the park, up Denman, east onto Georgia, a slight left onto Pender and the gentle, cruel uphill slope to the finish. I watch that stupid hat with the stupid ears bounce away in front of me and then I saw the finish line and the clock at it read 1:34 and the seconds ticked up as I ran by.

I finished with an official time 1:34:52 for a new personal best by 3:35 and 11:08 faster than my first half marathon. This is the second time in as many races that the pacer I’ve chased has been ahead of pace. I’ll take that over the alternative any day. Right up until the start at 7 this morning I was a bit bummed not to be running the full marathon. Not anymore.

***I saw the 10 KM clock. It said 43:something. I remember because my second fastest 10 KM race time is 44:06. My official time at 10 KM today is 44:19 but I swear to dog that clock said sub-44. This isn’t the first time this has happened. I do not understand.