Tag: Tom Gauld

2020 week eleven

“Books” Read
7. You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack – Tom Gauld
8-12. Money Shot #1 – #5 – Tim Seeley & Sarah Beattie

Kilometres Ran
week eleven – 88.8

2020 to date: 675 KM

The COVID-19 crisis has become a worldwide pandemic and while many online suggest this is a great time to get some reading done my attention span is on lingering around comic books and video games. So I read some comic books and played a lot of XBox. Tom Gauld graces the cover of many a New Yorker collecting dust on my coffee table, and I picked up this collection from Pulp Fiction Books in the fall. This little book collects from his eight years of weekly comics in the Guardian. Dark, quirky, genius. I’m a fan. I’m also a fan of Sarah Beattie on Twitter and Instagram and (also) back in the fall she started talking about a new project with Tim Seeley. Money Shot takes place in the near future “amid an anti-science presidential administration and public apathy.” A group of five scientists cannot secure research funding and resort to raising money by producing pay-per-view intergalactic porn. Fun, funny, smut. I’m sure I’ll get back to being Mr. Serious soon enough, but for now it’s comics and XBox.

Because everything is cancelled. First, Boston got postponed, which I was a bit relieved because I was expecting it to be cancelled. I expected everyone to get deferred to 2021 and then make it virtually impossible to qualify for Boston #125. But it was postponed, for now. Then the cascade started. Yesterday’s St Pat’s 5K was cancelled, followed by the Vancouver Sun Run. I wasn’t registered in either, but disappointed regardless. Then goal race April Fool’s Run half marathon on the Sunshine Coast was postponed until August and I was really disappointed. And then the BMO Marathon in May was cancelled and I was pretty demoralized. I had registered to run it to try to get a BQ for 2021 but didn’t talk about it except with my partner and coach, and had sworn them to secrecy for various reasons. Now I’m in limbo. I had wanted to run Berlin at the end of September and enjoy it rather than put the weight of BQ onto it. Who knows if it will even happen now. So for now I’m back to running like I did in the weeks following CIM – running for the sake of running and just enjoying it like I did way back before I became hyper-competitive with myself. And that’s okay, but I’m going to miss racing, and it seems my race-each-month goal is not going to happen this year. My next races are Scotiabank Half Marathon on June 28 followed by Summerfast 10K in mid-July. If they go ahead. We’ll see.

2018 week forty four

Book Read:
49. Instructions for a Funeral — David Means

Kilometres Ran:
week forty four: 27.3

To date: 2,193 KM

I received an advance copy of this new David Means book of short stories. I was previously unaware of him or his work and I am not sure that I’ll bother to pursue any more after trudging my way through this collection. I see that he branched out briefly from short stories to write a novel that was nominated for the Man Booker. Perhaps that one is worth a look. Means has quite the résumé and I feel like I should have liked this a lot more than I did. The title story was dark and funny and okay, and I also liked “The Terminal Artist” about a serial-killer nurse. But I spent so much time going through this collection like running in the pool. So much work for so little satisfaction and often seeming to get nowhere. Then one day I was clicking through the Guardian online and came across this Tom Gauld comic and thought yep. But what do I know. Anyway, thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the review copy.

I bicycled a lot less and ran a bit more this week. The bicycling less due to the torrential albeit prototypical rains that have arrived in Vancouver, well, let’s be honest, about a month later than usual. So October was spectacular and I ran a grand total of 72 KM so I feel rather ripped off. But things are starting to feel a bit better so on Hallowe’en I took a Mobi bike from the station around the corner from my place and rode down to Sunset Beach and (since I missed the actual one this year) I ran the Ghost Race segment from Burrard Bridge out to Third Beach and back and it didn’t suck. I was slow and exhausted but the pain was manageable and knees and stuff worked the way they’re supposed to work.

Now I just need to not rush stuff. And with that in mind I did not run the Fall Classic this year but instead after wasting my extra hour of sleep from daylight savings time change overnight I got up at the crack of dawn to watch the NY Marathon on television and then bicycled up to UBC (PS Arbutus to UBC up 16th sucks BTW) to catch the half marathon and 10K finishers and then bicycled back home plus a loop around Stanley Park Drive and then had a snack and a short nap and then went a ran a 10K loop around the Park and wondered why I was so exhausted that I barely ran it sub-50. I’m taking tomorrow off.