Tag: Vancouver Noir

2019 week thirteen

Book Read
13. Vancouver Noir – Sam Wiebe (Ed.)

Kilometres Ran
week thirteen – 58.6

2019 to date: 600 KM

Last year I received a review copy of Nathan Ripley’s highly anticipated first novel Find You in the Dark and I had no idea who Nathan Ripley was but I read it and then I had no idea who was highly anticipating his first novel because I didn’t think it was very good at all and then I picked up this collection of noir featuring some local authors that I really like, like Carleigh Baker and Timothy Taylor to name two, and I was looking forward to reading Don English’s piece because I’d only ever read his non-fiction and along the way through this Sam Wiebe edited collection I got to the Nathan Ripley story and it was really, really great and then I got to the end of the collection and while Baker and English and Taylor did not disappoint I think I liked the Ripley story the best of the whole bunch, which made me understand why Find You in the Dark was so highly anticipated and yet made me wonder, oh boy, if I was disappointed imagine the people actually doing the highly anticipating. Anyway, Vancouver Noir continues the Akashic Books collection of noir set in major cities around the world. I liked it a lot. If I lived somewhere else and knew the city well enough I’d probably like that iteration too. Except Winnipeg. Fuck that place.

I am not an early morning runner but sometimes I get it and sometimes it’s the only way to get the work done between getting work done. Plus this shot is kind of noir-y no?

In the words of Al Jourgensen, this week was the way to suck eggs. It start out fine but job got in the way and by the time track Wednesday rolled around I was already exhausted. Wednesday is typically my day off but for most of March I’ve been embroiled in negotiations so after a day locked in a hotel meeting room in Surrey (like Winnipeg, but closer…) I drove to the track and managed to squeeze out six and a half 1,000s with 200 metre breaks out of a planned “between six and ten but try for eight.” Thursday wasn’t much better as it turned into a 15 hour day that should have resulted in a deal but to my frustration ended up in filing for federal conciliation and meant that I missed my Thursday run. Today’s long run was supposed to be 20K easy then a slow, gradual build to 8K at marathon pace and I just didn’t have it in me today. I misjudged my route, ending up at 28.4 and could have and should have gone the other 600 metres, but I’d only managed five of the 8K at marathon pace -ish and then a jog home and now I’m grumpy and perhaps slightly less confident in my goals at BMO in five weeks. Next weekend is the April Fool’s Half Marathon from Gibsons to Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast and it will be a real test to see where I’m at but after today the idea of setting a new personal best let alone going sub 90 minutes seems outlandish. So we shall see.

2019 week eight

Book Read
8. Bad Endings – Carleigh Baker

Kilometres Ran
week eight – 37.1

2019 to Date: 328

Bad Endings is a collection of 15 short stories by (currently) Vancouver-based writer Carleigh Baker. Many of the stories are also set in Vancouver, and one particularly depressing one is set in my hometown of Kamloops. Well, they’re all pretty depressing. The Kamloops one, though, crept up on me like, “this seems familiar, and not just the mood.” Sure, they’re dark and a few really do have bad endings but not badly written, just displeasurable – sort of like the ending of tonight’s Academy Awards that’s just wrapped up vying for my attention in the background. Baker has another piece (that I’m now even more looking forward to reading) in the Vancouver Noir collection that’s currently sitting in the to-read pile.

Ten weeks to go before the BMO Marathon and I’m still spending equal time riding a bicycle to nowhere as I am running. And could spinning a cycle training be any more boring? I thought that pool jogging was bad. Actually, pool jogging is probably worse. At least on a cycle trainer I can zone into something rather than just zoning out. So with a couple elastic bands I strapped my iPad onto the handlebars and cued up Netflix and tried to distract myself from the fact that not only am I not going anywhere, but on a whatever-the-opposite-of-smart-is cycle trainer there is zero coasting. Too bad The Punisher doesn’t have less coasting. I mean it’s okay but pick up the pace, please. Anyway, while BMO is t-minus-ten, WestVanRun is just one week away and just last night I noticed that they’ve changed up the courses for both the 5K and 10K both of which I’m going to race, and they look really fast. My plan was to chase a sub 20 in the 5K and go have a fun run for the 10K but now I’m wondering about chasing a 10K PB too the following day. I have no idea how that will go, but I really want to give both a try. I’m not letting Baker write the finale, though.

2018 week forty five

Book Stuff Read:
Poetry is Dead — Issue 18 — Metal

Kilometres Ran:
week forty five: 23.4

To date: 2,217 KM

A slow week in book reading but a great week at my mailbox. The latest issue of Poetry is Dead is guest edited by Carleigh Baker and David James Brock, the latter of whom I was unfamiliar and now I’m interested. Baker has a piece in the new Vancouver Noir collection that also launched this week and I missed out on for fear of spreading the plague. But I really want to pick up a copy. PoD Metal explores the unusual intersection of metal and poetry. There’s some great stuff inside. It’s hard to argue with Luke Meat’s “Five Times Metal Jumped the Three-headed Hydra.” My favourite piece is Chris Koenig-Woodyard’s “Satan, in Pandemonium,” a work whose lines are anagrams of pandemonium, which sounds gimmicky but is not. I don’t think so at least. The issue is delightfully evil, and right up my alley.

On Wednesday just before the Metal PoD came through my mail slot I went out for a run that would be my 666th activity on Strava, so I decided to run 6.66KM because I couldn’t resist. It went pretty well with minimal knee pain. At physio on Friday I had my knee taped for the first time, which was a different experience and I’m still not sure about it. The run with a taped knee wasn’t great, but I’m not sure that it had anything to do with the taping; I think that between the running and bicycling and strength training exercises that maybe my leg was tired. So I might give taping another try. I’ve started on a study somehow affiliated with the University of BC and at the moment of typing this I cannot seem to recall the confidentiality clause, so I’ll talk about it a little bit. Basically I’m to use and then evaluate a website focused on knee pain, specifically pain in the knee cap. I’ve learned a few things that I’m going to try to incorporate into my routines and see how it goes. I’ll probably write more about the study and the website when it wraps up, sometime before Christmas. My total milage is below what I wanted for this week but it’s a long weekend, which always messes with routine (if you’re paying attention you’ll notice this is Monday and not Sunday…). My current plan is to start slowly loading by adding 5KM per week as long as my knees respond positively. If not then it’s back into the pool, though I want to be in the pool at least once per week too. Two weeks until first test: Moustache Miler 5K on November 24.