Tag: Vancouver Running Co

2018 week fifteen

Books Read:
16. Steal It Back — Sandra Simonds
17. Further Problems with Pleasure — Sandra Simonds
18. Ariel — Sylvia Plath
19. My Ariel — Sina Queyras

Kilometres Ran:
week fifteen — 66.0

To date: 630 KM

It’s National Poetry Month. Why April, you may ask? I did. Seems it was started when in 1996 some members of the Academy of American Poets gave away copies of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land outside of a New York post office. Canada NPMed two years later, making this the 20th annual celebration of April cruelty. I’ve celebrated by reading less poetry than I have since I started keeping track of my annual failure to read 95 Books in one year. I’ve followed Sandra Simonds on social media for a while. The other day she suggested to me on Goodreads that I might like her new collection Orlando and I thought that maybe I should read some of her already published stuff so I picked up Steal it Back and Further Problems with Pleasure, both of which, I should add, come with five-star reviews on Goodreads from Simonds herself. Who am I to argue? As it happens, I like both very much. Last fall one of my favourite people I’ve never actually met Sina Queyras AKA Lemon Hound released My Ariel, which Coach House described as “a poem-by-poem engagement with Sylvia Plath’s Ariel” so I decided that I should revisit Plath (whom I haven’t read since undergrad a lifetime ago) and also decided (since no one could have possibly thought of this before me) that I would read Plath and then the corresponding Queyras, which lasted all of three poems since Coach House are liars. Not to take anything away from Queyras; these poems are pretty great. These aren’t happy poems, but neither are the referral materials.

Don’t call it a resolution but this year I wanted to at least try to once in a while be a bit social and over a quarter into 2018 I haven’t done a very well so I decided this week that I would join the Vancouver Running Co. Thursday night Flight Crew run which sets out at a very reasonable 6:15 p.m. from 1886 West 1st Avenue (which is a very reasonable 2.5 KM jog from my place), for a very reasonable 10 KM weekday evening run. Except that I got Translinked on Thursday and didn’t get home until 6:10 so I missed out. Except that I should have remembered from the two or three other times that I’ve ever joined a social run that social runs never start when they say that they are going to, as Strava let me know later Thursday evening that the Flight Crew took off closer to 6:30. So maybe next week. This week’s long run I did some reconnaissance on the second half of the BMO half and finished feeling very confident that I will new or near my PR on May 6. Less encouraging is that Garmin dropped for the second time in as many weeks. I believe in second chances, which is why I believe it may be time for a replacement.

2018 week two

Book Read:
2. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry — Neil Degrasse Tyson

Kilometres Ran:
week two — 52.7

To date: 114 KM

Two weeks into 2018 and I am way ahead on my reading, which allows me to mix things up a bit. Such as, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry isn’t the second book I read this year, I don’t want to write about the others right now. I suppose if the two of you reading this are into spoilers you could go over to my Goodreads page and see where I’m at and what I’m up to, but there’s really no fun in that. I don’t have much to say about Astrophysics. It was fine and interesting and I’m a fan of Neil Degrasse Tyson and I liked that I could hear him when I read the book, but there’s a lot in the book and while he keeps it as light as astrophysics can be, I suppose, it’s still pretty heavy. There are a few recent discoveries and progress within the field that are interesting. There was also a lot of stuff that I already knew from reading A Brief History of Time and from taking an astronomy course back in undergrad because I needed science credits for my humanities degree so that I would graduate a well rounded individual. Jury’s out.

I decided mostly consciously that this year I would not make resolution but rather I would set goals and in spite of that I resolved to try to be a little bit more social with my running, beyond a head nod or flashing the victory at passing Seawallers. So this morning I woke up earlier than a typical Sunday and jogged down to Vancouver Running Co for The Nation Run — a 5, 10, or 15 K social run. And I remembered why I don’t really like social runs. It was set to start at 9:30 a.m. and I timed my 2.5 K transit badly, arriving a bit too early (about 9:20), then stood around for about 20 minutes waiting for it to start. The hundred or so of us set off back over the Burrard Bridge for a photo opp at the inuksuk between Sunset Beach and English Bay. Then wait for everyone to arrive, then take some photos, then the 5s 10s and 15s set off for the remainder of our respective runs. I went with the 15s — off around Second Beach Pool then the Seawall around Science World and back to Vancouver Running Co and I was with the lead group up until the Seawall detour just past the south end of the Cambie Bridge and then I started to gas and lost them around Granville. I paused in the fog at the corner of West 1st and Creekside, looked left and decided to go to right. The route went left. I went under Burrard and through Vanier Park past the Vancouver Museum and up Whyte back to the store. My 15 K that was actually mapped as 14.7 ended up being 16.9 and then another 2.5 to get back home, which turned my day into a surprise 22 K. I wasn’t planning on that. But it was fun. I even talked to a couple people. No wonder I’m so tired.