Tag: Vancouver Sun Run

2020 weeks fifteen + sixteen

Books Read
17. Why Did I Ever – Mary Robison
18. Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry & Prose

Kilometres Ran
week fifteen – 70.8
week sixteen – 74.7

2020 to date: 1,022 KM

I went to Costco the other day and as I arrived a busybody announced to everyone waiting to pay for parking that we might was to check the line to get in because it was an hour and a half long and they damn sure weren’t waiting in that nonsense but I was sure I had a book or twenty on my phone so standing around for 90 minutes didn’t sound terrible and besides I was sure they were type who believe that two metres is six feet so I wasn’t going to take their word for it. Why Did I Ever is the perfect book to read while waiting in line because it’s basically like reading through a moderately interesting person’s Twitter timeline except at the end of it you get to flout that you read an actual book rather than wasting your time endlessly scrolling on social media even though most of the time you have no clue what the fuck Robison is talking about. For instance:

65
I say to myself, “Stop it.” Or so I say. It doesn’t work.

Or:

165
I say to myself, “Damn you, damn you, God help you, help you, help.”

I liked this book in spite (or out of spite?) of not really knowing what the hell was going on. But it’s poetry month and also Easter came and went so to celebrate the resurrection I woke up Easter Sunday and pulled out my copy of the collected works of Wallace Stevens and flipped through to “Sunday Morning” as the warm spring morning sun shone in through my apartment window and it was perfect. Everybody loves WC Williams or (that Nazi sympathizer) Ezra Pound and don’t get me wrong because I like Williams a lot but Stevens is my guy. Frost? The guy who overthinks a hike? GTFO.

On a my long run yesterday out along the Central Valley Greenway to Burnaby and up Willingdon to Confederation trail and then back under the Iron Workers Memorial Bridge through Strathcona and then home somewhere along the way I passed 1,000 kilometres so far in 2020 and while I’ve been conscious that it was coming up rather quickly it was still a bit of a surprise just how quickly it came up. So I checked. Last year I made it to one thousand on May 24 while I was on vacation in Paris.

In 2018 I made it to one thousand on May 27 while I was on vacation in Tallinn, Estonia.

This year I made it to one thousand on April 18 while I was running through Burnaby.

Today was the day that the Vancouver Sun Run was supposed to go but was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I had no intention of running it. I did have a goal to run a time fast enough to get a seeded bib (sub 38:00) but I knew it wasn’t going to be this year so I didn’t even sign up. Today after a mid-long bike ride to recover from yesterday’s long run, I set out for an easy jog over Lions Gate Bridge and back. My intention was to run 9 KM to get to 200 KM for April, but I hit 4.5 heading out in the middle of the bridge I wasn’t going to turn around mid span. So I jogged to the end then back home for a pretty casual 10KM in 48:53 reminiscing most of the way about running my very first race five years ago today when I Sun Ran and finished in 52:57 and thought I was going to die. Nostalgia weekend for sure.

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.