Tag: XBox One

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.

2019 week twenty eight

Book Read
None

Kilometres Ran
week twenty eight – 54.6

2019 to date: 1,352 KM

I didn’t actually read nothing but I didn’t finish reading anything either, which is almost entirely to do with the fact that I finally broke down and bought a copy of Fallout 76 for XBox and I’ve been postapocalypticking pretty much constantly since. I thoroughly enjoy playing immersive video games, unapologetically, to the detriment of my reading. I’m not great at video games. I mean, I’m not going to the video game Olympics or anything, but I’m okay. It might seem like a useless waste of time, but….

Last Sunday I went for a run over-and-back on Burrard Bridge and then over-and-back on Lions Gate Bridge and then on Monday just before noon I sat down in front of my laptop and pre-logged into Eventbright and PayPal and Strava and double checked all my details and then as the clock in the top right corner clicked over to 12:00:00 I hit Command+R on the Take the Bridge ticket page and secured myself an entry to the inaugural Vancouver run coming up on Thursday, July 18. Ten minutes later I check on the site out of morbid curiosity and found as I suspected that it was already sold out. I found out later that it sold out in two minutes, and some deep conspiracy theorist out there believe it sold out in seconds. Whatever the case may be, all this time I thought I was preparing for the impending nuclear Armageddon what with the nonsense happening south of the boarder and you know exactly with I’m talking about. But nope; turns out it was all so that I could click my way into Take the Bridge. So next time someone says video games are a waste of time, tell them I say bullshit. What is Take the Bridge, you ask? I’d never heard of it before seeing on Instagram Briana Hungerford (Mile2Marathon crew) winning it in New York last September. There there was this article in Runner’s World (see I do still read some stuff) and anyway I’m pretty excited in spite of having little clue as to what exactly I’ve gotten myself into, and possibly being resented by more than a few in the running community for getting in at all. But if you need to find me between now and then you can try Appalachia under the handle VonDoppelganger. Mind you I’m pretty solitary on there too.

2018 week seven

Books Read:
7. American War — Omar El Akkad

Kilometres Ran:
week seven — 0

To date: 249 KM

Kilometres bicycled week seven: 103.4

When number forty-five was elected president I believed (hoped, maybe?) that the west coast states would secede. Or at least break out into civil war. It still could happen. I’m not so sure about British Columbia joining Cascadia but whatever. But now with this ridiculous trade war over wine and oil that B.C. is caught up in with the petulant, spoilt child that is Alberta, who knows. American War imagines America has finally caught up with reality and sees no future in fossil fuels but the South loses its mind being told it has to drive solar cars and so there’s a civil war. Sounds familiar, except wine. Or maybe sounds ominous. The book follows the life of Sarat Chestnut, not a northerner and not quite a southerner either. I really liked this book — a post-apocalyptic hellscape sans the nuclear winter. The scenario actually seems more plausible than the impending radioactive mass extinction that we’re currently potentially facing. For better or for worse (as far as reading is concerned, for worse) American War drew me back into playing Fallout 4. As if I needed another excuse. I thought this book was great, especially for being El Akkad’s first novel. His depiction of the war-torn South is vivid and the characters are very well developed. Plus a strong female protagonist that I cared about in spite of disagreeing with her. This is a good read.

Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment

I took the week off running after the knee twist and shout at the First Half last week. A trip to physio and for some ultrasound and electroshock therapy helped a bit. Dr. Physio and I had an honest and frank discussion. I have three races on the horizon: West Van 10K is one I’m not happy to but willing to burn. My eye is still on the BMO in May, but I’m starting to think half instead of full, and then a full in Kelowna or Victoria in the fall. Then Helsinki is towards the end of May and I really, really don’t want to be traipsing around Skandinavia on a reruined knee.

Good news is that Dr. Physio ruled out ACL or any tearing, but clearly my meniscus is not so happy. She said I can swim, but I hate swimming, and she said I can ride my bicycle. I don’t mind riding my bicycle so I did a fair amount of that. But I also went for a tour of the YWCA Health + Fitness Centre down on Hornby — the one I walk past going to and from physio. It seems nice, and SC has been going steady there longer than with me. She seems to like it, and it’s nearly half the cost of the Robert Lee YM on Burrard. So I’m considering forcing myself to go swim once or twice a week, hate it or not, and it will be nice to have access to bikes for those rainy days, even if those bikes go nowhere.