Location: Burnaby Lake, CW
Distance: 11.52 km
Weather: Cloud and sun
Temp: 15ºC
Wind: strong with occasional gusts
Calories burned: 817
Average pace: 5:02/km
Total distance to date: 1313.95 km

Note: I ran all three optional loops today: Piper Mill, Conifer Loop and Spruce Loop.

The start of today’s run my left shin felt a little creaky but once I’d warmed up it was fine. Conversely, my right foot toward the end of the run was hurting a bit, probably due to a pair of ingrown toenails (yuck) that I had trimmed earlier. It wasn’t too bad but I could tell I was shifting weight around to compensate. Everything seems okay now so there shouldn’t be any lasting damage. Time, as always, will tell.

I tied my best opening km today at 4:42/km — again, this was not intentional. It seems that some days I just have a lot of pent-up energy that comes out when I start. Fortunately I don’t wilt after these fast starts anymore so it doesn’t seem like as much an issue anymore. I also put in my second fastest pace overall: 5:02/km. This is only one second behind my best pace. If I had known I was going to be that close I would have pushed a tiny bit harder. Oh well, it’s nice to have goals.

Weather-wise it was a mix of sun and cloud and seasonal temperatures, with a strong wind blowing. This combination insured I would not overheat, so I’m not complaining.

As for the dogs, let me say this: grr. A lot of dog owners had their dogs off-leash today (because their dogs are always well-behaved, y’know). A larger one nearly bowled into me as it veered across the trail toward me. The couple who owned the dog seemed to find it mildly amusing. Another guy had a pair of dogs, a larger one on a leash (hooray) and what looked like a Mexican Hairless off leash. I nearly stomped the Mexican Hairless as it charged straight at me. I don’t blame it, given that its view of the world is about two inches above the ground but come on, dog owners, leashing your dog not only protects others, it protects your easily squishable dogs, too!

While passing the fields I noticed two families of geese, each with a pair of goslings. Since I had previously seen one family in the same general area with six goslings I am hoping these weren’t among the group because losing 4 of 6 goslings would be pretty harsh for momma and poppa goose.

For the first time I used the pedometer in my iPod to track the walk to and from the lake — about 38 minutes each way, a combined 9560 steps and 415 calories burned in addition to the 817 from the run. Not bad!

Chart (average pace is bolded if different than the last km):

I finally decided to check out James Herbert, the popular English horror author who has enough cachet (and sales) to warrant his own section in most bookstore horror sections. I didn’t do any real research in picking a title, I just read a few descriptions and grabbed the first one that sounded good.

That turned out to be his 1975 novel The Fog (no relation to the John Carpenter movie of the same name). It’s his second novel and understandably still has some rough edges as befits an early book. It has for the most part aged well — you could easily plop the premise down in present-day England and not have to change much at all. I also like the conciseness of the story. There is little flab here, no long digressions or exposition. While this at times makes the writing and characterizations a bit perfunctory (and Herbert occasionally spells things out a little too explicitly, telling rather than showing) it does result in a snappy narrative.

The plot is science fiction horror, revolving around the accidental release of a biological warfare agent into the English countryside. It emerges as a yellow fog from a crevice and proceeds to drive everyone batty who comes in contact with it, some sooner than later. The story revolves around a government team and an unwitting immune individual working to contain and/or destroy the fog before all of England goes as mad as George. Along the way there are numerous colorful vignettes in which it is illustrated just how various people go insane. This usually involves violence, sex or often both! The fog is very old school in the way it entwines sex and gore together, just like the EC Comics of yore. The difference is people don’t get killed for having sex, rather they kill as they are having sex.

The nadir of the novel is probably a comprehensive sex scene between the protagonist and his girlfriend with creepy daddy issues. It’s played straight, so to speak, in that neither character is insane (at the time) but it comes off (ho ho) as second rate softcore porn. I’ve no idea if this is a James Herbert thing or if he was just a horny young man at the time he wrote this (checking, he was 32 at time of publication so perhaps horny youngish man is more apt).

The last third of the novel is essentially a chase sequence following the fog. It’s actually more interesting than it sounds, especially given the double whammy of deadly fog combined with nutty people running around in it.

In the end this is a competent but unremarkable novel. I am uncertain if I will read more Herbert.

Location: Burnaby Lake, CCW
Distance: 11.51 km
Weather: Sun
Temp: 19ºC
Wind: moderate
Calories burned: 819
Average pace: 5:04/km
Total distance to date: 1302.43 km

Temperatures today were only slightly above normal and with a steady breeze I wasn’t overly concerned about getting parched on the run. I opted to skip any hydration and it turned out fine. My mouth was a tad dry by the end but it was fine overall. I established a comfortable pace early on and held on throughout, using the slightly cooler temperature to boost my pace a bit to a new second-best ever at 5:04/km. I also passed the 1300 km mark, which was nice. And Joan congratulated me for 500 more km completed, which was just Joan doing her thing.

Other than that, there’s not much else to add. The run was smooth and uneventful, just the way I like it. My cranky left foot is feeling that much better and my calves and shins are holding up, too.

I ran the Spruce and Conifer Loops but skipped Piper Mill.

Chart (average pace is bolded if different than the last km):

Location: Burnaby Lake, CCW
Distance: 11.67 km
Weather: Sun
Temp: 25ºC
Wind: moderate
Calories burned: 828
Average pace: 5:06/km
Total distance to date: 1290.92 km

I knew today was going to be interesting with the temperature about nine degrees (!) above normal for this time of year. Looking back to last Monday’s run and how horrible that felt, I was feeling more than a bit of trepidation. As I stepped outside the heat was immediately apparent and though, mercifully, there was a decent breeze blowing, it was not cool as it has been on the previous few runs. I girded myself and set out.

Two km in I was doing fine and opted to skip the water fountain at the Nature House. I hit the 5K mark as I was crossing the bridge near the athletic fields, which surprised me, as it indicated a better-than-average pace. Further on and in one of the stretches where there is no shelter from the sun I began to feel a lot more parched but fought to maintain my pace. Despite my mouth drying out I was still breathing comfortably. Two more times I had the urge to stop but fought through them and even experienced the proverbial runner’s high at around the 8K mark. It felt a bit surreal to have this renewed energy while at the same time being ready to kill someone for a drink of water.

In another odd turn I completed the 10K while on the second walkway on the south side of the lake, again suggesting a decent pace. I soldiered on, determined to get to 11K at the very least.

I made it to the parking lot, which is right beside the damn and stopped there. To my surprise I was informed I had run 11.67 km (best for the year) at a pace of 5:06/km (tied for second best pace ever). I was pleased as punch by this but more than that, I wanted some punch or water or anything.

Fortunately a kindly soul showed me how to get water from the spigot near the dam. Apparently I hadn’t been yoinking the level up hard enough. Once done the water gushed mightily (think if your kitchen faucet only had two settings: off or on full blast. I took a few grateful mouthfuls from it and felt immediately better. I did the same at the fountain in Hume Park while noting that the water play area had its big sprinkler running, something you would almost never see in the first half of May. Weather is weird.

My calves are a little sore after the run but not hurtfully so. I am pondering if they just had to work that much harder today, if the muscles are stretching and growing or maybe just stretching and breaking. I’ll know soon enough. For now I am happy that my stamina has improved enough that a very warm run did not slow me down. And also that so much of the trail of Burnaby Lake is in the blissful shade.

Note: I ran the Spruce and Conifer Loops today but skipped Piper Mill.

Chart (average pace is bolded if different than the last km):

Back when I was unable to gamble legally I accompanied my parents on summer vacation to, among others places, Reno, Nevada. As Mom and Dad were not heartless monsters, they found fun things for us underage types to do or better yet, activities we could all indulge in that didn’t involve one-armed bandits, roulette tables and such.

One of those activities was mini-golf at a stupendously elaborate mini-golf course outside the city. In retrospect it may have been outside of Las Vegas but I remember it definitely being in Nevada. Each hole was elaborately dressed with windmills and tunnels, hills, chutes, all the zany obstacles you expect at a deluxe mini-golf course. I’d always wanted to play again and finally, over 30 years later, I did just that today with Jeff.

The course we played on is far more modest than that Nevada wonderland — the 18 holes at Eaglequest Coquitlam (by coincidence we did indeed see an eagle up high in the sky overhead) are all rated at par 2 and while they feature a variety of layouts, slopes and obstacles (rocks or pilings) they’re pretty basic as mini-golf goes. But while the presentation wasn’t quite up there (including a mostly non-functional stream that was barely filled with some stagnant water) the holes were still zany good fun.

Neither of us managed a hole-in-one though we both had our moments. Neither of us managed par very often, either. :P I scored a solid par 5 on four holes, while Jeff took 6 shots on a pair. In the end we finished a mere point apart, with Jeff edging me for the victory 62-61.

Here’s the scorecard to make it official. I have added the date using advanced computer technology:

Mini-golf, maxi-scores

The weather was downright balmy, with temperatures in the low 20s, quite unusual for the first half of May. It felt as if we had been transported two months ahead and landed directly in summer. The best part of the game is neither of us landed balls in the stagnant water or on someone’s head.

We shall do this again. And then for a real good laugh, we may try real golf. I can already smell the sand traps.

Location: Burnaby Lake, CCW
Distance: 11.5 km
Weather: Sun
Temp: 14-16ºC
Wind: moderate, up to 15 km/h
Calories burned: 815
Average pace: 5:06/km
Total distance to date: 1279.24 km

With not a cloud in the sky I was wary once again of getting baked by the sun but it turned out to be a little cooler than forecast (14-16ºC depending on your source) and there was a moderate breeze blowing that helped quite a bit. I started on a counter-clockwise course and tried to set a careful pace but still burned through the first km in 4:50. I did slow and settle shortly after and cruised to a tie for my second-best pace overall at 5:06/km. I’m quite pleased with the result and my fear of the sun has abated somewhat.

I opted to start CCW because the north side of the trail is more shaded than the south and I figured this would allow me to get settled in before hitting the hotter stretches. I think the strategy was successful.

Bird-wise, the two geese families were out with their young ‘uns again and for the first time I came across a robin sitting in the middle of the trail sunning itself. I don’t know if it was afraid of trees or what but it was a little weird to see. I felt guilty in passing by close enough to make it move.

I skipped the Piper Mill trail but took the Conifer and Spruce Loops. Running from the south side of the dam and back around to the north I came in at 11.5 km, so it would appear the Piper Mill Trail adds about 40 or 50 m to the run.

The left shin is feeling a little tender if I poke at it but regular contact and walking/running are not an issue. Still, it’s something I will be monitoring. Left foot continues to mend slowly.

Chart:

Inspired by a thread on Broken Forum (and an idea I had for a post ages ago) here is a nearly complete list of every video game console and computer system I have owned, with dates (where I can remember).

The Computers

1982: Atari 400. With membrane keyboard! This was really just a video game machine for me but it was awesome. It came with four (!) joystick ports, took cartridges and provided far better sound and graphics than any comparable video game system back in the day. I almost considered buying the kit that replaced the membrane keyboard with actual keys. Instead I held out until I got my next system.

Open the hatch, insert Star Raiders cartridge, lose rest of day.

1984: Commodore 64. The C64 shipped in 1982 but it cost $600 then and I couldn’t afford it. By 1984 it was selling in huge numbers and had been reduced to a mere $200. The one I got in the early part of 1984 was one of a notoriously unreliable batch (I recall about a 25% or so failure rate) and had a bad keyboard. The replacement worked fine, though and having a keyboard you could touch-type on was neat. This marked the first time I bought productivity software for a computer, a $130 word processor that I’ve long forgotten the name of. On the C64 you could create files about 2.5 pages long before you had to use dot commands to chain the files together for printing. It taught me brevity. I still have some of the data disks. I wonder if they would still be readable? In addition to being my first computer used for non-gaming stuff, it was also the first that I got peripherals for, namely an Epson dot matrix printer (designed to misfeed paper as soon as you turned your back on it), the 1084S color monitor and the infamous 1541 floppy drive. The first game I bought on floppy disk was Lode Runner. I actually picked it up before I even had the C64 and marveled over its floppy diskness. This was also a game machine, of course, with most games running from floppy and the best ones making use of Epyx’s Fast Load cartridge.

I still recall playing Infocom games and knowing I’d successfully figured out a puzzle because the 1541 drive would start clattering away (the game apparently kept the YOU HAVE DIED moves stored in memory).

Not shown: 1541 floppy drive a.k.a. Is It Supposed to Make That Noise?

1987: Atari 520ST. I had it with the monochrome monitor, so it was for Serious Business. I had WordPerfect 4.1 and WordWriter ST. I still played Phantasie on it, though. I eventually got the color monitor and tried and disliked King’s Quest III. I still remember where this computer sat in my apartment on Nelson Street in Vancouver and even recvall writing specific stories with it. This was the first computer where I had dual floppy drives. I was clearly moving up.

A built-in floppy drive, a 2-button mouse and numeric keypad. Future: now!

1989: Amiga 500. Ah, the Amiga. I loved this computer. It felt sexy and modern and had tons of games and lots of other interesting and useful software for it. I had ProWrite, excellence and I think maybe one other word processor. Some people collected games, I collected word processors. I stuck mainly to ProWrite. I eventually upgraded the Amiga (my first computer upgrades ever) to AmigaDOS 2.1, 3 MB of ram and a 52 MB hard drive. This let me call up ProWrite nigh-instantly. Black Crypt also installed to the HD, which was nice. I kept the Amiga until I finally made the jump to PC and to this day regret selling it. Although pictured below, I did not have an external floppy drive for it.

Like the Atari ST but better.

1994: PC with Athlon 486-40Mhz CPU and 4 MB of ram. I eventually added a 2x CD-ROM drive to it so I could play Myst.

It starts blurring after this but along the way I had:

- Pentium II 120Mhz. I mostly remember playing Quake II on this with a Diamond Monster 3D video card (Voodoo 1 add-on card).
- Celeron 500 (for about two weeks before it got stolen from my apartment — three days before Christmas, ho ho ho)
- Athlon XP 1800. This was clearly a better system over equivalent Pentiums at the time.
- Athlon 64 (first 64-bit system, though it only ran 32-bit Windows XP)
- Intel Core 2 Duo 6850 with Nvidia GTX 8800. Back to Intel. I still have this system, though it is just parts at the moment.
- Intel Core i5 2500K (quad core). This is my current rig and it dates back to January 2011. 8 GB ram, Nvidia GTX 580, Windows 7. Pretty standard now but still runs everything nicely.

Video game systems

Atari 2600. It was still called the VCS when I got it in 1980. I probably had 30+ games on the system (I had a list somewhere at some point) and favorites would include: Adventure (duck dragons!), Superman, Video Pinball, Canyon Bomber, Circus Atari, Night Driver, Demon Attack (which I thought looked amazing for a 2600 game), Kaboom!, Asteroids (a surprisingly decent port) and a bunch of others I’m forgetting. For its primitive hardware, the system had some fairly captivating, if obviously simple, games.

And it came with two joysticks and two paddle controllers. That’d be $150-180 extra these days!

Intellivision. I didn’t know who George Plimpton was but I knew I had to have the Intellivision. I got it on cheap thanks to my brother’s wife’s employee discount at Woolworth’s. I never had as many games with it as I did with the 2600 but some were classics, even if that thumbwheel proved to be less than optimal. The Intellivision is also where I (more or less) learned the rules of American football. Favorites include Microsurgeon, Skiing (falling was especially painful), Armor Battle, Sea Battle, Astrosmash (this was almost zen-like in the way you could keep racking up a score as the shapes tumbled down from the top of the screen) and Major League Baseball (Yer Out!)

From the era when fake woodgrain was on everything.

Atari 5200. I had this around the same timeframe as the Atari 400, which was appropriate, because the 5200 was pretty much a 400 re-purposed as a game console. The joysticks were wacky non-centering analog things that worked great for games like Missile Command and not so great for games that required precise changes in direction, like Ms Pacman. One of the neat things was how the system would switch to a blank screen when you turned it off to switch cartridges, instead of blasting you with the sound of a static-filled TV display. I never had many games for this, mostly some arcade ports but it was a decent machine. The cartridges were massive.

This sleek design still holds up 30 years later. That joystick…not so much.

ColecoVision. This had the potential to be the ultimate console but it came out just before the whole market crashed in 1983. I still enjoyed it for what it was: a machine that consciously improved in many ways over its predecessors. The joysticks were better than the 5200′s, the keypad and buttons better than Intellivision. Graphically, it offered the closest to arcade-style graphics at the time. It also had an awesome pack-in game: Donkey Kong (this was before Nintendo locked it up forever). Most of the well-known arcade hits were already licensed to other companies so Coleco had to go with more of a B-list but there were some excellent games among them, if less known: Venture, Looping, a Smurf game that featured so-so gameplay but astonishing graphics for 1982, Carnival, Lady Bug and Mr. Do! The load screen was annoyingly long — apparently in an attempt to get the ColecoVision name permanently embedded in young and impressionable minds.

Kind of cheap-looking but the games were good!

After the ColecoVision I turned to computers for the next 20 years. It wouldn’t be until 2003 that I would pick up an Xbox. Three years later I got an Xbox 360 but found I used it so little I ended up selling it off. Today the Xbox is still hooked up to the TV and dusted off occasionally. I have a Nintendo DS but it has largely sat idle since I got an iPhone last year. It’s so much easier to not have to switch cartridges around. The DS is a better platform for crossword puzzle games, though.

Location: Burnaby Lake, CW
Distance: 11.03 km
Weather: Sun
Temp: 13ºC
Wind: heavy, up to 28 km/h
Calories burned: 819
Average pace: 5:12/km
Total distance to date: 1267.73 km

After the parched run on Monday I was leery of another sunny run and today it was indeed sunny once again. However, instead of being unseasonably warm it was actually a few degrees off the norm and on top of that a heavy wind was blowing most of the day. Normally the wind is my arch-nemesis on a run (after rain) but today it actually served to keep me from overheating, especially in the more exposed parts of the trail.

As a result I didn’t feel like curling up into a ball 2 km in nor did I have to re-adjust my pace at any point. While I was still slower than Friday’s torried pace, I came in at 5:12/km, which is perfectly respectable. I also did all three optional loops and by starting and finishing on either side of the Cariboo Dam came in at 11.54 km, my longest run for the year. Joan, of course, was there to congratulate me for the extra 488.46 km I didn’t realize I had also completed.

My pacing, though slower, was back to being remarkably consistent in the second half of the run.

The left foot is proving stubborn in recovering but is still not being a factor in the runs. The walk home was better than the last run so it is improving.

No snakes today, just ducks, robins and that adorable goose family that is apparently nesting somewhere near the dam.

Chart:

Location: Burnaby Lake, CCW
Distance: 11.03 km
Weather: Hazy sun, sun
Temp: 15ºC
Wind: light
Calories burned: 782
Average pace: 5:20/km
Total distance to date: 1256.19 km

My plan today was to ease back on the pace a bit, to reduce the risk of strain/shin splints (my legs feel fine when walking and running but the shins are a bit on the tender side). The weather was very much the opposite of Friday, with the temperature a relatively balmy 15ºC (warmest of the year, run-wise) and hazy sun in a mostly clear sky.

Ah yes, the sun, my nemesis. There hasn’t been much sun this spring so I’m not accustomed to running in it. I put in a pace of under 5:00/km for the first 2 km of the run and found myself gasping for breath. This is not good. It is, in fact, bad. The warmer temperature, sun and generally mugginess was all adding up to extra strain. I eased off a bit and still found it difficult to find a pace I could maintain. By the 6K mark I had to take about 30 seconds out to recover. As it was, it ended up being an old-style run with 2-3 seconds added every km and a final pace of 5:20, a full 19 seconds short of Friday.

Still, as I get used to the sun again, the times should start going back down. I am also pondering shifting my runs to the cooler morning.

Joan still congratulated me for another 500 km.

My left foot was feeling slightly creaky after the run, which was another disappointment.

But for the first time at Burnaby Lake I saw a (vibrant green and yellow) garter snake slither across the trail ahead of me. Neat.

The highlight of the run came after, when I got home. I felt something on my neck and brushed at it and a small black bug fell to the kitchen floor. It had probably hitched a ride back from the lake. It crawled for no more than a second or two before a spider darted out and made a meal of it. Ah, nature.

Chart:

Let’s Play PONG.

In 1973 the population of Duncan, British Columbia was about 5000. Today, nearly 40 years later, it is still around 5000. Duncan is a small town, but it struggles to maintain that small town feel with outlying municipalities springing up subdivisions like mushrooms after a heavy rain. The tiny footprint of the city — all of two traffic lights on the Island Highway as you pass through — is being stamped with every kind of franchise imaginable, from Burger King to Home Depot to casinos and multiple McDonald’s.

But it wasn’t always like this. In the early 1970s the outlying area around the city was largely undeveloped. You could ride your bike (with banana seat, of course) on trails that ran for miles along the Cowichan River. The annual exhibition took place on agricultural land that existed within the city limits. When that first McDonald’s opened in 1978 it signaled the end of an era.

In 1973 one of the popular local eateries was an Italian restaurant called Romeo’s. To my young eyes it was a place of mystery and intrigue, an ‘adult’ restaurant with subdued lighting that made me think of a coal mine (the aesthetics were more appreciated when I got a bit older). The small lobby area, like the rest of the place, was dimly lit and had everything you’d expect — a coat rack, some seats, the stand where the hostess would greet you and take you in. But one day we went in and something new was there. It was a machine unlike any I’d seen before.

I’d heard of Pong and now I was staring directly at it: a cocktail table-style cabinet housing a TV screen, with controls on two sides that consisted of simple knobs. The surface of the table was glass. I watched the strange phosphorous glow of the display, simple lines and a small square of light gently arcing back and forth between two rectangular blocks or ‘paddles’. This was like something from Star Trek. I had to try it!

25 cents for one play. In 1973 and to someone who had yet to hit double digits, 25 cents was a lot of money — more than the cost of a whole candy bar! I rarely had any money on me. My older brother did, though. He regarded me as his personal slave, so it seemed unlikely he’d give or loan me the money to try it out. To my good fortune it turned out that Pong required two players. My brother would pay then ‘force’ me to play against him, keeping the hierarchy of owner/slave intact. Win-win, as far as I was concerned.

I don’t remember how that first game went. I’m going to say I won due to that intuitive little kid video game sense that so many little kids seem to have. What I do remember is how the simple act of turning that knob, seeing the paddle on the TV move in reaction and then hit that little square of light was magic. Magic.

A few years later we got a home Pong unit. My brother, who liked to tinker with electronics, managed to take the controls that were hardwired to the console and break them out into handheld units, allowing us to play without being three feet in front of the TV. We still played sitting three feet in front of the TV because that’s what you did but we had the freedom to move if we wanted to.

Pong led to the first video game system I owned myself — no negotiating with the big brother required! — the Atari VCS (later renamed the 2600). It didn’t come with Pong. The new world of video games moved quickly and already Pong was passé. It didn’t matter. Those early days of ‘electronic tennis’ had already confirmed that I had a new lifelong hobby, one I didn’t even know existed until I saw that glowing screen in Romeo’s when I was nine years old.

(reposted from a thread on Broken Forum)

Location: Burnaby Lake, CW
Distance: 11.03 km
Weather: EVERYTHING (cloud, sun, rain, hail)
Temp: 11ºC
Wind: light
Calories burned: 771
Average pace: 5:01/km <– PERSONAL RECORD
Total distance to date: 1245.15 km

Not quite déjà vu this time: another run, another personal best for the year to date (and overall!), but Joan congratulated me for the latter rather than another 500 km completed.

The forecast today was 11ºC with a 40% chance of isolated showers (< 1 mm). It was indeed around 11 and it felt rather chilly for early May (average would be 15) — I could see my breath as I walked to the lake.

It started to shower as I got to Hume Park and by the time I was ready to run it had turned into pretty much a downpour. I’m fairly confident the 1 mm total precipitation was reached in about 30 seconds. Since I had to pee I crossed over the dam and used the port-o-potty at the parking lot and opted for a clockwise circuit. Technically I started my run in the outhouse because when I stepped out of it my iPod was already wet enough that the clickwheel had gone into Not Working No Way mode. I went back in, grabbed some toilet paper, wiped it down and managed to get the workout started.

I kept the toilet paper clenched in my right hand in case I needed to use it at the end of the run. It turned out my hand is not waterproof.

After about a km of solid rain the weather changed to solid hail. Unlike the last time this hail meant business and came down hard. It actually stung a little. This made me miffed, which improved my pace. The sooner I finished the sooner I could get out of this miserable weather. The hail changed back to rain and continued for the first half of the run. It eased up and finally stopped by the end of the run, allowing the wad of toilet paper to dry sufficiently that I was able to wipe down the iPod again and stop the workout on time. There was also a bit of sun in there, too, sometimes with and sometimes without accompanying rain.

I took the Piper Mill trail but skipped the other two optional loops. Because of this I didn’t hit the 11K mark until after I had passed the dam and was running on pavement. Not optimal but not horrible, either. I’ll know to take at least two of the three loops for future runs.

Pace-wise, my fear of not keeping up with Wednesday’s run was unfounded as I not only kept up, I eclipsed my previous best pace by five seconds, coming in at 5:01/km. The soggy first km was a mere 4:42/km. I apparently really wanted to get out of that weather.

Overall I am very pleased with this week’s runs. I may ease off a bit next week as I was pushing a little harder this week but we’ll see. The left foot was a very minor issue on the walk back.

Chart:

Actually, this may be the third time I’ve read The Exorcist but the first time as an adult.

The paperback copy I have dates from January 1974 and I tried re-reading it last year but it’s one of my few books that is falling apart. Fortunately the book has been re-released in a 40th anniversary edition in 2011 and was made available in ebook form for the first time.

While subversive kids a generation before read EC comics late at night I read stuff like The Exorcist. Reading it as a child it scared the living heck out of me and I was curious to see how it would hold up with nearly 40 years of pop culture baggage tied to it, not to mention experiencing the story as an adult.

I’m pleased to find it holds up quite well. The events depicted — the demonic possession and exorcism of a 12 year old girl — are no longer frightening but the story is told with grace and economy. In its more reflective moments William Peter Blatty adopts a lyrical quality, heavy with the use of metaphor. Some passages read almost like poetry. And much as he did in the screen adaptation, Blatty lets the story unwind slowly, ratcheting up the tension nicely.

I’ll be damned if I couldn’t help but see Max Von Sydow as Father Merrin, though. He was perfect for the role.

The story is dated only in a few minor ways. The character Chris MacNeil works on a film that features a student protest scene that has a strong late 60s/early 70s vibe to it and most of the characters smoke like chimneys. There’s also a weird thing with Father Karras viewing psychokinesis as plausible and documented and I’m pretty sure it’s still considered unproven, since I’ve not noticed any real-life Carrie episodes on the news of late.

Overall, this is still an excellent book, highly recommended for any horror buff that has somehow managed to miss it.