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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Location: Burnaby Lake, CCW
Distance: 11.02 km
Weather: Overcast, some light rain
Temp: 13ºC
Wind: moderate
Calories burned: 771
Average pace: 5:06/km <– PERSONAL RECORD (tie)
Total distance to date: 1234.12 km
Yes, it’s déjà vu yet again: another run, another personal best for the year to date, another ‘500 km’ completed according to Joan Benoit Samuelson.
The left foot is a minor annoyance now, so it seems to mending nicely.
The wind made the walk and start of the run a bit chilly but I warmed up soon enough. I extended my run a bit by adding in the Conifer and Spruce Loops. I got to the halfway mark a short way past the bridge, just alongside the start of the athletic fields. I always feel a bit intimidated doing a follow-up to a run where I knock a good chunk off my average pace and today was no exception. I pushed a little harder than I might have in the hope that I could at least equal Monday’s effort and at the end came in at a pace of 5:06/km, knocking seven seconds off Monday’s run and tying my best runs to date. Now I’m really intimidated for Friday’s run — but in a good way!
Weather-wise it was cloudy and a light rain began at around the 6K mark that persisted for about the next four km. By the end it had stopped and the sun came out so I arrived home as dry as I’d left. I liked that.
Vehicles were my bane today. The construction of the Brunette River habitat continues and as I approached the construction site a dump truck with trailer was trying to execute a tricky back-up around a tight corner, occupying the entire roadway in the process. The woman guiding the driver asked me to move back a bit at one point and I happily obliged, as that was preferable to being smooshed by a giant dump truck. The third time was the charm and I continued to the lake.
On the run itself I got onto the long straight stretch of the Cottonwood Trail that parallels the train tracks. I heard a rumble behind me and glanced back, thinking it was a train (I’m all logical like that). It was actually a park vehicle bearing down on me. I nimbly moved further to the side of the trail and let it pass. It stopped to collect the garbage from a nearby trashcan and I stepped on the gas a bit to gain some distance before it could terrorize me again. Okay, I was more startled than terrorized but go with it. The same vehicle sneaked up behind me at the end of the run. It was the stuff of nightmares. Very mild nightmares. Mostly I don’t expect vehicles on the trail.
Some additional remedial work has been done on the trail, shoring up parts where pipes allow water to pass under it. The parts that get boggy in the rain haven’t received the same treatment but here’s hoping.
