Run 540: Into a running event, awkwardly

Run 540
Average pace: 5:25/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 10:22 am
Distance: 10.03 km
Time: 54:24
Weather: Partly sunny
Temp: 14ºC
Humidity: 82%
Wind: light
BPM: 169
Weight: 154.5 pounds
Total distance to date: 4202 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone

Because I last ran counter-clockwise at the lake, today I ran clockwise. However, I started my run a little after 10 a.m., which turned out to be around the time a running event was beginning at the lake. The runners, as tradition dictates, were heading in a counter-clockwise direction.

And so it was that between the 3-4 km mark I noticed someone dashing by wearing what looked like an event jersey. The design was too elaborate for me to read as he whizzed by, but then I noticed a few more and thought there must be a small running group out and aboot.

It was when I approached the bridge at Deer Lake Brook that I could see dozens of people in a slowly-spreading out formation, all moving toward me. I managed to barely stay on the edge of the trail and for a moment wondered if I should just switch direction and go with the flow. After another moment I figured they’d pass soon and all was well after that until I rounded the sports fields and about five young women sped past me like a bullet train toward what looked like a finish line. At this point I had no idea how many events were going on or where or how or why, I just quietly hoped I’d be off the trail before hitting the next batch of eager participants.

And I was.

With the forecast promising rain, I headed out with the temperature hovering around 14-15ºC, nearly perfect for running. I didn’t even notice any sweat until I was nearly three km in! The sky was a mix of cloud and sun but this was one of those days where the sun felt like a fall sun, unlike two days ago when it got weirdly warm (27ºC in Vancouver) and very much felt like a summer sun. I prepared for possible rain by protecting my nipples (I wish I could come up with a cute nickname for them. “The boys” seems wrong.) but the rain obligingly held off until two hours after I had finished the run.

I kept up a nice pace and the cooler weather made it easier to maintain the pace. Somewhere between the 5-6 km the left leg began to feel stiff but I waited it out for a bit and it leveled off quickly, so I was able to finish the full run and even felt a little spry in the last stretch (I wasn’t really any faster, but I did keep up a very consistent pace throughout). The walk home was fine and as I write this the leg seems to have recovered nicely. My overall pace was my second-fastest for a 10K this year at 5:25/km. I am provisionally prepared to say I am safe for running 10Ks on the weekend.

Which I will probably do in a counter-clockwise direction from now on.

Book review: Five Stories High

Five Stories High: One House, Five Hauntings, Five Chilling StoriesFive Stories High: One House, Five Hauntings, Five Chilling Stories by Jonathan Oliver
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The five novellas in this collection all tell stories either centered around or at least featuring (sometimes very tangentially) the Gothic residence known as Irongrove Lodge, with narrative bridges connecting the stories together in a manner of sorts.

Irongrove Lodge is a nasty old place, full of tortured ghosts and malevolence that drives its occupants to madness and worse. Its many victims prove that a good design treatment on a hell house just leaves you with a nicer-looking hell house.

I enjoyed four of the five stories quite a bit, while one of them left me a bit unmoved. The linking narrative also didn’t really click for me and probably could have been excised altogether. The passages are brief enough that you can get through them quickly, though.

“Maggots” features a protagonist who may be afflicted by imposter syndrome–or his aunt could actually be taken over by some alien entity. It’s appropriately weird and yet thoroughly grounded at the same time. At one point Will, the young man who feels he may be standing precariously on the edge between worlds, writes down possible explanations for what he perceives as his aunt’s strange behavior, ending with “I have lost my mind.” The whole thing is enjoyable in how the characters behave and react in the most ordinary of ways to to each other and events both mundane and…less so.

“Priest’s Hole” is about a man who discovers he can shape-shift thanks to a rather special room in Irongrove Lodge. He ends up with an agent he never sees who finds him jobs and it gets complicated and messy from there. The shape shifter narrates the story and frequently apologizes for being melodramatic and stupid. It’s a neat take on shape-shifting.

“Gnaw” is a straight-up ghost story, in which a young family moves into Irongrove Lodge, the husband determined to remodel it and make it a home for his wife and two children. Various ghosts and ghost-like entities have other plans, most of them violent and disturbing. The remodeling does not go well. This is one of those tales in which you will find yourself constantly muttering to yourself, “Why won’t they leave?!” but still manages to keep on the side of the characters behaving believably.

“The Best Story I Could Manage Under the Circumstances” is a surreal trip through magically-appearing doors in bedroom walls and ceilings, in which a young boy is ensnared by a demented storyteller. The whole thing is presented in a very droll manner, as a kind of modern fairy tale, and while it is a triumph of style, I found I didn’t care about the characters and nearly stopped caring about how things would turn out. If this style works for you, however, it may make your socks roll up and down in delight. My socks didn’t really move much.

The final story, “Skin Deep” is told as a series of vignettes from the perspectives of those involved, a format author Sarah Lotz used to good effect in her novel The Three and again uses skillfully here. This is another remodeling-gone-amok tale, in which a May-December couple moves into one of the flats at Irongrove Lodge, where Robin, the younger of the two, becomes obsessed with redecorating the place to the detriment of his wife’s bank account, their marriage and his sanity. The remodeling again does not go well, though the cleaners manage to get most of the nastiest stuff cleaned up.

Given the subject matter of most stories, the tone in the majority of them is surprisingly light, yet with the exception of “The Best Story…” the presentation never feels glib. “The Best Story” is all about being glib and weird and gross (you may not want to pass along this story to someone expecting a baby–trust me on this).

While I would overall recommend Five Stories High,/> the marketing of it is deceptive, as only two of the stories are really ghost stories at all. They also happen to be the only two that really make Irongrove Lodge a significant part of the narrative, rather than something shoehorned in to technically fit the theme of the collection.

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Run 539: The peppiest 5K of the year (so far)

Run 539
Average pace: 5:09/km
Location: Brunette Brunette River trail
Start: 6:07 pm
Distance: 5.02 km
Time: 25:58
Weather: Clear
Temp: 19ºC
Humidity: 64%
Wind: light
BPM: 159
Weight: 155.9 pounds
Total distance to date: 4192 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone

Well, that was weird.

I had three things benefiting me on tonight’s run: the weather was very pleasant, with the sun behind the trees, the temperature 19ºC and little wind, it made for near-ideal conditions, with minimal sweating and such. Secondly, the river trail is much more forgiving than the trail at Burnaby Lake, with minimal changes in elevation and wide, gentle curves. Thirdly, I started the run at the start of the trail, so my warm-up walk was only 1.5 km instead of 4 km as it would be if I’d been running at the lake.

And cyclists are allowed at the river, which oddly means they are much better-behaved.

All said, I was aware of not overdoing things again and indeed, the second km found my pace dropping off by a fair bit as I tried to rein things in. Then the weird part happened. I found a good, solid pace and maintained it for the rest of the run–and ended up with my best 5K run of the year so far, with an average pace of 5:09/km. It’s the first time I’ve also come in under 26 minutes. I was not expecting this.

About two km in I felt a very slight bit of tweaking in my left shin but it eventually went away and the left leg was otherwise pretty much fine, with little of the stiffness I felt on Sunday. My BPM was lower, too, due in part to the utterly nice conditions.

Overall, a very welcome run, especially coming after what could have been a potentially nasty muscle injury. I think as long as I don’t try pushing harder I’ll be okay–for both running and walking.

Run 538: The pulled muscle recovery run

Run 538
Average pace: 5:18/km
Location: Brunette Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 11:30 am
Distance: 5.02 km
Time: 26:40
Weather: Mostly cloudy
Temp: 17ºC
Humidity: 57%
Wind: light
BPM: 166
Weight: 156.4 pounds
Total distance to date: 4187 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone

I was originally planning to wait until Tuesday to resume my runs since pulling the muscle in my left upper leg last Friday but spontaneously decided today to go out for a 5K, since the aforementioned muscle hasn’t exhibited any sort of soreness or stiffness over the past few days.

And so I headed out after seven days off, back to Burnaby “yes, there really are bears here” Lake. My plan was to walk to the lake, do a 5K, then hitch a ride back on the SkyTrain from the Burnaby Lake station rather than face a 9K+ walk back home, which I felt might be pushing it only a week later.

I started out by making a trip to the loo, which seems to happen quite a bit now for some reason. I don’t mean going to the loo in general, just specifically when I get to the lake and my body seems to interpret that as “nature calls” (literally). After relieving myself I headed back over the dam and encountered a far-too-cheerful cyclist pulling a small wagon behind him. I secretly wished rabid geese on the bike but later found the same bike was being used to collect cones that had been placed as part of a Running Room event (the event was over by the time I got there). He was still riding too fast and was too dang cheerful, though.

A small section of the trail near the sports field was closed for repairs and a spray-painted line through the grass suggests they may actually be preparing to shore up Ol’ Floody, as I call this particular stretch. It would be nice if they fixed it to not flood, because when the trail floods and you detour onto the field you discover that the grass is actually kind of floating on a layer of mud and water that is really tricky to run on.

I did not see any bears this time, for which I am glad. I have nothing against bears, as long as they stay, you know, out of the city.

The run itself started at a steady pace and I felt fine. Conditions were actually pretty good–cloudy and temperatures in the high teens–and for the first three km it felt pretty much like any other run. Around the 3K mark I started feeling stiffness around the left knee, though oddly enough the actual pulled muscle seemed fine. I’d seen some stiffness in the left leg on previous runs and it seems the pull last week accentuated the issue. The stiffness progressed to a point but never enough to slow me down (my best times were actually in the fourth and final km), but doing only 5K seemed like the right call.

After, the afflicted muscle continued to behave and the stiffness has retreated, so I think I’m probably going to be okay if I stick to 5Ks for now.

The average pace surprised me, coming in at 5:18/km, much faster than I was expecting, so that’s also encouraging.

The run on Tuesday will wrap up right around the time the sun is setting. I’m going to have to decide on whether to run at lunch on the yucky golf course loop, or switch to running on a yucky treadmill, or coming up with some other hopefully not yucky option.

The first day of fall 2017: Not too shabby

The first day of fall was nicer than the last day of summer, with pleasant, mild conditions, some sun and all that stuff.

Because it was nice out and I suddenly did not feel like sitting around again for my lunch break, I went for a noon-hour walk for the first time since pulling the muscle in my upper left leg. The leg seems to have survived intact, even after I picked up to a more typical pace by the end (I walked a little over 4 km in total).

After work I hung out with a few guys from work and a former guy from work (that is, someone who formerly worked at Langara, not someone formerly a guy) at a pub on False Creek and it was quite nice by the water, though it got a bit chilly once the sun ducked behind a cloud.

I got home shortly after 7:30 p.m. and it was already dark. I was sad. It still seems bizarre that there are times in the past when I would start a run as late as 8 p.m. to beat the heat. I’d need night vision goggles for that right now. Plus I’d probably barf if I actually tried running in the dark wearing night vision goggles.

Anyway, I must come to grips with the change of season. It’s official now, there’s no going back unless time travel becomes a thing (but if it was a thing, wouldn’t I already have gone back? Wouldn’t I in fact be living in a perpetual summer, constantly skipping back to the warm days and long nights? Now I am sad again.)

A soggy 2017 birthday

Today is my birthday.

I celebrated by drinking an entire carton of eggnog.

Just kidding. The Save On Foods nearby isn’t selling eggnog for at least a few more days.

Instead I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, other than being treated to a nice dinner out by Jeff. The day was gray and wet and cool, like a fall day, except it’s technically still summer.

Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer and sunnier. It figures.

On the plus side, I’m still around and kicking and complaining, so there’s that.

And now, a birthday haiku:

Another year gone
A little less hair for me
Better bald than dead

Pumpkin spice eggnog Valentine whatever

It’s that time of year again.

Not even halfway through September, with it still officially summer and me still dressed in shorts, Safeway begans selling eggnog.

Save On Foods had already started selling pumpkins before that, and every place that has a “pumpkin spice” drink like Tim Hortons and Starbucks rolled them out to officially start this year’s blurring together of all holidays.

It has happened slightly earlier this year compared to previous years, so retailers are still testing how far they can push this nonsense. I predict we’ll have August eggnog within a few years.

I kind of hate everything right now because of this.

Bah humbug, you might say.

(By the way, if this all sounds familiar, it’s because I wrote a similar rant last year, when eggnog appeared in October. How we have progressed!)

Pants! (I’m wearing them again)

Today is the first time since July that I’ve worn actual pants and not shorts.

It makes me sad.

It was not an unwise choice, though, as the day started cloudy, turned to showers and the temperature is dropping instead of going up, as it properly should during a summer day.

All of this also makes me sad, though the showers will make the parched grass happy. Since the next few days are forecast to be damp it’s quite possible the Fire Danger/No Smoking signs will finally come down at Burnaby Lake, the Brunette River and Hume Park. If they are removed they probably won’t go back up until May or June of next year, depending on how whimsical climate change is feeling.

It’s also four days until the last official day of summer, September 21. The sun is setting earlier, leaves are turning (the trail at Burnaby Lake isn’t quite festooned with fallen leaves yet but it’s starting) and there’s a general sense that summer 2017 is coming to an end.

Summer is my favorite seasons, so I always feel a bit down when it’s over. I like the long nights, the warm days, everything being green and alive. Early fall is not so bad but the days quickly shorten, The Rains begin and soon enough every day seems bleak and gray.

And now in preparation I’m drinking hot chocolate and the AC is off.

Bleah.

Here’s to summer 2018!