Run 386
Average pace: 5:17/km
Location: North Thompson River Trail (Kamloops)
Distance: 5.06 km
Time: 26:46
Weather: Cloudy, some sun
Temp: 23ºC
Wind: light to none
Calories burned: 374
Weight: 159.6 pounds
Total distance to date: 3152
Device used: iPhone 6
For a change of pace I decided to run in Kamloops, some 400 km or so away from Vancouver.
By coincidence my partner’s sister’s daughter was having her high school graduation/convocation ceremony around the same time so we hitched the trailer to the truck and made a good ol’ camping trip out of it (more on that in other posts).
After some unseasonal rain, it was not overly warm for the run (Kamloops has what is probably the closest to a desert terrain in Canada), hitting about 23ºC. High cloud blocked the sun for the most part so conditions were pretty good.
I ran along a dike that parallels the Thompson River as it is conveniently a few blocks away from the sister’s house. The only downside is that it was relatively short, only about 2 km in length. I decided to do a 5K so I could get a direct comparison to other recent 5Ks. My pace of 5:17/km was a couple of seconds slower than my last 5K, so not much difference. Physically the biggest change was probably elevation, as Kamloops is 345 m above sea level, compared to where I normally run, which is roughly 0 m above sea level, give or take a meter or two. As it turned out, that’s not enough of a difference to have made me pass out from thin air or anything. It felt mostly like any other run.
There were a few people out walking dogs and the desire to let dogs roam free (ie. off-leash) seems universal, though the majority were either leashed or were down closer to the river, running through the tall grass and collecting brain-destroying ticks and keeping out of my way. Other than that the run was fairly ordinary, though I’d have preferred a faster pace. I’m still inching (centimetering?) toward peak form, so that’s probably still a ways off yet.
Run 385 Average pace: 5:40/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Distance: 10.03 km
Time: 56:50
Weather: Cloudy and humid
Temp: 23ºC
Wind: light
Calories burned: 743
Weight: 159.7 pounds
Total distance to date: 3147
Device used: iPhone 6
This run was very similar to the previous Sunday’s run, down to a mere second difference in average pace. I had no major issues and the cloudy sky meant the trails were lightly populated (yay).
For a change I ran the section of freeway trail I had to use in 2012 when the first boardwalk was being replaced. Without the sun beating down it wasn’t too bad and it was probably nicer than the rest of the south shore, which felt weirdly muggy once again.
In fact, I am hard-pressed to add much more. It was a solid if unspectacular result and I am neither backsliding nor vaulting forward.
Run 384 Average pace: 5:29/km
Location: Brunette River trail and Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Distance: 7.02 km
Time: 38:29
Weather: Sunny and humid
Temp: 24-26ºC
Wind: light
Calories burned: 519
Weight: 160.9 pounds
Total distance to date: 3137
Device used: iPhone 6
I decided to stretch a bit and do a 7K run instead of the usual weeknight 5K. I ran the river trail then headed to the lake and ran another 5K to Still Creek then made my way to the nearby Burnaby Lake SkyTrain station for a nice ride home.
My pace was 5:29/km, which is slower than my last 5K (5:15/km) but faster than my last 10K (5:39/km). With it being quite warm and muggy as well, the results are about in line with what I expected and I had no discomfort or pain, just the usual stiffness starting out.
There were plenty of other runners out enjoying the summer-like conditions, including the titular roving band, about a dozen or so jogging as a group clockwise around the lake. Even though they formed a giant, multi-legged blob on the trail, they kindly and quickly adjusted to allow me to pass by without having to throw myself into a ditch first.
I ended the run a few hundred meters from the SkyTrain station, then did a bit of a sprint on the pedestrian overpass (for some reason it almost always triggers my latent acrophobia so I like getting past it as quickly as possible). I stopped at a convenient fountain for a few welcome sips of water, then lightly jogged into the station just as a train arrived. Timing! The downside to this is I didn’t have a chance to really cool off and the olde train had no air conditioning. As I sat down my body turned into a furnace and I sweated profusely for a few minutes while waiting for my body temperature to settle back to something normal. When I got home my shirt was so bathed in sweat I actually had trouble pulling it off. This is not something I would expect to be a problem in May. All said, I’d still take it over rain.
Sunday looks like it may be cloudy and perhaps a tad cooler. We will see.
The Store may be the worst horror novel I’ve ever read. When I try to think of something positive to say about it the two things that come to mind are 1) it was easy to read (more on this shortly) and 2) it didn’t set my hair on fire. That’s about it.
I’ve never read any books by the prolific Bentley Little (24 novels published since 1990) but he’s a two-time Bram Stoker winner, his novels get consistently good ratings on the usual sites (3.86/5 for The Store on Goodreads) and the premise of The Store intrigued me, so I decided to finally check out his work (there’s a little shopping joke in there if you look, ho ho).
But what could have been a sly take on people turning into obedient sheep beholden to a mega-retailer, with a supernatural twist thrown in, is instead a preposterous and laughably melodramatic story.
Suspension of disbelief can be tricky in horror stories and even more so in horror novels where the author must maintain a book-length narrative alongside the usual supernatural hijinks. The essential problem with The Store is that it’s not believable. It feels like something written by an unsophisticated teenager trying to tell a scary story. The characters are stereotypes, often acting in irrational ways in order to further the plot and the writing is not merely plain, it’s simple to the point of being banal. In The Store, a luxuriously-appointed living room would be described thusly:
The living room was luxuriously appointed, with fancy chandeliers and fancy carpeting. The sofa had big soft cushions like the kind you would find in a five star hotel.
Instead of describing how something is creepy, Little will just say it’s creepy. That doesn’t make something creepy (or scary or sinister or whatever). An example is below. (Warning: creepy!)
That was it exactly. There was something artificial here. Clean and wholesome, yes. But not in a good way. In a creepy way, an unnatural way.
The adults and teenagers all talk using the same speech patterns, “playful” insults and slang. The story repeatedly has scenes set in city council meetings. It’s as exciting as it sounds.
As a reward to those who push through to the end, the story jumps the shark about three-quarters of the way in. The stalwart protagonist Bill the technical writer is subjected to treatment that is probably meant to shock or disgust the reader but instead it’s ludicrous, eye-rolling stuff. The story concludes with a gross “twist” ending that is left unresolved and adds nothing. The characters cry a lot. You may cry if you read The Store. Don’t. There are many horror novels far better than this one.
Run 383 Average pace: 5:15/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Distance: 5.02 km
Time: 26:21
Weather: Mostly sunny, some cloud
Temp: 24-27ºC
Wind: light to moderate
Calories burned: 369
Weight: 160.8 pounds
Total distance to date: 3130
Device used: iPhone 6
I was feeling cranky and the day turned unusually warm when I went out running tonight. At the end of the run the reported temperature was 27ºC. That’s kind of crazy. It even felt a bit muggy.
I got off to a slow start but at least got the phone into the belt without going through a contortion act like on Sunday. I picked up the pace and as I neared the 2K mark I felt surprisingly comfortable, almost relaxed. But then I passed the usual 2K mark, kept going farther and was suddenly really cranky. There was no way I could be running slower.
I pushed a bit on the way back and the right Achilles tendon, feeling sore, smoothed out. That was good. A cramp threatened on my lower right side. That was bad. And I started to feel tired from everything. Also not so good.
Still I ended with an improved pace of 5:15/km, a full eight seconds better than my run one week earlier, which was also a follow-up to a 10K. So overall I end up being pleased with the result. Weird.
Run 382 Average pace: 5:39/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Distance: 10.02 km
Time: 56:38
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 19ºC
Wind: light to moderate
Calories burned: 740
Weight: 161.5 pounds
Total distance to date: 3125
Device used: iPhone 6
For my second 10K run of the year my goal was to simply improve on my pace over last week’s. Mission accomplished! I went from 5:51/km to 5:39/km.
Bizarrely, the third km was the fastest. I was helped by the weather, which was mild and overcast. The first km was an unusually slow 5:27/km and this was due to technology (and my clumsy hands) failing me. Specifically, the Nike app was still set to play music through the app. I don’t like this because it always shuffles songs, even when you choose an album. I forgot to change the setting so aborted my run to fix the music. Next I had to pace around for a good bit before it finally got a good GPS signal. When I finally started, I couldn’t get the iPhone into the pocket of the spibelt and found myself shoving it behind the belt instead. I’m trying to keep up a good pace while fiddling with all of this and it obviously didn’t work. The second km was even worse, like my body suddenly decided it was very tired. But things improved after that and my pace picked up on the third, ninth and final km.
I experienced some concern around the halfway point when my right ankle started to hurt. Not drastically or anything, just in a way that was unrelated to the Achilles tendon. I tried working out a kink or recalling if I had twisted it in some way. In the end it worked itself out after a few minutes and felt fine for the rest of the run. Just the body being temporarily weird, hopefully.
The trail was not as busy as it would normally be on a Sunday due to the cloudy conditions and the temperature never budged from 19ºC so conditions were pretty comfortable. I was put off by a group of cyclists right at the start of the trail near the dam but they were either heading out or had realized they shouldn’t be there and were sensibly leaving. Dirty cyclists.
Also I had to use the loo before running but the porta-potty was occupied by someone taking a little too long to make me want to be the first to use it after they were done. Instead I found a nice spot tucked around a big ol’ tree not far from the dam, did a scan to make sure no one was close by to have me arrested for indecent exposure…then looked down and saw someone else had used the exact same spot mere minutes earlier, judging from the evidence. It was a bit weird because it was literally the exact same spot.
Anyway, here’s to the next 10K being better still and with less peeing and cylists.
Searching for writing prompts is, on the one hand, easy. I enter “writing prompts” into a Google search and get 12.7 million results. It would take approximately one billion years to comb through 12.7 million results. Luckily, Google ranks the results, putting the allegedly best ones at the top. Let’s take a quick peek at the top three results from Google and check out the embarrassment of riches that shall be found, writing prompt-wise:
Result 1: Creative Writing Prompts, courtesy of Writer’s Digest and written by Brian A. Klems, their online editor. These are actually not bad at all, though they tend to favor specific scenarios rather than general ones (which is a preference, really) and more twists than your small intestine. Example:
Ah the freedom of flight, the weightlessness of free-fall. Doesn’t it feel wonderful? Well it would if you weren’t launching at maximum velocity towards a gaping hole that leads to the center of the earth. Why are you going there? What’s going on?
Result 2: Writing Prompts as featured on a Reddit subreddit. Reddit’s layout bothers me in a way I can’t articulate. The user-submitted prompts here tend to be brief and wacky/kind of dumb. Example:
Your girlfriend is the only protection earth has against an invasion by giant monsters. You want to break up with her. The government won’t let you.
Result 3: 180 Journal Writing Prompts on the Daily Teaching Tools site. The site design is like stepping back in time to 1999. Stare at its layout and you can almost sense the budding Y2K fear. As you might expect, these prompts are aimed at kids and are not built around writing fiction. Example:
Describe a real made-up dream or nightmare.
I’m not sure how a dream can be both real and made-up. Maybe that’s part of the writing challenge, to make the impossible possible. Reach for the stars, kids!
I originally intended this post to be a complaint about how easy it is to find prompts but how difficult it is to find good prompts. I don’t know if Google re-jiggered the results since my last check, but these are generally better than the ones I’d found previously.
That said, I’m still going to ignore all of them in favor of writing some prompts myself. I’m not going to do anything with the prompts, I’m just writing them down because I can. Because I must. But mostly because I’m too lazy and uninspired to do more than that tonight.
You are a contributor to The Worst Writing Prompt website and have been asked to come up with the worst writing prompt ever. What is it? Does it make people scream in horror? It should make people scream in horror.
You have a nice ripe banana. The monkey very badly wants the banana. The monkey is cute and hungry. You refuse to give the banana to the monkey. In 500 words explain what the hell is wrong with you.
You wake up to discover you’ve switched bodies with Karl Marx. Since Marx is dead you find yourself buried alive in his grave, slowly smothering to death under the crushing weight of the earth. Describe your day.
You’ve always wanted to go to a Beach Boys concert and finally score tickets for the front row. Excited, you take your seat, only to find that instead of The Beach Boys, the band on stage is a bunch of skeletons wearing Hawaiian shirts and singing “Kokomo.” They sound a lot like The Beach Boys, though. Do you ask for a refund? Explain why or why not.
Write a story about three blue jays, a raccoon and a grey whale that make a magical journey across Canada.
You are a robot and can only speak in binary code. Write a love poem to a nice female or male robot in binary code.
In the year 2722 acid wash jeans finally come back in style. How does this affect future society?
An old gypsy places a curse on you. You scold the gypsy for perpetuating unhealthy ethnic stereotypes. What happens next?
Persuade a friend to become a drug addict so you can use him to research a story on drug addiction. Just write about it, don’t actually do it because your friend will get high on meth and try to kill you with an axe.
You find an ancient mystic lamp and rubbing it causes a genie to appear. The genie grants you 3,000 wishes. What do you wish for?
Run 381 Average pace: 5:17/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 26:38
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 26-24ºC
Wind: light to moderate
Calories burned: 376
Weight: 161.9 pounds
Total distance to date: 3115
Device used: iPhone 6
Work was again exhausting. When I got home I began stuffing apple strudel and tortilla chips into my face. I was not motivated to run, I was motivated to gorge, then hibernate.
Further killing my desire was the unusually warm weather–the Weather Underground app on my phone was reporting 28ºC when I headed out for the run. That is zany hot for May. It’s zany hot for June, July and August, too.
Yes, I did go out. The secret to the running routine when you’re feeling unmotivated is to just change and go outside. If you don’t think about it, the routine can carry you along to where you’d feel bad about not continuing.
I pushed a wee bit more during the first two km and yielded positive results. Instead of a significant drop after the second km, it was a mere 1%. My overall pace of 5:17/km was six seconds better than Tuesday, not bad considering the increased temperature and humidity. A cramp threatened to materialize in my lower right abdomen but never quite gelled (if cramps can indeed gel) so my pace never truly sagged.
Run 380 Average pace: 5:23/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Distance: 5.02 km
Time: 27:05
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 23ºC
Wind: light to moderate
Calories burned: 376
Weight: 162.7 pounds
Total distance to date: 3110
Device used: iPhone 6
Although the temperature was again around 23ºC it felt much warmer, the warmest run for the year to date. As a result I sweated even more than on Sunday. I do not normally think of sweating a lot on mid-May runs.
I was feeling very tired going in, mentally exhausted from work, and also coming off my first 10K on Sunday and a 16+ km walk yesterday. I expected a plodding pace. In the latter half I found enough energy reserves to push during the fourth km (my fastest stretch, actually) and again for the last 500 m after pooping out just prior to that. The result was a mediocre pace of 5:23/km, two seconds slower than my previous 5K. I call it a wash. A sweaty, stinky wash.
The right Achilles tendon felt a little sore but it was fine by the end and I had no other real discomfort, just sluggishness and such. One day 5Ks will seem easy again.
Run 379 Average pace: 5:51/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Distance: 10.0 km
Time: 58:42
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 23ºC
Wind: light to moderate
Calories burned: 753
Weight: 162.3 pounds
Total distance to date: 3104
Device used: iPhone 6
Today my plan was to run 5K and then run farther if I had the energy for it. To facilitate this I again chose to run at a deliberate pace, rather than try pushing for the need for speed.
I was indeed slower, but, as planned, I felt no great discomfort or anything while running, save for an occasional hint of a cramp in my left shoulder, which continues to be strange. The weather was pleasant and the sun was warm. I even sweated a little.
My pace was a tepid 5:51/km, but I completed a full 10 km and never felt like I was struggling. It felt decent. The trail was clogged with people, due to an event apparently taking place. I saw two people with flags but couldn’t make them out. What I could make out were the vast crowds stretched out all along the trail, forcing some clever weaving and dodging at times. You can tell the regulars from the non-regulars because the latter tend to never realize there are other people on the trail.
Still, I stayed upright the entire time and finished 10K without difficulty. I am emboldened to continue and improve.
Run 378 Average pace: 5:21/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Distance: 5.01 km
Time: 26:51
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 23ºC
Wind: light
Calories burned: 375
Weight: 161.6 pounds
Total distance to date: 3099
Device used: iPhone 6
Tonight, feeling tired and not really into it, plus with my lower legs still a little sore from the beginnings of a new regular run routine, I decided to do something different. Instead of trying for a burst at the beginning and end, I would instead just find a comfortable pace as quickly as I could and then try to maintain it for the rest of the run. I knew this would almost certainly mean the run would be slower but I was curious. And tired.
I ended up being a little slower than on Tuesday (5:21/km vs. 5:19/km) but felt much better during the run. My breathing was more relaxed, I never felt like I was exerting or gasping for breath. The drop after the first km was a little smaller but I still had a fairly massive drop in the last km, perhaps a reflection that I’m still a fair ways off from peak form. I even pushed a wee bit at the end but it just seemed my tiredness caught up with me. It was also warmer and a bit more humid, which may have been minor factors as well.
Still, I liked the results overall. A slightly slower pace in exchange for a much more comfortable experience is a win for me. In fact, I’m giving myself a tiny imaginary gold trophy right now. Yay for me!
I may try a full 10K on Sunday using the same method. My official time will probably be six hours. But I’ll be comfy!
Also, the Nike app/site is strangely rounding down so instead of showing me at 3100 km, it insists I’ve only run 3099. This is why I hate math.
