Curves

Convergence

Symmetry

I keep reading about people’s running: someone’s training for Boston, or an ultra, or an Ironman, and I think “I want to do all those things, but here I am signed up for a puny little Half Marathon again this spring.”

I can’t get excited training for it. I haven’t been interested in training since my SI joint injury just after the marathon last May. It still doesn’t feel quite right, and I can’t even get excited about running most of the time. I haven’t adjusted to running life in Vancouver very well.

I miss running in Victoria. I miss having kilometres of beautiful coastline within minutes of my home.

I miss having trails an easy 20 minute drive (or less) away.

I miss having a challenging tree-lined hill workout in my own neighbourhood.

I miss having training buddies who run at my training pace.

I miss daylight. Maybe it will get better in spring. Maybe I should bring running gear to work and run the seawall at lunchtime.

I know I need to exercise every day, and I manage to get a few workouts in per week. Maybe that’s enough for now. After all, I just moved. Chris just moved in with me. I just want to sit in my cosy apartment with my fireplace going and have a glass of wine with my new neghbours and friends.

Maybe I should just give myself a break. Lean into it, and see what happens.

This too shall pass.

Photo by robswatski used under Creative Commons license

I remember a question from a participant at the start of training for my first marathon in 2009: “Will we still be running if the weather is cold, windy and rainy?” to which the run leader replied with a question of her own:

“Will they cancel the race because of rain or wind?”

“Uh – no.”

“Well then, we won’t be calling off any training runs either.”

There’s a sign outside the Mountain Equipment Co-op store in Vancouver that says something like “There’s no bad weather, only bad gear.”

So I’ll be packing dry socks and an extra sweater to change into after tonight’s run, expecting my windbreaker to be soaked through to my bones after tonight’s run. I’ll also be lit up like a Christmas tree with blinking lights front and back. Dark, cold and rainy indeed.

I don’t mind the wind and the rain once I drag my ass out there. If the rain pelts down and the wind tries to knock me over I persevere by envisioning the crossing the finish line with the clock well under my goal time.

I have also been known to laugh in the face of a storm in my own version of Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump, shouting: “Is that all you got? C’mon, gimme more!”

After all, I know a hot shower and a dry warm bed await me tonight. It’s all a matter of perspective, passion and perseverance.

BRING IT!!

New home, new city, new routines, truly living alone in my empty nest for the first time. I don’t even know where to begin to write about it all. So I’ll start with today.

Today I finally did it: I shopped for some groceries at the Granville Island Market. I hadn’t been there since February when I took Chris there, both of us visitors, tourists.

I had told myself the first thing I wanted to do as a Vancouver resident was go to Granville Island Market as a local. It took me over a month to finally do it (well, two and a half if you count from when I actually took possession of my home).

I wandered and lingered. I admired hats at Edie’s and notebooks and pens at Paper-Ya. I bought an umbrella, I gave coin to the buskers, I bought a bag of roasted chestnuts and some cheese curds. Then I got some vegetables and local meat, my meals for the coming week.

In my month here I have: given directions to tourists, got embroiled in the Occupy Vancouver controversy, ventured into Richmond for some of the best pho I’ve ever tasted, learned the public transit system and voted for mayor.

It’s probably going to take a little longer for it to really sink in, but I’m a Vancouverite now.

After the elation of signing my mortgage papers and downloading all the strata minutes and materials to read in advance of closing the deal on my real estate purchase, I found out I owe the government almost $4,000 cash for the privilege of getting into the second most expensive real estate market in Canada.

My new home has lots of light. And a hefty tax bill.

First a little background: I bought a two-bedroom condo in Regina for under $90,000 years ago. I sold it in April 2006, after I moved here. It was on the market for four months, I was paying rent here plus my mortgage, because the market hadn’t picked up yet in Saskatchewan. I didn’t have anything from that sale to afford a downpayment here, I barely broke even. So I’ve been renting the last five years, always with the dream of owning my own home again. I’ve also been socking a bit of money away in my RRSPs.

Did I mention I’m a single parent?

Now that I’m moving to Vancouver, I can withdraw up to $25,000 for a modest downpayment on a modest condo in Vancouver, under the federal First Time Home Buyer’s Plan. Yay! Deal’s almost done.

But wait! In B.C. There’s something called the B.C. Property Transfer Tax: one per cent of the first $200,000 value of the property, two per cent after that. If you’re a first time home buyer, you’re exempt. I naively thought if I was a first time home buyer to the Canadian government, I’d be one to the B.C. government too. After all, I worked on the interprovincial trade file years ago when I worked for government. We’re supposed to all be Canadians all under the same rules, aren’t we?

But a first time home buyer in the federal sense is not a first time home buyer in the provincial sense.

Because I’ve owned a place before and lived in it, no matter that it was years ago in a much less expensive market, I’m ineligible for a break on the B.C. Property Transfer Tax. I got the unpleasant news today – as I’m ready to close the deal – that the B.C. government wants almost $4,000 cash from me before I can transfer title of my little 600 square foot home that I worked so hard to buy.

Finance Minister Falcon, here’s a rhetorical question for you: I wonder what I would be spending that money on, stimulating the local economy, if I didn’t have to hand it over to the government?

• New furniture for my new home, from local businesspeople in Vancouver
• Paying someone to come and pack my belongings instead of me doing it myself, saving myself stress and making work for someone else.
• I could pay someone to come and paint my new condo rather than doing it myself.
• I could buy a subscription to the opera, or a theatre company, in my new city so I get to meet new people and take in its culture.
• I could contribute to the local community centre, or the United Way, or the Vancouver Foundation to make Vancouver a better place to live, because government sure is doing a piss-poor job of that right now.

But no, instead I’m scraping together $4,000 cash to hand over to the government in an inexplicable tax grab. I could understand if the rules were the same as the federal government’s – so as to catch real estate flippers or what-have-you. Even that rationale is sketchy though.

I don’t mind taxes, really I don’t. I just want them to be consistent and fair and transparent. This one came as a surprise and I am left scrambling to fit it into my plans.

Why in the hell would you want to make it even harder for people like me to get into home ownership? My mind is still boggling.

Good lord, moving is stressful enough as it is.

• They’re loud. Wear the ear plugs. You’ll need them.
• Better yet, get yourself a pair of good in-ear noise-cancelling headphones. That way you can listen to music or podcasts without cranking the volume to dangerous levels.
• 

  Fraser River Delta from the air

  The smell of fuel gets to me, but here’s a trick: single engine, sit near the back; twin engine, sit near the front. Or is that the other way around. Anyway. Works for me. I might just be used to it by now.

• Ladies, the pilot with your life in his hands will ask you to put your oversized purse in the back of the plane, especially if you’re sitting near an emergency exit. Be a dear, swallow your bitchiness and don’t give him any sass about it. Your shit will be all right. I promise. I don’t want to have to trip over your shit getting out if the plane ever hits the drink.
• Get yourself an account, sign up for loyalty points and book your flights online. It’s cheaper and you get points toward free flights.
• Don’t ever miss your flight, stay over in Vancouver, party, then catch a flight in the morning hung over. Just. Don’t. (Ahem, this one was told to me by a friend. I swear.)
• During the flight, you can look all you want for whales in the ocean below. I’ve never seen any though.
• Look up instead. You never, ever get tired of the view, especially in summer.
  

  The Songhees from the seaplane (Victoria BC)

• In winter or during peak periods when it’s busy, don’t be late for check in. They will sell your seat to a standby passenger. I’ve seen it happen a couple of times.
• About flying in winter: sure we don’t get snow, but we do get wind and fog and low clouds. And wind. If you love rollercoasters, you’ll love flying float planes in winter. Did I say wind?
• Better yet, if you fly a lot in winter and get air sick easily, and you’re made of money or have time, you could always take a helicopter or the ferry.

Accordingly, I vowed to get out to North Vancouver and do the Grouse Grind this summer. I ran Mount Doug and Mount Finlayson. I hiked Gros Morne mountain in Newfoundland. I did not shy away from The Hill (yes there is one) when I was in Regina.

When I put out the call for fellow Grinders on Twitter and Facebook, my friend David (a runner from Central Saanich who runs with the Frontrunners gang) and Eric (from Vancouver) responded. We were on. August 21 was Grind Day.

David on Grouse Mountain

6:25 am: I pull up near David’s place and he’s waiting outside, mostly because I’m five minutes late. It’s already warm, heading towards one of the hottest days of the year on the west coast.

6:40 am: We’ve decided to go public transit, so we leave my car at the ferry terminal and walk on. Despite my lack of sleep, we talk – really talk – the entire trip. No, not just the ferry crossing, I mean the ENTIRE trip which involves bus, sky train, sea bus and another bus before we get to Grouse Mountain.

7:30 am: I’m not hungry, but David convinces me I need to eat breakfast. I will thank him for this later.

10:30 am: after the epic public transit adventure (see above) we arrive at Grouse Mountain guest services to check our bags. “You should know the trail is very strenuous. You can’t climb down after you start up, you have to take the tram…” begins the spiel. “We know. We’re marathon runners, we’ll be fine,” we say.

10:45 am: We meet up with Eric at the trailhead and start off. Thinking Grouse is much like Mount Finlayson, which starts out relatively flat and then climbs, with the occasional flattish spot to pick up the pace, I want to run as much of it as I can. So we start out running.

Catching my breath on the Grind

10:46:32 am: We (well – er – it was me actually) stop running and start hiking. I am sucking wind, heaving like a rusty bellows. The Grouse Grind is nearly three kilometres straight up on awkward, uneven shored up trail. You can’t take short steps because of it. Quite frankly – it’s – a grind.

I blame my poor performance on my prairie upbringing and lack of latent athletic ability. David assures me I’m doing just fine as he slows down with me. I tell him to go ahead if he wants. He’s a Boston Qualified marathoner after all. And I’m — not.

“Why would I do that?” he says. “We came all the way over here to do this together. It wouldn’t be any fun if I went ahead of you.”

10:59 am: It occurs to me, after I get my heart rate down, after all this slowing down and sucking wind, that David is a lot like my last climbing partner Pete. Easygoing, just wanting to share the love of the sport and have a great time. Not out to prove anything. It’s all about the camaraderie, the adventure together. The more the merrier.

11:00 am: I realize how much I’m going to miss my friends in Victoria when I move to Vancouver.

11:15 am: the mountain is packed with people. I can’t believe the number of young children on this trail. Did their parents not get the message? (This blog post warns against taking young children.) I didn’t see anyone carrying a child up, but I did pass a lot sitting by the side of the trail. Meh, who am I to judge? I also saw some very spry (yet slow) older people making their way up.

Me and Eric at the top of Grouse Grind

11:30 am: I wasn’t the only one sucking wind, that’s for sure. It was also a very hot day. Silly me, I had forgotten my running hat at home. I took off my shirt so I could wipe sweat from my eyes, baring my midriff in public for the first time in years. It’s a little more cushy than I remember it from years ago when I ran in the Saskatchewan heat wearing only shorts and jogbra. I feel a little exposed, but soon I don’t care. I’m just concentrating on climbing.

12:05 pm: Success! One minute I’m hauling my very tired legs up that damned hill. Next, I turn a corner and surprise! There is the chalet!

Our total climbing time was 80 minutes. Apparently the average is 90. That’s what our waiter told us when we sat down to order beer and burgers, and enjoy the view from up there.

Eric had to head off to UBC for a conference, but after we finished lunch David and I decided to head right to the summit, another 20 minutes, but much easier hike to the top of the ski area. We watched some hang gliders take off and took the ski lift back down to the chalet. There we picked up the bags we checked at the bottom and changed into clean, dry clothes. Even I was starting not to be able to stand my own stink.

The view from the chalet

The tram ride all the way down is one of the highlights of the trip, even though it was packed with people. I’m sure they all appreciated that we had changed clothes.

We caught the bus to Lonsdale Quay, where we detoured for gelato before getting back on the sea bus. What a gorgeous day!

We got to Tsawwassen in time to catch the 7 pm ferry, 12 hours from the time our adventure started. I catnapped for about 10 minutes, then David and I just kept talking (albeit at a slower pace than before).

Back on the island, I dropped David at his place, and by the time I got home at about 9:45 pm I was exhausted, but still stoked from such a perfect day.

Overall impression of the Grouse Grind? It is indeed a grind: but with Guest Services at the bottom, a beer and burger at the top, and a tram ride down, you can’t go wrong. I’ll be back to do it again soon.

Paragliders taking off from Grouse Mountain

But I’m in love with Vancouver.

I have been since I moved to the west coast over five years ago.

It’s beautiful, it’s vibrant, it’s liveable, it’s diverse, it’s world-class. I count only once since I moved here that I’ve cursed Vancouver traffic. I’m sure more local people do that quite often, but that’s because they don’t have to commute in New York City, Mexico City, Los Angeles or even Seattle. We really do have a gem here.

When I got my job a year and a half ago it was with the full realization that although BCcampus’s head office is in Vancouver, I could continue to live in Victoria. We’ve made the arrangement work, but it’s about time I made the move to the mainland.

C'mon Vancouver, I'm going to give you a BIG HUG!

For one, being a strategic communications professional is ideal when you have ongoing, direct access to the management team. Skype helps, phone calls help, and I’ve been over there frequently for meetings and conferences. However, nothing can replace daily face-to-face contact with the people with whom you work most closely, and I’m missing those interactions. I am highly effective (I’m sure my colleagues would agree), but I could be even more effective based in Vancouver.

Our biggest stakeholders are based in the lower mainland too. Not only that but Greater Vancouver is a central hub for post-secondary institutions whether they’re based in the interior or in northern B.C. It’s more efficient to give service to province-wide stakeholders when you don’t have to get off an Island all the time. Example: the first time I met in real life some people with whom I’d been working for months from University of Victoria, Royal Roads and Vancouver Island University was at a meeting in Vancouver!

An important drawback to being a distributed worker: the isolation. Some people deal with it better than others, but I need people around me. I’m enough of a hermit as is (for instance I’ve spent most of this weekend reading) I don’t need to compound it by shutting myself up in my home. Some other client service managers were having similar issues, so we reconfigured the Victoria office to accommodate more work spaces several months ago. Now I have two official workspaces (in Victoria and Vancouver) rather than three (+one at home).

In reality, I can work from anywhere. I even worked four days from New Brunswick this summer. However, over the day-to-day, the long haul, nothing says “I belong” like having a base of operations with the rest of my team.

Frequent travel gets wearying after a while, and it is a time-sucker: both mine and the organization’s. (And I don’t even do it that much really; I know people who travel world-wide hundreds of days per year. Ack!) Although we keep travel down to a manageable, cost-effective level, it takes time to get over there and back. I’ve missed some valuable face-time with colleagues AND friends and family, not to mention the Wednesday night runs with the training clinic. Too much productive work time is spent making travel arrangements, filling out expense forms and waiting for ferries and flights.

But it all comes down to this: Victoria is paradise, but Vancouver is alive. Let’s face it, the final reason for relocating is: I have a better chance of improving my romantic prospects there.

I’m excited to finally be making plans to move there within the next few months. Stay tuned for details on my farewell bash.

Photo of me at the 28k mark of the 2011 BMO Vancouver Marathon,
by Christopher Mackay.

I love Vancouver. I work there at least twice a month, I would like to move there (well, at least to Greater Vancouver) soon. I consider it my city. Last night and still this morning I am incensed and ashamed at what happened after the Stanley Cup Game 7.

When I say I “escaped” Vancouver last night: I mean it. Everyone at our office in downtown Vancouver was anxious to leave early for their homes in Kitsilano, White Rock and North Vancouver. The car honking started at about 10 am. By 2 pm, our weekly team meeting was disrupted by honking cars and yelling from the street.

It was not a celebratory atmosphere. There was no music or dancing or street performers or crowds of smiling faces. Just stupid, aggresive yelling and honking and people lined up five-deep to get into the bars. This was not the Olympics Games of 2010.

My walk to the seaplane terminal was peaceful; as I got further from Granville Street it got quieter. There was a crowd of people (lots of families, it looked like) waiting for the game to start on the big screen at Canada Place near the Convention Centre. I thought “Maybe things will be all right.”

But I knew better.

We all knew better. We knew this would happen.

At the very least, we were worried it would happen again.

What I can’t understand is: why wasn’t the city more prepared than last time this happened in 1994? Why did the cops seem so surprised? Why didn’t Vancouver learn its lessons? Are we doomed to repeat this again?

Can we all now agree that Vancouver has a systemic problem with hockey riots?

Some other observations/rants resulting from reading my Twitter stream last night:

“Those aren’t real Canucks fans.” “This has nothing to do with hockey or the Stanley Cup.” Um – not so, I suspect. You may want to distance yourself as a hockey fan from the violence, but the sad fact is this didn’t happen at the Olympics, this doesn’t happen any other time than the Canucks losing a Stanley Cup final. Yes, it has something to do with hockey. That doesn’t mean all Canucks fans are rioters, it means we have to take a sober, rational look at the systemic factors triggering the riots and taking measures so it doesn’t happen again.

True, this doesn’t happen on Boston or anywhere else there’s a passion for hockey. That only means there’s something about the conflagration of hockey in Vancouver that needs to be examined.

“Those people weren’t from Vancouver. They came from somewhere else (Surrey) to riot in our city.” I’ve got bad news for you: to the rest of the world, Surrey, New West, North Van, Langley, Richmond — they’re all “Vancouver.” The people watching CBC Toronto, CTV Calgary, Reuters, CNN and BBC are not watching their tellies fretting “Oh poor Vancouver, some hooligans crossed a bridge and caused mayhem in that beautiful, peaceful city.” Besides, that’s just prejudiced and it doesn’t help matters.

“This is just a few dozen anarchists trying to make a point.” “These are the anarchists from the G8 and Olympic protests.” I don’t even know what to say to this. I saw young drunken men and women wearing (or taking off and burning) their $150 Canucks jerseys either participating in or cheering on rioting and looting. I didn’t see any black-clad masked people with “A” armbands protesting the violence inherent in the system of overpriced sporting infrastructure and overpaid sports players and executives while little children starve. I will refer you to a course in political science and ask you to please grow up. I’m not defending anarchists, I’m just asking for a little discernment here.

One more: “Those are failed human beings.” I do hope law-breakers are caught and justice is done, but the “fail” goes wider than that. These were the acts of individuals, to be sure – but they were individuals acting within a particular, volatile set of circumstances in a particular context. The answer does not lie in shifting the blame for all this mess onto one group of people: it wasn’t the Vancouver police’s fault. It’s not the mayor’s fault. It’s not Surrey’s fault. It’s not hockey’s fault. It’s not the anarchists’ fault. It’s not the Downtown East Side’s fault.

Vancouver is us. What are WE going to do about it?

My first marathon was a triumphant 4:42:24 finish. My second attempt ended at the 15k mark with an injury to one of my upper calf muscles.

I’ve been ambivalent about running this marathon. Training is hard, it takes over your life. I haven’t been out in the evening in weeks. My friends are starting to wonder if there’s something wrong with me. Not only that, but I signed up to be a run leader for a spring marathon, not realizing my group would consist of exactly four people: me, two fellow run leaders, one of whom is not signed up for a race and who hasn’t completed a run more than 2 hours, another who injured her ankle hiking and had to drop out of marathon training, and our sole clinic participant who was in Hawaii for all of February and missed several crucial build-up runs.

But still, I slogged through my training, being sidelined by nagging injuries (that were caught early and treatable) only a couple of times. The whole time I’ve been plagued by doubt: do I really WANT to do this? Previously, the training was the most fun part of marathon training. Not so this time.

Of course, yes I do want to finish this marathon. I’ve worked so hard for this. I know the feeling of accomplishment after crossing that finish line and getting a medal is incomparable.

I think my problem is: I’m no longer a newbie. I know how hard it is. I’m under no illusions as to how much work it takes to cross the finish line after 42.2k. I’m under no illusions that race day might not be my day to have a good run. After last fall’s sudden, unexpected injury (it happened in the last week before the race) I know that any-freaking-thing can happen to derail my race plan.

I finished Saturday’s 3:30 run confident that I am ready to run Vancouver. Now taper starts. I’ve been doing everything I can to get into the right headspace to finish strong. I visualize the race each morning, including my triumphant finish. I listen to my marathon music mix, including Phoenix’s “Love Like a Sunset.” I imagine Chris (who’s flying in from New Brunswick the week before) waiting for me in the family area with his camera, a big hug and kiss to my sweaty, salty face.

I know that no matter what happens in the next 20 days, I will take whatever comes, knowing that life happens, the running gods sometimes have a sick sense of humour and I’ve done all I can to get me that medal.

If it’s true that the race is simply the victory lap after all the training, then I’m prepared to just enjoy the day.

• BMO Vancouver Marathon