Quick bites

1. Record Store Day [Alan Cross article] – It’s sad that many people are abandoning purchases of physical albums in favour of MP3s. Record Store Day is the response. You’ll likely get shades of High Fidelity, but the independent record store is still the best place to discover something new, even if you weren’t looking for it.

2. Happy birthday, David Tennant! “Planet of the Dead” has now aired in the UK (and coming soon to Space in Canada). I only bring this up because I have just finished reading the 1st Doctor novel The Time Travellers, and in page 267, there is a date mentioned: 18 April 1971. Guess what? That’s Tennant’s birthday! It’s probably not coincidence – this novel was published in late 2005, around which time Tennant’s 10th Doctor was about to encounter “The Christmas Invasion”.

3. BMO Vancouver Half Marathon is in two weeks. I completed the last long run of my training this morning, and I think I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. So far in my training, I’ve run almost 300 km, which is already more than the total amount I trained for last year. And this year, I’ve eschewed my 10-and-1 long run approach and went for straight running (with appropriate walk pauses for hydration). Let’s see how this will work under race conditions.

This might be what can be called “lousy Smarch weather”.

(Simpsons fans will automatically recognize a line from “Treehouse of Horror VI” for my quotation in the title.)

It’s the beginning of April. It’s supposed to be spring, right? It snowed in the higher elevations earlier today; elsewhere, it was just a cold rain. I didn’t mind all the snow this past winter, but I do have a tipping point when it comes to enduring cold, rainy weather. And I think the volatile weather of late is part of the reason I’m now fighting a cold.

In theory, I could have gone for a run this week; supposedly, that can help fight the effects of the cold at the same time. But after my hill-training session last week in the same dreary cold rain, even I couldn’t face another round, particularly on a planned steeper course. Mind you, hill training is essential for the BMO Vancouver Half Marathon, with a killer hill in the middle of the course.

I know that a runner in Vancouver inevitably has to run in the rain, and I’ve accepted that. But I just might have run into training fatigue. Until this week, I’ve followed my three-day-a-week training program pretty well. And with my schedule busy enough as it is, that is an accomplishment. But have I been overtraining? I still have three more long runs before I taper for the BMO Half. When I told that to a fellow Twitterer who is also training for the same race, she told me that she only has one long run left before the taper. Hmm, I don’t know if there is an ideal taper time; it is different for different people, even different for the type of distance about to be run.

I think the priority for me would be to get better, then get back out and pick up the training where I left off. The rest will certainly get me itching to get back to the running!