Victoria's high end real estate

Running through Victoria’s most posh neighbourhoods, I feel proprietarial, condescending, envious, and afraid. I am an intruder, casing the joint in the early morning, yet I am also in equal measure a neighbour sympathetic to the plight of millionaires trying to avoid losing money, realtor alert to the multitude of ‘for sale’ signs that have sprouted everywhere, and a canny investor (albeit with no money) looking for a good deal.

And you do see good deals (in relative terms) – the house for sale that was a once in a lifetime opportunity at 2.199 million is now going for a song at $1.999 million, in grim competition with a stone-gated mansion that has its very own website or an ocean-front penthouse. I am becoming aware of the slight but acute class distinctions between houses that are a mere 500 meters apart – the parvenu concrete block at the base of Foul Bay road doesn’t fall into the same category as the house up the hill that is being sold by Sotheby’s International. A water view is not the same thing as an ocean front, and King George Terrace is not to be confused with Hollywood Crescent. One of the dozen or so manorial residences at the corner of Beach Drive (before it turns into more plebeian Oak Bay with its rental apartments for seniors) sports oriental turrets on the small gatehouse for the gardener or visitor, not to be confused with the mansion itself at the end of the driveway.

I was glad to see an article in today’s New York Times confirming my impression that lots of high-end property is for sale right now. The article quotes local realtor Marsha Crawford saying that Victoria “has more property now on the market in a single month than we have seen in 18 years.” Most oceanfront homes on the market are being priced at between 2-4 million dollars. While, there has been a slowdown in transactions, I’m not feeling too sorry for the would-be sellers – “prices are up double digits over the same period last year.”

Apparently, four percent of Victoria’s houses are owned by Americans, with other foreigners owning another one percent. One realtor thinks Americans are selling their Canadian vacation properties “because of the Canadian dollar’s newfound strength and reinvesting in American vacation properties.” Perhaps he is too polite to consider that maybe they are just over-extended and desperately trying to get rid of whatever they can to get some cash.

3 hour run

I ran longer than three hours (well, just a minute longer) for the first time this morning. My right foot hurts a bit, otherwise I feel good, even sitting in a cramped seat on a crowded airplane heading to Anchorage, surrounded by the smell of cheeseburgers and those who eat them.

Another first: I chose not to listen to music on my long run, although I did stick my iPod Shuffle and earphones into a pocket, just in case I got bored. Instead of zoning out to music, I was more aware of the rustle of leaves, the crash of waves, passing cyclists shouting to each other, the rasp of my breath, inducing a different trance state, with a synesthetic dimension – an undiluted appreciation of the pastel pink dawn over pale blue mountains half-hidden by a pearly layer of sea-level fog, a rust red container vessel, bright as blood in the early morning sun, the surreal yellow of a fire engine blocking the familiar path by Dallas Road, followed by the acrid shock of smoke floating up from the beach below.

This morning I ran (and walked – one minute for every nine or ten running) my usual route, which I am extending in 15 minute increments. I started at 5 am at the top of the gentle hill on Southgate street, a block and a half from where I live, slowly along the wood chip trail shaded by stately chestnut trees on Heywood Avenue, along the eastern border of Beacon Hill Park, past the peacocks screeching harshly in the petting zoo, across the street from the retirement homes on Douglas Street by mile zero, then looping east along Dallas Road through the no-leash zone beloved of dog owners, walkers, joggers and kitesurfers, around Clover Point where staid Victoria releases its raw sewage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca in pouting defiance of propriety and municipal toilet training, down the long slope to historic Ross Bay cemetery, in the cemetery itself along a narrow path between gravestones and tree stumps (which are conspiring these days to trip me up), across the street to Hollywood Crescent, up and down the killer hills of King George Terrace, past the Victoria golf course, the mansions and marinas of Oak Bay, and the lane by Willows Beach and Cattle Point, reminiscent of some genteel English seaside resort, replete with tea house and deck chairs, then looping back all the way again to James Bay and Beacon Hill with its landmark maple leaf flag fluttering proudly for all to see.

A few hours later, I told a colleague in passing I'd run three hours that morning, and she nearly fell off her chair. "What, are you training for a marathon?" she asked, incredulous, and I replied, "yes, actually I am."

Hip stretches

I've really got into doing hip stretches in the last few weeks.

Trolling the Runner's World website, I came across a couple of wonderful videos with professional athletes, smiling and calmly brushing away a stray lock from an immaculate hairdo, while demonstrating a series of eye-popping stretches for the hips, core and abdominal muscles.

Most of these exercises are done on all fours - well, actually, less than all fours since they involve extending an arm and its opposite leg, or raising a leg parallel to the floor with knee bent at a forty five degree angle, or doing 'donkey kicks' backwards as far as possible, or extending and rotating the leg forward and outward, then reversing, and other amazing movements that leave me gasping, dripping, and exhilarated.

I've been doing rather gentler hip rotations for some years now, lying on my back to engage the abs, and also during the closing portion of my morning stretch routine, standing on one leg and rotating the hip in both directions nine times, then switching legs.

Then I follow my marvellous chi kung teacher Minke's instructions to rotate at the waist in each direction 'as if writing on the ceiling with a pencil sticking out from the top of your head'. This is relatively easy; yet when my hands drop down on either side from the waist to the hip, and I begin to rotate the pelvis and hips, my breath catches. Shame and self-consciousness inflame my face and I bring my unsteady attention back to the pelvis, dropping down into the core anxiety, the clenched root of neurosis.

I am outraged and embarrassed each time I manage to say this out loud. (Will they call me mad like Wilhelm Reich?) Toilet training is the primal lock on the ecstatic energy that streams through the infant's body. Before we know better, we are taught to clamp down on that undifferentiated libidinal flow. We learn too early to tighten our sphincters, often beyond our conscious control. We are conditioned (by banal triggers, the dull semiotics of pornography - inflated breasts or pectoral muscles, the numbing boredom of repetitive genital banging) to associate release with both pleasure and shame; the orgasm we get to experience is more guilty spasm than abandoned flow.

So when I do hip stretches, and manage to breathe into the anxiety, I am liberating not just the muscles of my hip and knee and calf and ankle that I use for running; I am unfastening the shackles of a rusty body/mind armour I want badly to let go. Who would have thought loosening your hips would help you lose your mind?!

Run for Canada

On July 1, along with 800 other runners and walkers, I celebrated Canada Day by running the HBC 10K 'Run for Canada'.

The race started beside the Parliament Buildings facing Victoria's inner harbour, wound around Beacon Hill Park and the Dallas Road waterfront until picturesque Ross Bay cemetery, then turned back around James Bay, and back past the green lawns of the Parliament Buildings.

It was a nice morning for the run - sunny yet not too warm; the course was spectacular; the volunteers and spectators were kind; the shirts were beautiful; the post-race medals were bestowed by genuine Olympians - and the whole experience was altogether pleasant in a very Victoria kind of way.

I had a good run - maintaining a good relaxed pace and finishing strong in 45:36, which I thought was a personal best so far, until I realized the next morning that I had actually finished my first 10K last March in Maryland in 44:01. I was wiped out after that race, though, while I felt fine this week.

The best moment on the race for me, though, was seeing my friends Karin and Doug along the way. I was on the return stretch at the 7K mark, starting to pick up speed, when I saw Karin walking on the other side of the road. 'Go Karin!', I yelled; she waved back and pointed behind her. To my total delight, there was Doug, dauntlessly marching along, wearing the race shirt, a sun hat, and a broad smile.

Doug is 64, weighs more than he should, and has recently been put on blood thinners for an irregular heartbeat. At my urging, Karin (who is a serious runner) and he had signed up for the 10K before he found out about his heart issue. Around the same time, Karin hurt her calf and ankle; so it looked unlikely they would take part.

Yet there they were, walking along, and I was (and am) so proud of them for taking on the challenge and going the distance.

We met up later for breakfast and then sauntered down Government Street. We moved a table into the sunshine outside Starbucks and I fetched their mochas. Doug happily basked in the sun, sipping his creamy drink, looking good, if incongruous, in his fancy technical running shirt, modeled after the signature line Canada's Olympic athletes will wear next month in Beijing. Victoria (and nearby parts of Vancouver Island) is where 50 of Canada's Olympians live or train. There is a big send-off for them downtown this afternoon. I'm sure they will look good and do us proud. Yet I can't imagine being more proud than I was of Doug, walking along, indomitable, that Canada Day morning.

Icarus

Lying on the mat at the Y this morning, after an intense core workout and hip stretches, I realized the flatness I've been experiencing all week is just the surface manifestation of a deeper grief.

When Icarus came crashing down into the blue Aegean, his waxen wings melted by the aloof sun, eyes averted from such human hubris, as he tumbled through that turbulent terror into desolate clarity, Icarus finally understood gravity, inexorable as Ananke-necessity, infinitely stronger than any countervailing human effort.

I feel exhilarated when I see photographs of runners airborne, caught in that infinitesmal moment between contact of one foot or another with mother earth stretched out beneath like a patient safety net, holding us safe, whether we will it or not.

Each step that launches me off this earth is a miniature mirror of Icarus' wild flight. And each landing reflects that first and final fall.

Half marathon

I ran my first half marathon last Sunday in Vancouver. It was a beautiful morning, sunny and cool, and over 3500 runners ran a very scenic course from the University of British Columbia, through Kitsilano, across the Burrard Bridge to Stanley Park. A band played raucously; runners, munching bananas and bagels, mingled with excited families and friends; and I felt oddly flat. As Peggy Lee might have said, "is that all there is to a race?"

I don't want to admit to feeling competitive; yet the next morning, looking at the race results online, I felt deflated when I saw I was slower than the average runner in my age group. I ran the race in a respectable 1 hour and 55 minutes - five minutes faster than my public goal of 2 hours, ten minutes slower than my private goal of 1:45.

A small dishonesty to be more ambitious than I might let on to others; yet part of a persona I've interiorized for a very long time. Nearly twenty years ago, I went to Balliol College at Oxford, an institution that instilled the ideal of 'effortless superiority', which fit well for someone who never did homework and passed exams with minimal study.

Yet there are no shortcuts in running. My body will carry me as far and as fast as it is able. Training, recovery, rest, and nutrition will make me stronger; yet no matter how much effort and time I put into it, I won't become a world beater. Time's arrow flies in one direction, and sometimes that is down hill.

Or should I make that uphill? Most of the Vancouver half marathon course was along a gentle downhill slope - too easy to over-stride or go for broke too early. For the first half of the race, I resisted the temptation to run fast, shuffling along on the grass verge whenever I could, shifting to a walk every ten minutes, watching other runners go by, then enjoying the childish pleasure of catching up to them and passing them again. I played 'tag' for four turns with one tall bearded heavy-set man who was pushing along as hard as he could. Somewhere around Spanish Banks, I complimented him on his form and then ran away, determined to complete the second half within fifty minutes.

Which I did - accelerating after making it through the long Art Nouveau rise of the grand old bridge and the opening curve of Beach Drive. One man lay stretched out flat on the sidewalk, his head cradled still by a couple of paramedics. Another casualty had an oxygen mask strapped to his face. All this from a two hour race? On the other side of the street, a woman came cruising down, obviously a fast runner who had just completed the race, enthusiastic, exhorting us to finish hard, complete the race in under two hours. I nodded and began to really pour it on along that final stretch.

And then the painful expectancy of a finish line, surely it should be around this corner, no, wait, what's that red banner, just a sponsor's logo, and yes, finally, legs flailing, running out of steam just a moment too soon, then recovering to run tall past the line and through, lining up for a perfunctory medal, a banana, an overheard conversation about the latest running watch, stretching while waiting for a bus back to the race hotel, relaxing over green tea and an almond chocolate croissant with a friend who was reading a newspaper story about our ongoing epidemic of mental illness.

I'm wondering now about a possible parallel between mental illness and running - maybe I'll save that for another post when I'm not feeling depleted!

Trusting Gravity

Walking home today at lunchtime, I shortened my stride and was disconcerted to find I was holding my breath. And when I exhaled, there was a moment of dizzy unsureness, alleviated only when my feet pushed deeper into the ground. So then I took lighter steps, experimenting with my tenuous trust in gravity's hold. Although I feel like floating, I'm still tethered to the ground; only my head feels like a helium balloon.

Until this week, I was feeling smug about my stride. Nice short steps with an enjoyable rhythm of heelstrike to the ground, ankle rolling forward, and then a slight lift off from the ball of the foot. Yes, I was running slower, which was fine with me; getting the form right feels more important than speed.

"You're walking differently," my friend N observed last Sunday, as we strolled leisurely towards the open air market on Government Street. I pressed her for more details; she would only add, "like a Masai".

The Masai walk long distances barefoot in East Africa. A Masai foot touches down on a sweet spot just in front of the heel, pivots fully on the ankle, and then pushes off from the ball of the foot. This makes for a uniquely springy stride and gorgeous posture. A Swiss company makes expensive footwear that claims to duplicate the Masai walk for Westerners.

Swiss MBTI, they are eclectically named; hideously expensive, they come with their very own video. I bought a pair of MBTI sandals in a fit of enthusiasm over a year ago, and never got around to wearing them last summer, because I couldn't find time to watch the video. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I reluctantly loaded up the video. After some cursory footage of athletic Masai tribesmen demonstrating their brandname strut, a strapping, obviously Central European, bleached blonde in white lab uniform smilingly introduced apprehensive clients to their new MBTI shoes, while the video repetitively extolled their benefits in multiple languages. As the video ostentatiously points out, these aren't just shoes, they're medical appliances.

I strapped on my medical appliances last evening to run errands in Cook Street Village, and quickly found that my stride was way too long. Teetering along, I shortened the distance between landing and taking off, and found myself serenely gliding along at an impossibly slow pace. And of course I was holding my breath.

In anticipation of what? It's hard to stay light, float slow, trust inertia and gravity to play their part in keeping me upright, stable, and moving along. I see heavy joggers pounding the pavement, their feet, ankles, knees, hips absorbing the full punishing blow of all that impact. Something in us needs to push the river, gouge at the earth, gulp down the air around us, as if what we are given is not enough.

As I run, my body is learning afresh how to walk and breathe, letting old patterns surface and dissolve, hopefully to be replaced by new, lighter, more efficient ways of linking together musculature, ligaments, bone in articulated connection with the earth as well.

I get to test it out when I run a half-marathon in Vancouver this Sunday. I'm excited and a bit afraid. Hopefully, it will be more fun than pain, and I can remember to breathe and walk in between.

Pacing Myself

How slow can I possibly run? I tried to find out this morning. First I walked a block, putting one foot in front of the other, stretching my neck by lifting and lowering my head, then moving it side to side, doing circles, clockwise, anti-clockwise, somewhat startled by the grinding sound coming from the base of my neck. On a tree branch above my head, a crow cackled harshly. Black shirt, black shorts, black hair all tousled, wagging my head - the crow probably saw me as a demented mutant.

At the end of the block, I hopped off the curb and broke into a slow run diagonally across the empty expanse of Quadra Street. I was still putting one foot in front of the other and my sleep-drugged movement felt just as slow as when I was walking a moment earlier; yet now, I was undeniably in running mode. As I loped in slow motion up the gentle grassy slope, I tried to focus on what distinguishes even the slowest run from walking - a miniature explosion in the ball of the foot, mushrooming upward, launching motion through calf and upper leg.

Just after the intersection with Humboldt Street, flanked on either side by ugly new facilities for the very old, the gradient gets steeper. Running up the hill in the cold dark wet mornings last winter, I felt breathless, yet victorious, each time I made it to the crest. I ran the hill grimly, and geared myself up by programming the treadmill to a hill course that was probably too steep and too fast for my strength. I wasn't stupid; I just didn't know any better. I alternated between ignoring and icing injuries - stubborn shin splints, a sudden sharp spasm in the calf, an ankle twitch, a footache.

Now I run the hill easily and I prize my legs like a race horse. Each twinge triggers an anxious awareness of possible derailment. There's the goal of getting to the marathon and making it through what still seems like an inconceivably long distance; yet even more compelling, I don't want to grieve the loss of this rhythmic movement, this deeper breath that fills and swills out the dark unkempt cavities in the lower lungs where old stuck depressive energy resides, this low-key endorphin ecstacy that lights up each cell like a pilot light.

So I pace myself. I run slow, shorten the stride, touch down as lightly as I can. I don't yet float along as easily as the two Japanese-origin runners in the marathon clinic I joined last week. One of them barely lifts up her feet and yet, shuffling along, is at the front of the pack; the other's calves turn over nice and light, regular as a metronome. The accompanying melody should be light and perky, lyrical, maybe just relaxed.

I'm looking forward to seeing those two, and a bunch of other runners at the clinic tonight. For the next sixteen weeks, until the marathon, we will be meeting every Wednesday for running drills and every Saturday for long runs. Some are regulars, taking clinics marathon after marathon, running in packs; this is their community. As always, I'm a spy coming in from the cold, or maybe just an alien, peeking into another form of North American sociability. More on that in another posting. I have to pace myself in this blog as well.

Picture Postcard

For some months now, I wake up early. Sometimes even before the alarm has the chance to sound its insistent beep, in electronic mimicry of the birds chirping beyond the pale curtains, I reach over to silence it, pull on shorts and running shirt, stretch calves, hamstrings and lower back, swig down three glasses of water from a silver cup and venture out.

The moist silence slips on like cool velvet, and I blink in the vivid golden sunshine, the glistening grass, the surreal clarity of this late spring morning. Shivering, I walk down a woodchip path between stately chestnut trees, fumbling with iPod, keys, headphones, watching the seconds and minutes circle around and around until it's time; then I kick off lightly, shuffling along, anxiously assessing ankles, knees, the disconnect between a body beginning to move and awareness still reaching plaintively for the last trailing clouds of dream.

I run slowly, running through a checklist that will accompany me through the next two hours: are my arms hanging by my side, hands loose, fingers curled, thumb up, how is the tension in my shoulders, can I shake it out, how about the posture, am I running tall, straighten that lower back a bit, there you go, and are my feet under the hips, how long is the stride, shorten it, even more, lighten the footstrike, get that ankle motion going, heel touchdown, mobilize the foot fully, exaggerate the movement a bit, get the spring from the ball of the foot, tip tap, tip tap, there you go.

Moving along, watch the time, oh seven minutes already, I don't want to stop and walk, let's run just a bit more, just until that next tree or turn in the road, after the hill, there now I can pause, no, maybe let's jog along a bit more until the next water fountain, take a few sips, okay, now walk, admire the view.

And it really is worth admiring. In the last few weeks, I've been running through the leafy paths of Beacon Hill Park and along scenic Dallas Road, past the postcard panorama of the Olympic Mountains, rising gigantic and jagged from the Aegean blue of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, long-lost Spanish explorer whose influence still extends to a few Spanish names in this prim English colonial city, Victoria by the sea, where I run past mansions of every conceivable conceit, framed by topiary hedges and manicured lawns, lined along the city's most fabled promenades, Hollywood Crescent, Gonzales Bay, King George Terrace, Beach Drive.

The housing market might be crashing elsewhere, here the realtors' signs are merely staying a few weeks longer - Sotheby International advertising a once in a lifetime opportunity for merely $2.199 million. From the street side, the houses look like modest two story shacks; when you round the corner and see across the bay or inlet, they are gigantic, four floors or more, as if perched on invisible stilts.

This morning I ran a bit beyond Oak Bay marina and then regretfully turned back. Other joggers, runners, dog walkers, and elderly matrons out for their morning constitutional were already turning out, although it was too early for the golfers. Turning a corner, I regretted not having a camera - I would have liked to show you the perfect photograph of Victoria - the emerald greens of the golf course against the backdrop of a red-roofed white-washed lighthouse on a rocky outcrop in the blue strait, and beyond the snow-capped mountains.

Did I mention I'm training for a marathon? The Royal Victoria Marathon, in fact - October 12, 2008. In the next few months, I'll try to keep up this blog, to record the thoughts, insights and experiences that will arise as I run.