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.