Ryan the runner

Post-run photo, outside the BC Cancer Agency

Vancouver 2013

This is a story about a guy called Ryan.

One of the first things I asked Jit and Emilia (my good hosts) when I touched down at Vancouver back in May 2013 was if there was a place to run. Within a few hours, Emilia had connected me with Ryan, her colleague at the BC cancer research agency. So we made an appointment to go an evening run on Monday, 13th May. It sounded good.

So fast forward several days to Monday. On Monday morning, I went for ‘a walk in the woods’ in North Vancouver all alone. It was a trek from Lynn Valley to Deep Cove – following the second leg of the Baden-Powell trail – that allowed me to spend some quiet time with myself and God. It was also a crazy hike, and I ended up traversing multiple canyons and bluffs for 4.5 hours. When I reached Vancouver city, I was pretty tired, smelly and covered in various layers of mud, soil and sweat. But I didn’t want to pungseh Emilia and Ryan, so I still went for the arranged run.

I met Ryan at his workplace. I was decked in all the necessary attire for a run during Canadian spring (dri-fit and compression tights). I think Ryan must’ve thought I looked overdressed. We took off from the cancer agency, headed towards False Creek and talked as we went.

We went through lush parks hugging the coast. It took me several miniutes to realise we were going faster than my usual easy run pace.

Ryan isn’t from Vancouver. He’s from the drier, colder plains of Ontario (in Canada’s east). He’s been running for a long time, and he moves with elegant, loping strides. Running behind him is like watching a wolf chase prey: no sudden movements, no wasted strides, while holding a steady gaze ahead. While we ran, he talked about his hometown, his thoughts on Vancouver (“cold and wet”) and how he felt the city was such a high density place, with too many people living on top of each other. I told him, “You haven’t seen Singapore yet sia.”

He took me across False Creek and back again, going up and under Burrard bridge (with its magnificent statues), round waterfront at False Creek right to edge of Stanley Park and back up across the Cambie Bridge.

At Cambie Bridge, I started feeling winded. I thought the cold air was getting to me. Casually, I asked Ryan what were his PBs for his 10km was. That’s how good runners talk about running, right?

He replied that he could do a 10km in about 31 minutes (“more or less”). He’d gone to the Canadian national trials for the Worlds and came in 19th. And so that’s how I realised, I was taking a ‘jog’ with a runner better than Mok, Rameshon and Ben Tan.

We talked about more idiotic things: COE, the price of housing, training methods and the insane amount of space that Canada seems to have even in a city like Vancouver. I recommended he trek the Baden-Powell since Vancouver’s bridges seemed no kick for him. He made me promise to try out hill intervals in Stanley Park (which I didn’t do because of the weather). We slipped past other joggers like they were standing still and turned up the last hill to the cancer agency. I was panting like a dog.

Ryan didn’t even look as if he went for a run. I had to stretch because everything was hurting beneath the compression tights. Ryan looked like he could do another 10km.

Later after we had showered and were headed our separate ways, I asked Ryan for a picture.

These are what experiences are made of: a run and a pacer and a cold evening in a foreign city. I think he was quite stunned and felt a bit sheepish. But we still stood together in that dusty back lot, before he swung on his bicycle and left for home (in his words: “it was just a warm-up”). And with my legs still shaking from a trek and a run, I would later re-cross the bridges he took me across – this time on a car – watching other runners tackle the road in the cloudy Vancouver evening.

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