Race Report: Two Bays Trail Run

About a year ago in an attempt to make some connections in Melbourne, I joined the Crosbie Crew, a horde of enthusiastic runners led by a guy named Tim Crosbie. A bunch of them had just finished an epic trail run and for the first couple of weeks, that was all they talked about. The Two Bays. I felt like I had missed out on the run of the century. It also seemed kind of crazy, to do a long trail run like that in the middle of the hot Australian summer. Continue reading

Race report: Queenstown Marathon

As many of you know from past posts, I’m a runner. I am much slower than I was in my 20s, and I rarely enter races any more. I find them a bit demoralizing, not to mention expensive. I’m not going to set any PRs, so why bother?

But there was one event that I hadn’t yet ticked off the list, and that’s the marathon. I watched Marc train for and suffer through a few, and earned a healthy fear of the distance. We had hiked 27 miles one day on our Oregon hike, and I was completely trashed.

You have to seriously train for a marathon, Marc said, in a serious voice. Seriously.

I haven’t done anything serious for years! Plus, there’s all that research showing that ultra long distance running is terrible for your heart.

Maybe I should just eat cookies instead.

But this year, I decided the time had come. Enough is enough. I’m going to run a marathon! Continue reading

TYP part 2

IMG_0790Full of enthusiasm from my first Yoga Project installment Friday, and with rain in the forecast, my plan was to attend another class over the weekend. But when I woke up on Saturday morning, all those down dogs were barking at me. Specifically in the shoulder region. I decided to clean the house and bake cookies instead. Sunday dawned cloudy but dry — twelve miles and two tired feet later, the couch looked really attractive. So it wasn’t until Monday that the Project could continue.

DAY 2: Monday, September 30, 4:00 pm

It’s raining lightly as I come into the studio and put my shoes into the cubby. I’ve rushed over here from across town, and I really have to go. The “washroom,” as they call it in Canada, is at the back (front) of the room, and I realize that this is a calmer area than the thoroughfare near the props where I have set up my stuff. Next time. Continue reading

The elusive Om

You should take R–‘s,” says the woman just ahead of me, when I ask at the neighborhood community center if they could recommend a yoga class. I’m hesitating between the three classes offered; they all promised to “accomodate” those with “limited mobility.” R–, it turns out, has had extensive training with the best of the best.

Despite the fact that the class is an hour and a half long, which summons painful memories of a brief and humiliating yoga experience in Baltimore, I decide to take the plunge. I set great store in word-of-mouth recommendations, particularly from elderly women with recent knee replacements. If she can recommend it, I should be okay. I sign up for a ten-class session.  Continue reading

Last lines to Lausanne

IMG_2781My last days living in Switzerland are looming. Two weeks and I’ll be back across the pond, the sun rising hours later on a completely different body of water. As the time draws nearer, I realize that:

One, I’m getting really impatient with things that drive me nuts about Switzerland.

Two, I’m already feeling nostalgic about the things that I love about Switzerland. Continue reading

Moment of (unexpected) beauty

It was a long, wet winter here in Heidiland. And is has been a cold, soggy, hypothermia-inducing spring. Down in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, Lago Maggiore is brimming over. Around here the farmers can’t plant their potato crops, because the fields are too muddy for their tractors to till. Continue reading

20km de Lausanne: hypothermia version

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Hello. It has been a week and a half and I am finally warmed up enough to type.

Last year’s 20km had people suffering from heat stroke. This year, it was hypothermia. Nothing like a little variety to keep those race organizers on their toes. Continue reading

Dispatch from the pit

IMG_0509It happened today. Out running along the lake in a cold drizzle, I felt it. The low pit of winter is past. We’re on the upslope to spring. There was a huge gaggle of cormorants (is gaggle the right term for cormorants?) on the fake island in Preverenges. They must be on their way to Scandinavia. They must be feeling it, too. (I took this picture the day before.)

I know it officially happened on December 21, when the balance of dark versus light hit bottom and the slow climb back into the sun began once again. But January is usually still too dark and cold and, well, winter for it to register. Today, however, despite the clouds and the rain, I finally feel like I’m climbing out of the hole. Continue reading

The function of funks

I was a little worried that after my last post, someone would stage an intervention. Take away all my running shoes, maybe, or set up a booby trap in front of the door so I would trip and sprain an ankle. Remember, way back this spring I asked you to remind me to be moderate when I started going off the deep end. Thanks for nothing, people!

As it happens, I intervened all by myself and took two consecutive days off. Then I went into a funk. And that has really slowed me down. Continue reading