We're Flying High Another Way...
‘No sun, thank goodness’ is not a phrase anyone who knows me would except to hear me say…!
But, we were about half way through our fifteen mile run today, running every other mile, at a sustained pace, for twelve of them…and that is exactly what I did say!
We covered another couple of miles and Anadi looked up in the sky ‘Its going to rain I reckon…’ he said ‘Oh lovely' I replied… Again not something you might have anticipated hearing me say, when out for a run with me in England…!
But we are not in England… The challenges for the runner are different in different parts of the world… I was on the balcony in the dark at 5.30am this week to talk to Amy, and a couple of locals ran by… they clearly know the best time to run.
The challenge here is the high humidity and the heat…
As human beings we adapt or we do not survive…. This is evident physically and emotionally too; as children we depend on the adults caring for us, and if we sense we are displeasing them, or fear we are in danger of being ‘abandoned’ or ‘cut off’, we adapt our behaviour to survive… And then spend a lifetime in that adaptation, or a lifetime trying to heal and become whole again!
After only a short time in St Lucia, our bodies are gradually adapting to the climate, and our responses to the weather are adapting too… thank goodness no sun, thank goodness for rain!
A cockroach ran across my iPad yesterday, he wasn’t huge, quite a baby... We put him outside and of course looked up the animal totum… This is what it said…
‘The Cockroach is a gifted teacher in the art of survival and successful adaptability…’
We decided to run laps today, along our Pigeon Island road, and then loop back on the beach, across the scrubland and back to the road again… It is a two mile loop and leant itself to our one mile sustained, one mile easy plan… We jogged a mile or so through the village onto the loop; our friendly dogs were happy to see us, and joined us!
Anadi and I and four dogs reached the start of the lap... Two of them then decided to ‘do it’, and the other two wanted lots of fuss and strokes... 'We’re going to go now’ I told them… and off we ran.
When we returned two miles later, the two ‘doing it’ still were… and the other two were mooching about waiting for them to finish…! They are always together these four…
We are in such a rural area, and as nomads we are learning what we need to travel with, sports fuel being one of them. We have run out… but our lapping run leant itself to a fuel plan! There is a café en route, so we bought lots of bottles of water and some coca cola, which I have discovered to be an excellent sports fuel... Not one that would be recommended I imagine!
But it works for us…
And we were able to drink as we passed through each lap.
I was reminded of my early days of running in the late seventies and early eighties when there wasn’t the nutritional knowledge there is now… I didn’t run with any sports fuel, or take water on long runs, or drink when I raced… But I remember learning the value of ‘fuel’ when I was winning the Dublin marathon….
The elite women were set off before the elite men and the main race… I had pulled away from the other runners and was leading the field… I hadn’t drunk anything and was reaching sixteen miles feeling good and on sub 2.40 pace… (my finish time was 2.41) There was a radio van going along slowly in front of me, with race officials riding in it too, and a motorbike either side of me with cameras for the television… I started to fade a little, and someone in the radio van noticed this and asked me if I needed anything… ‘Sugar in water’ I said instinctively without thinking…
A mile or so further on, I was handed a glass of just that, I drank it down slopping it all over me too…! It was like putting petrol in, and in that moment I understood the value of fueling as I ran…
We finished our run on the beach, so that we could enjoy a walk along it to cool down and wander home, when suddenly we saw a figure waving and waving… We approached the shore and there was Dani, the photographer of our wedding! She was taking a keep fit class on the beach and so we had an excited meeting. She told her class of ‘keep fitters’ that she had taken the photos for our wedding and that we had all eaten wedding cake together on the grass…
As we meandered though the village we passed a couple of guys sitting smoking a spliff, and you will be glad to hear that true to form they offered us one…
I smiled and declined, 'we’ve been running’ I said ‘You can walk now’ one of them said…
Anadi laughed and replied...
‘We’re flying high in another way man...'
