Red Arrows On The Road...!
Anadi and I have just had a conversation to establish whether we are at the front or the back of the boat....
Watching the port disappear from view has confirmed that we are at the back...
We are on a boat called Elene, on our way to Igoumenitsa, mainland Greece, where we will travelling to Metsovo to take part in another trail race on Sunday ....
There is a video of the race, but I am practicing the 'not knowing' stance...
It is something I learnt in therapy, to ensure that I keep totally open to whatever anyone is saying or might say; I like to practice it in my own life too.... Not knowing what will happen next, even within the most organised of plans...
Not knowing keeps us open to experience life afresh, as if everything were for the first time - and to see and hear what others have to say, without projection from past experiences....
And so, I am practicing the same 'method' with the Metsovo race...
There is another commonly used phrase used in therapy too.... Being in denial! :)
When Dwight, our friend who owns Calypso, started to talk about 'The Bear', an apparently renowned difficult part of the race, I chose to not inquire further into what this might be or look like... And when he spoke of his friend finding the race so hard that he was cramping up after a lap, I decided he might have been running the 40k event...
Anadi and I are entered into the 18k... I have visions of finishing on a lovely sunny day of course - and enjoying the relaxation of a race run, of sitting about cheering in the runners on the long race, of which Anastasia will be one, running her first marathon distance race.
Running a race can be, like many things, a very profound and immediate metaphor for life...
Every event is an unknown quantity. I have discovered this to be true of every race, even if it is a standard distance on a long, flat road... The outcome is unknown until the race is run... There is nothing to be done once the gun goes, but to put one foot in front of the other.
Anything can happen...
This is the same each day of our life, from the moment we step out of bed and put our feet onto the floor. Even if the daily rhythm ahead of us seems the same, there is no one second, or nano second that is like any other.
There are no two snowflakes the same, there is not one breath the same...
The more we live like this, the deeper our relationships go, as we do not project that our friends and partners will do the same thing, or even be the same person that they were yesterday...
Instead we give them the space to change, to grow, to be whatever they might want to be in that moment...
We are limitless beings and when we break the chains of our own self imposed limitations we are free.
I can remember reading Christopher Reeve, when he had been immobilised by his horrific accident saying that limitations were within us....
'Be inspired by living... The comfort zone is defined by fear and our perception of limitations....'
Of course fear can immobilise us. The stories we have about ourselves can stick us and then we stick within them, and others project them onto us...
But if we take that step and set off for our 'run' each day, landing in each step with curiosity and possibility - magic can happen...
As we waited at the port to hand our car in the Giannis, our car man, my wonderful 'sister 2' - Rosy called ('sister 2' is her name, mine is 'sister 1' as I arrived on the planet two and a half years before her).... It was really lovely to catch up and hear about her rowing training. She had rowed for two and a half hours in the river this morning and enjoyed a coffee afterwards....
Good coffee and sport it seems, are rather like love and marriage!
'love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage...'!
I am very much looking forward to us running and rowing together in June... we first imagined doing this six years ago... And now the vision is to become a reality, we have dreamed it into being...
This morning Anadi and I went for an early run as I needed to be back for some early FaceTime and Skype sessions....
The air was heavy with imminent rain, low grey cloud, still air, a quiet slightly moody day.... The sea though was strangely inviting as we ran by, and noticed a bike and a heap of clothes on the prom...We were curious, until we saw a man swimming alone in the choppy waters, a sea at odds with the still air...
We completed nine miles, and should I run six miles tomorrow as I intend too, this will be my first week on seventy miles for a few years....
I believe I have been inspired by Tim, who I am guiding in his running... But energy flows both ways, and this is his first ever week on seventy miles, which he has galloped through with enormous joy and enthusiasm....
My intention to run seventy miles has been there, since I started to put the miles in, in March and yet this is the week it has happened, with relative ease too....
Thank you Tim!
All of our energies link and mingle as we aspire to reach greater heights, and we are unconsciously and consciously affected by one another.... Which is why it is important to always notice what is occurring within our body, and our emotions and to be at all times reflective and responsible.....
This is both in what we are giving out and what we are receiving...
The clearer we are, and the more we know ourselves, the energy that emits from us will be clear and loving and there will be nowhere for negative energy to 'land'
And so it is win win ....
'When there is no enemy within, there is no enemy without...'
Later....
We are in Metsovo in the mountains.... It is a very beautiful place.
We arrived and were not sure of the way to our hotel... We asked a local who directed us down a steep lane which soon became un-drivable...
It was a mini adventure retracing our 'wheels' with me keeping an eye out first that we didn't go over the edge, and then secondly that we emerged without taking the walls of the village with us.
Anadi had to rev the car engine, and race back up the steep hill as we were not sure it had enough power to make it....
We also saw red arrows and red dots on the road, indicating that we were on a very steep and long winding part of the race course ....!
