Mornings

I was still a teenager when the Berlin wall started to shake. The eighties caught me young and naive, eager to discover, to love, to live. During the week days, when I was not training, I was probably spending an evening at some folk & country concert in one of the clubs at the outskirts of Prague. During weekends, I was hitchhiking all over the country to hear my favourite singers and groups. I had no money, no fear, no stress. Somehow, I always had time to do the things I liked to do. I had many good friends (and I am blessed I still maintain those friendships) to travel and to discuss ‘life, universe and everything’ with.

As I was never much of a drinker, I could talk and sing and spend all night at a camp fire to see the first sun rays shining next morning. Back then, I loved early mornings just as I do now.

Twenty five years later the setting has all changed: two babies and responsible job to focus on – but the mornings are still the same. And the below lyrics is still valid, too:

“Vsichni, kteri ve svy krvi stejnej bacil maj, tak se v techhle zvlastnich ranech potkavaj.”

So when Richard, a fellow blogger/runner posted these pics, I went out there on a fresh morning myself:

 

Medal without racing

After testing my A.D. running abilities yesterday, this morning (after a night full of crying, feeding, cuddling and crying again) I left my bed at 6.30 am. I had to go running again…
I haven’t been downtown with my running shoes since last December and somehow, intuitively, that was where I wanted to go. One of the reason was the Singelloop, a 6.6km annual run around the historical city centre – my first race last year, my first running race ever! Last night I missed it so I wanted to check if there were still any remains of it today.

To my surprise, I haven’t found anything that would even remotely remind of a running race with 5000 runners along the city centre canals. All was clean and quiet. I guess the cleaning guys had a loooong night.

I did not want to go further than 2 km down the main canal but then I suddenly remembered there was this one cemetary that I always wanted to visit but never had the time or opportunity. Funny enough, the gate was open this morning:

Half an hour later my 5.5 km loop was done and I was back at our city gate. What a beautiful morning!

And there is a bonus to it too – so that I always remember why it pays to get up early: at the end of my run, I picked up the Singelloop medal from the cobble stones. So here I am – no race but still one shiny medal!

Sinterklaas approaching

Early morning I dressed up and ran outside. How else a perfect weekend can start? I had no plans regarding the destination or distance, just decided to follow the gracht to the river and see depending on how I would feel after a mile or so. The sun was slowly coming up and the world around me was quiet and beautiful.

From the river, I turned to ‘my road’ and followed it till Leiderdorp park where some early birds were already walking their dogs and others playing field hockey. Luckily for me, there were still more than enough quiet paths to follow.

I even spotted something rather romantic (I think?):

My body felt good – no aching, no difficulty or discomfort with my belly, breathing nor legs so I just ran further down the road,

until I reached this windmill:

Ant close to that spot it hit me: today is the day when Sinterklaas (the Dutch version of St Nicolas or Mikulas, if you wish) is coming to town. All the Zwarte Piets (Black Pete’s, his helping buddies) were waiting already along the road:    According to the tradition, he is supposed to come from Spain on a steam boat – but I guess today I saw the modern version:

And so my run was again great: totally unexpectedly I got a chance to watch this show…

9 km.

Back to winter time

Yet another lazy Sunday morning downtown, just a couple of dogs with their owners packed in winter gear. Dry and sunny at times, not warmer than 5 degrees. I ran about 3 km along the city canal and did not want to run home…

  So I decided to discover the inner banks of the canal – with its old small graveyards, narrow paths through evenly narrow parks, all covered with yellow leaves. 

Back home, after 7 km, my reward was a long warm shower and hot coffee and the thought that I have all day ahead of me :-).

Juneathon Day 20: Bad signs

Sometimes life does not treat us well and shows us signs like these:On really bad days, you can even bump into this one:Luckily, for all the days, good and bad, there is always the road:Short post today, sorry about that. The run was great though: for 8.5 km, I had the entire world for myself.

Juneathon Day 19: Good signs

French trails are beautiful and unless you follow signs (that can be somewhat hidden), each of them will bring you to a new place every day. So much for my morning sarcasm. After a good night rest we hit the road at 6.45 am and went 8.5 km into the hills again and as we ran we found these: 

On the way back we picked fresh bread for breakfast and quickly checked the local tourist attraction: Les Grottes:

Another sunny day in Villecroze…