first post about running overseas!
in my 8 days here i managed to run 5 times. and i'm going to run today, so that'd be 6 out of 9. not bad at all. all the runs have been in the 6-10 mile range and not particularly fast. so if i'm going to beat sarah palin, i gotta start pushing myself and pick up the pace. also i gotta do a long run, probably on sunday.
Palermo, where i stayed in BsAs, has a whole lot of parks, and they're all next to each other. so one can run from park to park for miles. though the parks are not particularly inspiring. the grass is bleak and somewhat faded, there is little variety of plants - just bleak grass and bleak trees. and lots of concrete roads and a few concrete bike paths going through. and completely flat. so i was glad to have a park to run in, but as parks go, it wasn't particularly exciting. i guess it had one good part which was a big pond with hundreds of fat white geese as well as some exercise machines - i got to do dips for the first time in a while! i <3 dips.
running barefoot along the beach in Rio was loads of fun. i love running on packed wet sand. right between where it gets too dry and starts giving and it gets to wet and starts giving. i ran up and down along the beach for about an hour, cooled by gentle rain, wet by the occasional outlier wave, and with an idiot grin on my face. life is hard, i thought to myself with a smile, as i pictured my co-workers running round and round the rose bowl.
i finished the run off with two cocos - they serve green coconuts there which are not quite ripe (that's when they brown). so you get clear water instead of milk. and apparently it's the best workout recovery drink one could have. and i also had two cheeseburgers. i don't know what they put in brazillian beef, or maybe i was just too hungry, but those cheap cheeseburgers on the beach were GOOD!
the best run of all though was the run two days ago here in Sao Paulo. i found a huge park, which is their Central park. it's not nearly as big as central park, but big. it's close to 1 square mile or so. and unlike argentina, it's lush green with a huge variety of plants and birds - black swans, tall ducks, and a bunch of others i didn't know. also lots of art and cool-looking buildings.
the thing that was most exciting is that i found the local cross country trail - it was clearly marked with distance markers every 100 meters, and it was a trail, going all around the park. the whole thing was a 6K which is a standard cross country distance. now i can time myself and know exactly how much i'm running. it made me really happy. i felt a sense of camaraderie with those high school or college kids running around it (not when i was, but at some points in time). and it just made me happy to run on a trail. no matter how hard i tried to explore the park i always found myself back on the trail near the perimeter.
i love the feel of earth under my feet. i love all the little roots and bumps. i love the variety of textures. i love the soft cushioning (as compared to the hard asphalt or concrete). i love running along trees and dodging branches. i love all the curves and turns. i love feeling like i'm going somewhere which is a feeling often elusive when running on roads through a monotone city with cars weezing by. and i also love the feeling of being among grass and trees and going nowhere at all.
so yes, i'm officially a trail runner. i'm sure i'll do my share of road races, but they'd probably be far in between the trail runs.
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