enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Sydney, redux. And I just deleted the negative parts, mostly. I don't know why I'm feeling a bit bitter towards others today - not good. I do really feel pretty good and confident about being myself, doing my thing. :)

You know, I feel that that entry from last night was a bit catty and judgmental on my part, so I feel badly about that!

So I slept until 11. I hate wasting the day like that! BUt obviously I needed the sleep. :)

And I woke up to an email from my coach in Sydney.

Lately, I have been so happy to be retired from running. I really do not enjoy running in Ottawa. There is nowhere to run privately and quietly and prettily in the country. One is stuck with bikepaths along the river or canal, or one has to drive to the Gatineau Hills. The Gats are good, but it's not like running to a great city park and criss-crossing through that.

I don't know what else it is, but Ottawa has not inspired me to continue running. Maybe, also, it was the time to wind down. Maybe, too, it is that I find that Ottawa is a very yuppie town in which *everyone* is fit and preparing for an Ir0nMan or a marathon, and I try to run screaming away from everything that is "cool."

It could be that. I do find that whenever anyone finds out that I used to be a runner they try to hit me up for advice on how to run through an injury, or they want to talk obsessively about how training should be structured and what they should eat.

I was never that kind of runner and don't believe that any program other than a very simple, individual one involving one's intuition strongly is worth following.

So people are either 1) disatisfied by my brief advice or ; 2) think that they know more than I do.

So I don't talk about running anymore. And to each his own. And if I decide to do an Iron M@n at any point, please hire someone to throw me in the Ottawa River. :)

Lately I'm just scraping myself through 8k runs, so no Ir0n M@n is likely to happen soon.

So anyhow, given that I've been so happy to NOT be a runner lately, and to have freed up time to take an honest shot at doing other things, I was surprised that when I received a series of photos from my former coach...I felt a pang.

I felt a pang. And who wouldn't with this sea of wonderful legs to look at:

You know, I really believe that if I were going to be a runner again in another life, I'd either move to England or live in Australia. What I love about these places is that their running cultures, in my belief at least, have hung on to an old-style club mentality. People train hard but there's a real group culture. And not a group culture such as we have here in Ottawa, where everyone pays money to the national cult running store and learns how to walk run, buys lots of gear, trudges along the canal in their name brand gear and fancy water bottles at the same time twice a week.

In Australia, at least, which I can speak to more fully, the running culture is beautiful. It is not about gear. They put on their shoes and they go out and run hard and run long. No one brags about how far they ran, and similarly no one is going to accept any excuses if you don't put in the training. There's a certain structure to their workouts, but it's pretty loose. They believe that to run fast you've got to go out and train. No one talks much about what shoes one wears. In fact, many clubs do a fair bit of barefoot running.

Some people wear heart monitors in Australia, but more when a special workout is being done. Mostly, in order to get fast - and this is similar to the English cross-country race scheduling I believe - on the weekends they do a little club race whenever they can. They race themselves fit, really. And they're tough.

So I'm kind of biased.

Whenever I was racing in Japan I'd always jump ship to the kiwis and Australians and just have fun. Those guys are not afraid to drink a beer before a race! :)

And man are the kiwis ever crazy and fun to run with. I'll never forget a certain A (1500m guy) with whom I had a little fling. Man that guy had calves, and luscious curly black ringlets. He was like a...dark adonis. He could make a track workout...worth doing.

SO, enough talk. More pictures. This morning, Sean and the group were doing a hill workout.

Really, I have no desire to run anymore here. BUt this morning, I literally salivated over the pics, and thought of jumping on a plane to Australia in order to run full time. That's how wonderful it is to train with that group. Sean is the tall guy pointing up the hill in the earlier two pictures, and leading up the hill in one other.

11:40 a.m. - 2008-06-28

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