Holy Cow! (India part 1)

Shortly after this point in the trip I honestly thought I was going to die...

I arrived into Bangalore, India, on a Friday evening. Almost 35 hours of travelling non-stop had me wiped, but I was determined to let the timing work for me as my arrival time gave me 2 days to explore the city before starting work on Monday morning. Because the trip was planned at the last minute, I didn't really have any expectations (good or bad) to set myself up for. The only thing I really wasn't prepared for was the traffic. Specifically the masses of traffic and polar opposite amount of regard for traffic rules:

The traffic pictures you see here was a pretty typical scene, but the best I saw was a family of 4 on a motor-cycle (and a family of 5 in a tuk-tuk). They just sandwiched the kids in-between the parents on the bike. The rest of the time most of the women rode side-saddle, with their scarves hanging down looking like they are about to be spun into the gears of the bike at any moment. Busses passed carts pulled by donkeys, and road construction warnings consisted of a simple orange cone placed about 3 feet in front of a massive hole or pile of dirt... and the orange cone was optional in most casts.

There were some serious points I thought I was going to die in a grizzly traffic accident, but it (almost) never happened. The one time it did was the night I was riding with a coworker in a tuk-tuk. Imagine a 2 stroke scooter with a 2 person cab on the back, and then masses of traffic just moving around you. Cars just use the road lines as a suggested guide. No, wait. They don't actually use road lines. The mantra is a mix of: "honk to pass" , "fit 3.5 cars into a 2 lane road" and "if you need to go down the 1 way road the wrong way, that's ok as long as you keep honking".

Our driver was going down the middle of the street - more on the "wrong" side than the "right" - and a motor cycle decided to pass on our right. Unfortunately the car coming at us didn't have enough room to pass on the left so it just nonchalantly swerved in front of us, honked, and tried to pass on the right...which was exactly where the motorcycle was. It was at this point I thought I honestly thought I was going to die a wicked death on the streets of Bangalore. Tires screeched, bodies flew and our driver just gunned it and deftly maneuvered around any flying debris. After a moment the driver let off his throttle and peered back. "No problem sir! Just the motorcycle, not us!" he seemed to scream at us. With that he spun back around and promptly gunned it towards our final destination.

Yet it was just another day on the Banglore streets for our driver...

Geneva, On-Time

Back October I spend the weekend in Geneva, and holy time do they take their watches seriously! Fortunatly, my trip gave me 2 full days to spare and see the city. Half of one of my days was spent exploring St. Pierre's Cathedral. With excavations under the church hall dating back as far as 350AD, and the actual Cathedral buildings being started around 1160AD, there was some impressive architecture.


The view from the North Tower offers a panoramic view of Geneva and the lakefront: Geneva. This would have been the view of all of Geneva and Lac Leman when the city was first formed:


Excavation underneath St. Pierre's Cathedral. This mosaic floor was from ~200BC, and would have been the original floor that the bishop would ahve welcomed their guests into:


Crest on St. Pierre's Cathedral:

Inside St. Pierre's Cathederal.

Corner of one of the towers in St. Pierre's Cathederal. I was allowed to climb up into the spires to look at the view. It was one of the highest points in the old city, looking both over the lake and the entire old-town.


The rest of my time was exploring the Old Town.
Place Neuve. The Grand Théâtre de Genève can be seen in the background:
The Grand Théâtre de Genève (Opera House), originally built around 1876

Rue de la Corraterie:



Mur des Reformatures: It is about 5-meter tall and 100-meter wide wall runs along one side of the Parc des Bastion.


You can see the Lords Prayer with a picture of John Knox preaching at St. Giles. Roger Williams (16th century theologian) is on the right.


And yes, for those who know me, I did visit [Jean-Jacques] Rosseau Island.


Unfortunately there was 3 things on my list I didn't get to do:
1) Visit the UN. I ran out of time but would have loved to see the Great Assembly Hall.
2) Impressionist wing of the Art & History Museum. I was looking forward to sitting and contemplating a blog post while looking at the works of Van Gogh & Renior. While the rest of the Museum was open, this wing was closed "because of the birds". I am not sure what that meant, but it sounded ominous when the Security Guard told it to me after I tried to get through the locked door.
3) The Jet d'eau. On the lakefront there is the world's tallest jet spouting water 140m into the air. I walked down to the Jet, both days, but it was too windy for the Jet to be operating.

All the more reason to visit again...

McNuggets

Haley on her McNuggets explanation:

"You know how nuggets are made? These nuggets are actually chicken fluff covered by a layer of
crispy nugget crust"

I almost think I need to start a twitter feed for this.

H1N1

Haley said to me today:

Dad, you know the H1N1? Well the "H" is the coughing part and the "N1" is the swine flu part...

A technical 5 year old

Haley borrowed my blackberry to type a letter. This is what she wrote:

Haley mIChELle coWAN CUpcaKEe. Jhhgguutretykdtewabggujf.
B vhgghggghhghghghyhjh. Sdsdhgffhguklklooooo. Ggggffggfohjegdgvrvggrg

My blackberry spellchecker changed it to:
Haley Michelle Cowan Cupcake Jamborees Vaughn Sainthoods Gastrointestinal

Who would have known.

A Simple Tip Please

They say India is corrupt and sometimes you need to pay up to play. Well, they were right.
I had to pay my first bribe to a policeman today... He didn't want rupees, but american
dollars. It was, as he said, "just a simple tip please". I guess that's what happens when you
are the only white tourists in the place...Too funny.

Between the crazy Bangalore drivers and the spicy pickled lime peels, this has been quite the
trip.

More details when I return....

LP.

5 weeks of training = 1 big Screw You

Granted, I was unprepared. But I was fueled by the intrinsic motivation to be able to say both figuratively and literally "Screw you" if I crossed the finish line.

• 5:00 am Marathon Morning. I awoke to the alarm, a distant buzz on the other side of the bedroom which would ensure the actual movement from my bed to silence the noise.
• 5:10 am Breakfast of champions. Bananas and peanut butter. I don't like either, together OR apart. Having to wash it down with a Power Gel? Priceless.
• 6:00 am Time for a hot shower and Motrin. Anything to loosen up the muscles before they get raked over the proverbial coals.
• 6:15 am I headed out the door, leaving a silent and sleeping house behind me. In fact, not even Riley, our dog, wanted to wake up when I slipped out the door.

I arrived downtown around 6:45 and spent the next 1.5 hours contemplating dropping out and just going to hang out and watch the runners.

8:30 am - Race Start. After the gun went off I looked around and realized I actually started at the very back of the 5000+ pack. The entire back. Like where the special needs people start... that means my starting picture is with the Special Olympics of this marathon. Great!
Nowhere to go but up!

From this point onwards, time was not a relative measure. I would experience my day in a measurement of distance....distance ran to be precise.

• 10k Did the first 10k in 58 minutes...which was my goal so far.
• 14k I started to think my training motto of "Hills and Pavement are for race day" may have been misguided. Pavement is HARD and hills are STEEP!
• 16k I thought back to my chiropractors advice on "If your neck siezes up before 15k, then drop out. If not, then you'll maybe be ok". I recall her stressing the 'maybe', which was I am now sure for "like a 5% chance it won't" sort of 'maybe'.
• 16.5k Yep. My neck seized up. Good thing I made it to 15k and no backing down now!
• 20k I arrived with little fanfare, just under the 2 hour even mark. Slow and steady....
• 24k You know they say not to try new food out on race day? Well, I went against that. PowerGel has a new product out that tastes and looks like a Gummy Bear, but with a gel filling. Mmmmm...
• 26k I start to realize I have done about 150k of running in the past month in preparation for this race. That means my race accounts for 25% of my total running in the past 5 weeks. Usually over a 15 week program you ramp up and do about 600km. Whoops.
• 27k I am officially on my longest run since the Marathon last year. I feel it too....
• 28k I could feel the PowerGel Gummy Bear rolling around in my stomach....yes, perhaps it IS true not to try new things on race day...
• 30k At a 3:05 timing I have officially dropped behind any sort of target to set a PR, in particular since I have given up running and have walked the past 2k.
• From about 30-40k I slipped into the cycle of walk 1k and massage out the kinks in my neck, then put up with the pain and run for 2k more. If I could describe the pain, I would have to say it felt like an ice-pick being shoved in between my shoulder blades, then about 1000 acupuncture needles simultaneously piercing my skin from the tops of my shoulders to the tips of my fingers. Fortunately my thumbs were not feeling anything by now, so they were good blunt massaging tools for my neck.
• 36k I arrived at the Harrier Hash Aid Station - which serves up shots of beer for passing
  runners. I fought my previous encounter with drinking beer while running and went for it, dulling the pain as I walked. It was perhaps the best aid station of the day.
• 40k By this time all I could think was "fuck it. I'm sore. Let's just get this done and over with"
• 42.2k Finished!

My chip time was 4:32. A full 30 minutes slower than last year, but with a considerable decrease in training. When I was running I was doing about 5:30minute/km easy pace, and had a few km which were in the 4:30m/km mark. My legs felt great, which was nice, I just couldn't move my neck around to enjoy the scenery of both nature and runners (the latter seemingly improved the faster I moved up the pack of racers).

Things I learned about myself on this race:
1) 150k over 5 weeks in training is too little. Next time I should set the minimum around 200k for sure, or at least 6 weeks.
2) Allocate a little more budget to massage + chiropractor if I don't follow point #2.
3) I shouldn't move my bedroom upstairs the day before I race. Having to navigate stairs so soon after was a little challenging, and resulted in much mockery by my wife.
4) Flying to Europe on a 14 hour flight only 2 days after the race is not a good idea. (On a positive note the free liquor on the long haul fights seemed to dull the pain!)
5) Pain is temporary. Quitting is forever: Never. Say. "Can't". To. Me.

See you next year...just hopefully a little faster and a lot less sore.