26.2 here we come...

Well, the time has come...

after 17 weeks of training, we are only one week away to the big day.

I have very little to write at this point, mostly because I am seized with the fear and anxiety of what we have gotten ourselves into (or, perhaps that is just my legs seizing).

We start running at 9:30 am (France) on Saturday, September 8th. Which means for you folks in the US of A, that by the time you wake up on Saturday (or get home on Saturday =) we will be done running.

A friend shared with us a good trick to help while we are running: make a list of 26 people, a person for each mile, and think of them along the way; any memories, funny stories etc to get you through that mile. So, we will be thinking of you while we run, please think of us!

P.s. for those of you that submitted costume ideas, we are happy to announce a winner: US! We decided to go as "Les Chaussettes Rouges/Red Sox!"

Twenty, seriously

I am exhausted. Completely and utterly tired. I have been pretty consistent with my training over the past 15 weeks, running three times in the week and a long run during the weekend (if you are interested in the training schedule, see the link on the right). But this week I have found it hard to do five miles, let alone 10, and the prospect of facing the 20 miles on Monday is well, overwhelming.

It could be the humidity, coupled with the the constant sweating (another nice training side-effect)...or just the sharp unavoidable fear of spending nearly five hours running on Monday. FIVE HOURS!

I could watch two movies, fly to California, sleep, do my taxes, do laundry AND clean the house...think of what you could do in five hours (yeah, exactly).

I just don't feel prepared. Kate, Catherine and I have noticed this strange phenomenon, whereby we finish running ridiculous distances, only to feel like we really didn't complete our task. My theory is that your mind simply cannot wrap itself around anything over...nine. I say nine, because that is my uh-oh mile. That is when I really start to struggle and wonder if I am going to have to walk the rest of the way. When I run 10, I only feel the disappointment that the last mile was bad. After nine, well, I think your body stops counting.

Think of me on Monday morning, I'll be running.

eighteen.

There are certain things that they don't tell you about before you start training for a marathon. That you will lose toenails, for example. Or that 'Body Glide' is a necessary running accessory, because you will chafe. Where will you chafe? Oh, that is an extra special surprise (note: anywhere you really really don't want to chafe, you will). Also, the importance of the bathroom. Before and after. Crucial. This small little detail can break you as a person if ignored.

Yes, a marathon is a mental exercise in strength, perseverance and damn pigheadedness. After 10 miles, it is your mind (or rather, your minds ability to get the hell outta your body while you are torturing it) that gets you to mile 16, 18 and hopefully 26.2. That .2 is the bitch...I just know it. Nobody has to tell me that...I met the bitch that is .2 at mile 17.8 last week.

But let's not forget the physical...physically, you become a slave to the boyfriend that is the marathon. You eat, sleep, drink running. And when you are not eating, sleeping and drinking for it...you are talking about it, going to the bathroom for it, having early nights for it and bandaging it. Anything that goes in, or out of, or on your body is for the marathon.

My feet will never be the same. My beautiful, perfect, soft feet are no more. And you now what?! Fuck those feet...those feet were for pussy's! I have new, kick-ass feet that can run 18 miles. I have feet that WILL run 26.2 miles.

4 weeks until the marathon, and to date we have run over 200 miles. We've lost toenails, had bloody socks, sprained an ankle, been nauseas, had leg seizures and eaten like men. I say we, because running a marathon is not a solitary sport. I simply could not do this alone, nor would I want to.

139.2 miles to the finish line...

Food poisoning, or how I reached my goal weight (Final Madrid)

Originally: July 18, 2007

Sub-title: There are a lot of man bags in Spain

It was difficult to come up with a title for this last one, also strong contenders:
1) Drinking in the streets
2) How I reached my goal weight (and then drank & ate it all back with Sangria and tapas)
3) Do you want to make party with us? (that one is for you, Kate)

Anyway, wrote this on the way back home....

Apparently, it is very common to get food poisoning in Madrid/Spain in the summer. Ugh. Of course, I became sick on Monday, the day before my hectic work meetings began, and was sick through the whole week. I’m not sure if it is food poisoning, or an allergic reaction to EUSA. Either way, my second week in Madrid is a blur of fever, chills and trust falls (he he, just kidding).

Out and about in Madrid, some of my colleagues commented on the wonderful oddities of Madrid. Since you can go out all night in Madrid, there are some popular after-hours food choices. There are, of course, the ubiquitous Donner Kebabs of Europe, but even after those have closed, you have, what I call, the Chinese cardboard boxes. People sitting on cardboard boxes that have everything on offer: chicken fried rice in bags, beer, water, etc. Need a sandwich? No problem, your new friend will just climb up a nearby tree and you can have any bocadillo you desire (jamon, tuna, chicken, etc). In case you were wondering, NO I never did eat any of these bocadillos that grow from trees, or fried rice from a cardboard box, and that is NOT how I got food poisoning.

After my meetings ended on Friday, and a perfectly indulgent evening in my hotel with Kate and Catherine (and our friend, Rioja), Kate and I headed to Cordoba on Saturday. The best decision we ever made…our work meetings are very far behind us!

Mere hours after arriving, Kate and I discovered the Toad equivalent in Cordoba. For those of you that are not familiar with Toad, it is a bar in Cambridge that has live music every night of the week, never has a cover and Kate and I are completely obsessed with it. The sister bar in Cordoba, called Freaktown, is the exact same size, with the same crazy mix of characters; even Greg the bartender (Gregorita, we’ve now named him, a diminutive version of our favorite surly beer slinger). David Bea was playing and did a very nice version of a Ryan Adams song. As with any night at Toad, hilarity ensued as it slowly dawned on us that 1) apparently there are a lot of man bags in Spain (in fact, every boy in the bar had one), and 2) oh, yup – this bar is, while not a gay bar, full of gay men. We bonded with the DJ, who played a crazy folk/bluegrass/country version of Britney Spears ‘Toxic,’ and ‘Staying Alive.’ On our way out, we made friends with a bunch of David Bea fans, and found ourselves the only foreigners in a huge club, Gongorra, that was packed with people, blaring dance music…and yet, no one was dancing. No one. Oh we danced, of course. Those Spaniards poor a stiff drink, god bless ‘em, and since we don’t understand why you go to a dance club and don’t dance, we danced. In fact, we bumped into our waiters from our tapas dinner earlier that evening. They still had their restaurant shirts on. Spain: hilarious and random.

Kate and I woke up the next day at the early hour of 1pm and headed out to our stressful day of discovering Cordoba. We booked a bath, massage and tea at the Hammam Arab baths. Cordoba is a beautiful small town, with twisting streets and a history of Christian, Jewish and Muslim culture. We became happily lost navigating the streets to find the Arab baths (calle de putas, check) and were relieved to escape the heat and spend 2 hours relaxing. Our relaxing time got off to a bumpy start, when we entered the women’s changing area and were instantly surrounded by a large pack of gaggling Spanish women, about 10 of them. Large. Loud. Thankfully, the baths themselves were silent, even though these women just couldn’t help themselves. We spent 2 hours going between warm, hot and cold baths…a surprisingly exhausting and cleansing experience. We finished up with a 15 minute massage and then shuffled sleepily to have mint tea and relax in a beautiful room of hookahs, pillows and chairs. Aaaaah, Cordoba.

I’ve learned in the past, the best way to discover any new place is to just go with the flow, get lost and talk to people. We wandered in our haze of post-bath bliss through the very empty streets of Cordoba. Not only was it Sunday, but it was between the hours of 3pm and 7pm, when most of the world is eating and sleeping during the extreme heat of the day. Some of our best moments were just taking advantage of the crazy things we came across: like drinking 1 euro canas in the street with a bunch of Cordobians, as it was 2pm on Monday and time for eating, drinking and (soon after) a siesta; discovering the bar with no name that our friend from Casa Pepe directed us to when Casa Pepe was closing; we always seemed to land on our feet in Cordoba.

Cordoba is where we really discovered Tapas, and we often found the best places for Sangria, Salmorejo (cold “dip,” almost like gezpacho) or Tortilla. And yes, we drank Sangria!! Thank goodness they drink it somewhere in Spain! Bar Santos was written up in our guidebook, and it was there we met Raphael and Francisco. Francisco is likely in his late 70s and is known for his famous tortilla. On Sunday, the bar was empty and Kate and I made two stops at Bar Santos in our tapas rotation…proving that being a “local” (even if that means just returning to one place until they know you) is how to get to know a place. We returned there again last night, our final night, and had sangria and tortilla sitting outside on the walls of the Mezquita. The Mezquita of Cordoba is a HUGE cathedral that sits in the center of what was once the largest Muslim temple in the world. It is stunning and unbelievable in its size, and even more amazing since when the Christians took control, they built a church right in the middle of the existing mosque, building around the existing columns. It is a mix of Arab and Christian architecture; side-by-side, it is a jarring combination.

So, we said goodbye to Francisco and Raphael, and had our last Sangria in a local bar, hidden away in the streets of Cordoba, and then walked home at the embarrassingly early hour of 1am. It is hard to say goodbye to Spain, but it is a place that I know I will return to. I miss it, I miss it, I miss it already… some places just feel like home, and Spain feels that way to me.

I will be back.

Sangria, the drink, they myth, the legend

Originaly: July 9, 2007

People in Spain do not drink Sangria. They roll their eyes at you when you order it. You know what they do drink? Mojitos. Oh Mojitos….Que Buenos! oh Mojitos, why are you so good to me…You know what else they drink, cervezas, and a lot of it. Mahou is the cerveza of choice and it definitely hits the spot in this 90-degree weather (supposed to be 97 on Friday/Saturday)!

My love affair with Madrid continues… head over heels, completely enamorada with Madrid. I am so in love, that I feel like Madrid is my new boyfriend and I don’t care who sees us making out in public together...

I have met my match. Her name is Patricia and she is/was my profesora de espanol. I knew that I would get along with Patricia, even on our first day of classes, but I had no idea…Patricia has the kind of mouth you wouldn’t kiss your mother with, and I absolutely love her. Do you know how to say “Eat me” in Spanish? I do now. Come me lo. Oh yes, I am going to be friends with Patricia for a long time. Some of my other favorite Patricia-isms:
Where there is hair, there is joy.
Positiones sexuales realmente inviduras (sp?)

Patricia also helped proved the theory that Spanish people do not drink Sangria; we went up to a few tables, in a plaza in Malasaña, where groups were drinking Sangria to find out why they ordered it. They were all foreigners. The only halfway point is to have tinto de verano: basically, wine with some fruit in it. On Friday, we went to Malasaña and sat in Plaza de Dos de Mayo with our clase de espanol. There is a great culture in Madrid of sitting outside and drinking, chatting and relaxing. The sun goes down so late and people are out all night, so it is easy to lose track of time. We drank cervezas and vino blanco until 2am, and when we left it seemed like we were going home early. I got a little bit lost on the way home; but as Miguel (Ines’s brother) put it: I wasn’t lost, I was borracha (= drunk). A little bit true. Anyway, I walked home via a main shopping area in Chueca and found myself on the calle de putas (prostitutes), not to be confused with the term “de puta de madre,” which means fucking brilliant. For example, esta cerveza es de puta de madre. Anyhoo, there is a whole lotta prostitution going on here and it certainly ain’t subtle.

Chueca and Malasana were actually really bad parts of town 10 years ago, and they have become gentrified and are know well-known as the gay district. Interestingly, if you see a bar described as “de ambiente,’ with ambience, what it actually means is it is a gay bar. I like that.

And so ended my week of language classes, all summed up with our final lesson on masculine/feminine terms: Todas los problemas son masculinos y todas las soluciones son femininas. The word problem is masculine in Spanish (and in French), even though it ends in an ‘a.’ Because of this confusing ‘a’ ending, teachers always joke that all problems are masculine, whereas all solutions are feminine. How true, how true.

I’ve noticed that people here wear slightly inappropriate t-shirts. T-shirts with sayings in English that either don’t quite work, or are surprisingly vulgar. I saw a perfectly normal, well-put together woman wearing a t-shirt that said, “Do it to me.” And another young woman wearing a “I love smile” t-shirt. The best part is, no one knows what they really mean. A few others:
I am the after party
My boyfriend likes when I do that
Plant the pole

I was going to go to Toledo on Saturday to see a little more of Spain. But after Friday night in Malasaña, I realized I haven’t slept in a week, and I haven’t seen much of Madrid (well the touristic part of Madrid). I woke up at noon, fully intending to do a walking tour and to go to the Reina Sofia, one of the major museums in Madrid, and an outdoor Museo de la Escultura Abstracta (sculpture garden). Well…I woke up and Ines, Miguel and I went out to a nearby bar to drink canas (drafts/beers) and so the afternoon went. Ines took me to a place called ‘Casa Grenada,’ one of the famous terazos de Madrid…you have to know about it to go there. There are no signs and it is in a residential building. You ring the bell to go up and then the elevator takes you to the 6th floor where you discover a bustling restaurant with a beautiful view of Madrid. It is right in Tirso de Molina (the plaza where Ines lives) and I nearly exploded with happiness (and beer and food)! We ate queso con uvas: cheese and grapes, in olive oil. Simply put: the best flavor combinations. Claro que after drinking and eating in the sun, the next best thing is to take a siesta. Again, I fully intended to take a quick nap and then head to the museum. Three hours later, I awoke from the most beautiful nap. So it goes.


Ines is a great cook and it is a pleasure to watch her, while drinking and talking. I find great cooks fascinating and appreciate the “sensuality” behind it. Not sensuality in the sexual sense, but in the sense of how great cooks can “feel out” a dish, putting in ingredients based on a sense, creating tastes, and presenting the colors and natural beauty of food. Miguel, Ines and I drank wine from Portugal in the kitchen while Ines cooked; I am constantly reminded that in any culture, in any country, the kitchen in where everyone gravitates to talk, gossip, eat, smoke and live life.

On Sunday, Ines and I went to El Rastro, an outside flea market that takes over the streets of La Latina. It’s very similar to the stalls at Cambden town, or Portobello Road, but being Madrid it has a different feeling to it. We walked around and bought some more abinicos (fans)…I can’t believe how many fans I have purchased since being here. They are just so beautiful and tactile; hard to resist. When I die, all that will be left of me is a collection of scarves and fans. After we popped into al little bar where we had canas and sardines. Yummy, salty wonderful sardines and bread! And in a little place, hidden behind one of the main streets of El Rastro. Next we stopped in another local bar…beers are about 1 euro 50, not much at all to enjoy a typical Spanish bar and hide from the heat.

Reality is creeping back in, as today I checked into my hotel and had a long sigh as I looked through my 100+ emails. I’ll be in meetings all week and will be sure to try and sneak in some fun in Madrid.

Off to Cordoba this coming weekend with Kate, perhaps another update to come!

Madrid Ultra

Originally sent: July 5, 2007

Primera semana en Madrid…some thoughts

A very long first day, that started with a brisk walk with my home stay “mom,” Inés, at 730am. Ines is 29 and works at Glamour magazine. She has taken in EUSA students for the past two years and I am amazed at her enthusiasm and ability to talk, talk, talk! She is a perfect host to the Spanish language, and I feel a little more at ease with this Spanish sassy-pants, even more so because her mom is French and it comes out in soo many ways!

It was strange being a student again today…especially since I had two people guess my age as 19. 19. Two completely different people. 19. Thank you mum and dad for great genes…I still haven’t quite figured out how to be credible and look 19. I guess that is everyone else’s problem, not mine. Hopefully that makes me the dark horse…hardly.

What is very apparent to me is how much this experience is similar to my own study abroad in France, when I actually was 19. The same emotions are there (frustration, confusion, inability to communicate, complete mind fuck that, if you could hear my thoughts, sounds a little bit like: “Wha!? Whoa, okay, I know that word. Shit, while I was figuring out that word, they’ve moved onto a whole other topic…crap, huh, okay okay I think we are talking about…nope, now you look like a moron, because you smiled and said ‘Si’ and they didn’t ask you a yes or no question. That’s okay, moving on…damn, I am hungry, but the thought of having to first find a restaurant that isn’t so clearly touristico, then having to order and pay and the whole time knowing that I’m making some huge cultural faux pas, like eating lunch at 1pm instead of 3, etc etc). The difference is, that this time around I’ve got the study abroad Shit-kickers on…for those of you that don’t know what I mean: Study Abroad Shit-kickers are the invisible steel-toed boots that one acquires after studying abroad. Or traveling (no, trips to Hawaii don’t count), or going through a major cage rattling event. It requires that you are truly and completely torn out of your element; that you try to learn another language, only to realize that you will never really know it like a mother tongue (and curse that no one ever told you that before); that you make a gazillion and one mistakes (the one is what makes it count) and that you end up not caring what a fool you make of yourself (this is how you end up making that one mistake count). Those of us with Shit-kickers know, you HAVE to make a fool of yourself…or else you don’t get the damn boots. Unfortunately, the Shit-kickers don’t help with embarrassment, but wine does (thank goodness for vino tinto…y blanco).

I digress…the first day was great because I am no longer 19. I spoke Spanish with everyone, I tried verb tenses that I’m not sure exist; I spoke up in class and admitted that I had no idea what was going on. I had a long dinner with Ines, during which I understood the major temas, but laughed and contributed like I followed every word and syllable (honestly, who the hell knows what we were actually talking about). Following every syllable of a madrilena is impossible…but damn my Shit-kickers and I made a big effort.

I was placed in a beginner class and I take classes from 9am to 1pm each day. The classes are great and the 4 hours fly by! I have learned more than I thought possible and have that NEED to learn it until there is no more learning to be done (never)!

It helps that Madrid is….extraordinarily wonderful and intoxicating. Ines described Madrid as the NYC of Spain and it is so true. There is a certain sabor to Madrid. There actually is a palpable feeling to Madrid that is not possible to describe….how do you describe falling in love? That’s how I would describe Madrid.

And que differencia de la francia!!! I love the way the Spanish invite you into their world and make it so easy to speak and try and taste everything. Yes, the Spanish language seems easier to learn than French, but even more because the Spanish WANT you to learn, and don’t take no for an answer.

I went grocery shopping with Ines yesterday and she showed me a barrio called Lavapies….a section of Madrid full of immigrants and hippies and all things wonderful. Ines’s house is in an area called La Latina, right next to Lavapies and in true Madrid style we walked and walked and walked. And of course, stopped for a couple of cervezas. We talked for hours and it is getting a little easier to follow and understand. There are times when I do understand a lot and I am able to tell all my stories and comments (albeit in the wrong tenses, and with a little franglais/spanglish thrown in). 20 minutes can go by with me understanding nothing (and really, nada de nada) but I just ADORE that I can be part of her life and her conversations, whether I understand everything or not. We met up with a friend of hers, Marcos, and had copas (drinks) in a small plaza near her flat until the sun started going down (1045 pm). Dinner is late in Madrid, and often we eat at 11pm or later. I absolutely love it.

I discovered yesterday a whole new verb conjugation in Spanish, that doesn’t exist in French. Imperativo Afirmativo…and to me, it sums up Spain. You use it to tell someone to do something, to recommend something, in advertisements, etc. For example, Drink this! We are going out! Open the door! Come here! Do this, Do that, Don’t do that! And the only response is yes! Por supuesta, why would it be no?

I’ve been running in el parque de Retiro each morning which is a great way to see Madrid…in the morning there are less people, but more often than not I see people returning home from their nights out, rather than getting an early start for work.

I have yet to experience a true Madrid night out, but I have some plans for this weekend, so we shall see when I get around to running that 10 miles.

More later,

Los besos muy grandes!!