Lacing up

So me and my running buddy in town took that next step and signed up for the Cape Town marathon! I'm a little scared it still won't happen since having lived in Mozambique for over a year now I've come to accept that nothing is ever certain and I must always be ready for plans to fall apart at any moment. Yet having that said, at the same time I'm equally scared it WILL happen! I just signed up to run 26 miles in 3 months and I've never ran over 13 miles in my life, I hadn't been running very often these past few months, and I don't necessarily have the ideal running accessories available here... I've been running with my 2-year-old minimalist shoes and for long runs I tape my cell phone around my arm so I can listen to the local radio, which more often than not is in local language I don't even understand! Thanks to my best friend back home I DO have a brand spanking new camel pack I can use for water, and next month I'm going to meet my family in South Africa and will try to hunt down some new running shoes and a distance tracker to monitor my millage. So yeah, I'm currently a mixed bag of woo-hoo-I've-always-wanted-to-do-this and oh-my-goodness-what-have-I-gotten-myself-into feelings ;)

Being the dork that I am, I did a little research and made myself a 16-week running schedule that I've successfully followed for 2 weeks now, the first week reaching 14miles and this last week totaling about 16.5 miles (that's assuming I'm running 10-min miles but I have no idea what my actual speed is running through the dirt paths.)

On another front, we had a big workshop for our youth groups in Inhambane this past weekend! I took 5 of my kids and my counterpart (so really I had 6 kids ;) to a university about 2 hours away from Friday to Sunday. OOOOPA was that tiiiiring! I love my group but I have new-found appreciation for teachers who have to deal with teenagers every day. We had a great weekend learning about STDs, (with a big emphases on HIV in particular), pregnancy, gender issues, puberty etc... My group also performed the drug and alcohol abuse play they'd put together and was able to network and share ideas with the other groups in neighboring districts. It was a lot of fun but man was I beat by the time I got home Sunday evening.

During the conference one of the facilitators asked me to apply for a coordinator position next year so last night I sent in my “application” to be the southern region coordinator for all youth groups in the 3 southern-most provinces of the country. We have votes right now so I'll know by next week if I have a new activity to do in my free time (I'm not too optimistic but we'll see! If I get the position there are definitely a few things I'd like to beef up for next year's trainings and conferences...)

Did I mention that the workshop venue was on the coast? One of my favorite parts this past weekend was waking up before everyone else in the mornings, lacing up my running shoes, sneaking out of the university campus in the gray-dawn light, stretching my legs while holding onto a big tree with a bee hive on the first branch so the buzzing noises filled my head, and then climbing down through the thickets and flowers to the water.

The first day I ran north and soon came upon a group of men pulling a fishing boat out into the water. For awhile I chatted with the men in the boat about our respective schedules for the day: mine was to sit in a auditorium with about 100 teenagers while there's was to sail out to a nearby island and fish out on the water under the sun. It was hard to decline the invitation to jump onto the boat with them. Then I caught up to the men pulling the boat out and they asked me for a hand. Without breaking stride I picked up the rope and started pulling the boat along with the men until they were all jogging along with me and the boat behind us had picked up enough speed. When the cheering of the men died down I bid my new friends good bye and turned around to return back down the coast. On my way back I came across an old man with a big wooden post for the sail on his boat so I asked if he'd like a hand. Together we dragged it out to his boat on the water. Once it was by the boat I again bid adieu and continued on my way. As I jogged this last stretch I watched the sun finally rise it's head over the water and through the morning clouds, and then I found my way back to the path through the thickets, climbed up to the big tree with the bee hive, and slid through the side door returning back to the campus....

The next day I ran south down the coast and faced a wall of wind with every step (later that day there was a big storm.) Every step felt like wading through water in a dream and I watched dried seaweed and leaves dance over the white sand. I ran through a graveyard of old abandoned boats with the paint chipping off where their names had once read and large holes pocketing their sides like battle wounds. There was one monster of a boat taking up half the beach so I had to climb up the beach and over the sand mound through the wind to get to the other side. Once I climbed over the little hill and was safe on the side sheltered from the wind I looked back to find a tree growing right through the heart of the boat. It was beautiful. Eventually I gave up battling against the wind and turned around to be literally flown back to where I started in half the time it took me to get there.

The funny thing is, the teenage boys in my group also ran both mornings that weekend but they refused to join me on the beach in the early morning hours because it was “too dirty.” Instead ran in circles around the basketball court.

Big hugs, especially to my father and abuelito – happy belated father's day!