Chateaux Anne in Les Essards

We spent a bit of time in the little village of Les Essards, a tiny town of maybe 200 people. The village lies near Aubterre, a slightly larger town where we also spent some time. In the end, we actually zipped around in our Peugot, Penelope, to quite a few small towns in the area--crashing weddings, eating salad nicoises and scaling walls of actual chateaux (what's the plural of chateaux?) along the way.

Before all of that though, our co-worker, Anne, handed us over a set of keys and her summer kingdom became ours. Our homestead for the week was everything you'd look for in a french house in the middle of nowhere. It came with:
**nooks, crannies and a library including a desk that overlooked a rolling field
**shiatsu massage room
**books, books and books
**that musty french smell that musty romantic french houses have
**a beautiful fireplace





It also came with an assorted cast of characters of bees, bugs and hauntsville noises. But we managed to survive six days in the middle of nowhere with nothing more than a couple of hangovers and a slight sunburn. What a way to end an marathon filled, Ofsted damned half term.

St. Malo and Mont Saint-Michel

Back in the land of May, a week after the marathon, I had the good fortune of heading to France with my running buddy, Chuck and my co-worker, Natasha. We left the planning up to Chuck considering he speaks french, has a good working knowledge of the country and has a friend with a house there.

So on the 30th of May, we drove to Plymouth and caught a Brittany Ferry to St. Malo, in the Brittany Region of Northern France. The ferry moves slow; ours took a comedic eight hours. We tried to get drunk in the well-stocked canteen but failed. We tried to sleep in our unreclining seats but failed. Instead we weaved through the sleeping bagged, well-prepared corpses passed out along the floor of the big boat and froze whilst telling bad jokes then reading bad literature.


Upon arrival, we were delusional from the lack of sleep but had to wander through the still sleeping village of St. Malo before an eight-hour drive to Les Essards, a tiny village an hour outside of Bordeaux.



no surfing in the city?

We also took a twoish hour pitstop up the coast at Mont Sant-Michel, a beautiful monastery in Normandy. The monastery is connected to the land by a small, shaky bridge and is otherwise surrounded by very salty water and marshlands where local shepherds take their sheep to graze. This creates some kind of local delicacy that I had the joy of not trying.









From what I was awake for, I recall the drive along the coast being beautiful. But as the drive waned on, we began to lose hope that we knew where we were. We pulled into Les Essards in the pitch black around 11pm and were greeted with a beautiful, but eerie cottage style house. We made Chuck take the room closest to the door, in the event of crazed country lunatics, and Natasha and I shared a room further in the crannies of the house.
catching world cup sticker book fever in france

Lots of French food to come!

Yorkshire Roadtrip

Here's a quick rundown of the pre and post marathon road trip to get us to and back from Scotland. Chuck, Rosa and I hopped in Chuck's little car and barreled up the motorway, through York, the Peak District and Scottish Borders to Edinburgh. Then we did it again in reverse. I couldn't tell you where many of these places exactly are so i'll loosely suggest they're north of York and south of Edinburgh.

the way up:



wrong side of the road


peak district national park area


more peak district


my love for cheese knows no bounds


it's only quaint and cute because i don't live here

and on the way back, the city of York:

The River Ouse


?


in the Shambles


York Minster


Minster close ups




sporting my wicked marathon tan


american behind the wheel

phew, no more blogging today. but coming up soon, France and the week in Brittany.

Edinburgh Marathon

WARNING: LONG ENTRY

On 23 May 2010, I crossed #1 off my 2010 new year's resolution list and #14 off my life things to do list. it hurt. it felt good. i wept when i crossed the finish line.

I ran, and continue to run, for many reasons. In the beginning, I found that if you run you cannot simultaneously cry; your body needs all of its energy in one place. I also discovered that running is a good distraction for loneliness, depression and rage. As time passed it became clear that running also made me feel happy and that in completing a long run every week I accomplished something bigger than the week before.

But still, in running a marathon, the elephant analogy comes to mind--you can only bite off one chunk at a time. I took good advice from several runner friends and obtained a training plan, invested in some good clothing, better shoes and fabulous mindset before I set off on the impossible task. I began training in December and completed my first 10k road race in February, running past and through London's 2012 Olympic Village. I surprised myself with my times and ability to just keep on going. Which I hoped would prepare me for the big day.

What I didn't anticipate was getting a very bad chest infection, tearing a ligament above my rib from all the coughing and getting sidelined with only a month left in my training.

Thus, on the big day I woke up a bundle of nervous energy, having completed 17.5 miles as my longest run. In the starting pens I willed myself not to vomit as the blue, cloudless, breezeless 28-degree (78F) day beat down on me. I used that energy to sprint through the first two miles and completed them in under 18 minutes, a huge no, no. At my absolute best, I run an eight an a half minute mile; why would I even try to do that in the first two miles of a loooong race?

picking up my entry number the day before: entrant 10899

race prep

fear face

the clearest skies scotland has ever seen

I hit a mental wall at mile six thinking, wtf am I running a marathon? Then I remembered my friend Sara’s advice when she told me to just slow down and enjoy it. She knows what running and Edinburgh mean to me, and that was somehow enough to get me through. So I did indeed slow down a bit and started enjoying it...until mile nondescript somewhere in the middle where we ran through a field of rapeseed. with no people. And one shade spot. And no lucozade breaks for nearly seven miles.


my so very attractive mile nine NOOOOOO face

The few people on the course were amazing though. I don’t think Scotland’s ever seen a hotter day, let alone a marathon day. People began taking out hoses, sprinklers and buckets and dousing willing runnerbyers. I slow crawled through several sprinklers like an overjoyed seven-year-old.

i got to the point of taking two water bottles at every station, pouring one on my head and drinking the other sloooowly, then taking the metled jelly babies out of my mini running pocket and licking the ooze off my fingers for any and all energy.

All along the race route, people were collapsed with heat stroke. I found out later that a man had a heart attack and died on the racecourse. And at mile 23 I saw a man I’d been running behind for a while, collapsed with so little left to go. It was humbling and scary. So I’m not going to lie and pretend like I sprinted the whole thing. I walked bits of the race, I jogged most of the race, and I sprinted the last 400 meters. I didn’t reach my target time of 4:30:00, but I did reach my goal of finishing in under five hours at 4:54:13.


i did it all for the tshirt


the last time i would sit down or stand up unaided for three days

the after effects of spandex and extreme sun

So I’ve got something to aim for in my next marathon. London 2011, here we go!

tracing our marathon route in the car on the way back to england

i remember seeing this bench and thinking about how badly i wanted to rugby tackle the man languidly sitting there watching the runners

now, onto resolutions #2 and #3, which are a hundred times scarier than #1.

Comerica Park

To end our ten-day stay in the land of the Avilas, we headed out for a day of family fun (including Nasim and a couple of Batemans) at Comerica Park. Despite the 66-degree weather forecast, we neglected to remember that aluminum reflects up and burns the skin. Dawn also determined she's got a future in baseball coaching. Her only advice: 'run a lot faster you fools!'


next door: Home of the entirely defeated (0-16?) Detroit Lions


from outside


'so this is kind of like rounders, right?'




lucky number 13


Nasim!





The game was incredibly boring, with the Indians scoring eight runs in the first four innings. But of course, as we decided to bow out of the game at the eighth inning, the Tigers opted to run a little bit faster and ended up winning.

There are no pictures of the moments in-between: margaritas, Avila Family game night, good conversations with good friends, slushies and salads, etc. But it was a brilliant, brilliant trip.