20 minutes of French, German, Dutch, and Danish per day.
Ditto piano.
Starting to think it will take a miracle to manage all these lofty goals. Well. So be it. It’s a year that sounds like it belongs in a Science Fiction novel, after all. Nothing is impossible in sci-fi. Engage warp speed (and discipline)!
(The one blog post I ever wrote that got thousands of hits was one that alluded to sex (but didn’t really have anything to do with it), so if you have been taken in by the title I apologize. The rest of you, read on:)
A cubist photo?
To say I have a bit of a sweet tooth is akin to saying African elephants are slightly buck-toothed. Not for me any other white substance; no Peruvian powder, no Bolivian blow, but good ole-fashioned simple sugar. Sucrose. I have a sugar habit that would make a hummingbird seem abstemious, and it is the one vice to which I unfailingly return.
In fairness, it is by far the easiest addiction to cater to – no restrictions apply, no eyebrows are raised in the supermarket when you load up with knock-off Snickers the way they would be if you were buying cheap plonk – and yet it is an addiction. Substance abuse. What else would you call it if you down a quarter of a kilo of chocolate in one sitting, or a quart of ice cream?
The effects of refined sugar on your body are devastating. It affects your heart, your sleeping patterns, your brain synapses… and that’s before we get to the horrible effect it has on your clothes – they all stop fitting! Suffice to say sweets are unequivocally bad news for you. If you know me a little you know I’m quite interested in living healthily, so this is anathema to me, and yet I haven’t managed to shake off the yoke of Candyland.
Cotton eye candy…
Of course, there are no Betty Ford-clinics for recovering sugar addicts. No posh hangouts with a safe, fructose-free environment for you to adjust to a life without sugar highs. Incidentally, the latter are the reason why refined sugar is so addictive; such grade-A product is incredibly rare in the natural world, so our bodies are pre-programmed to cram as much of it down our gullies as we can on those (originally) precious few occasions when an opportunity presents itself. The reward is a rush of endorphins akin to what you get when falling in love. And this makes sense when you have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to steal honey combs and have to be double-quick gobbling it down before being stung to death by a black cloud of wild bees; it isn’t the least bit helpful when there’s an endless supply of it in your local supermarket (and no killer bees to prevent you from overindulging!).
In fact, resisting said temptation is an age old problem. All indigenous people go out of their way to get that sugar rush. Even the Original Sin was caused by sugar – Eve didn’t go for a starchy root vegetable or a protein-rich Egg of Knowledge in the garden of Eden, no, she and Hubby binged on fruit, which of course employ fructose to make themselves attractive to passers-by for propagation purposes (and information sharing, incidentally). My point is, the struggle is real.
So. I will sugar-coat things no more. Literally. My name is Chris. I’m a recovering sugar addict. It’s been ten hours since my last binge. From here on out I vow to live a life without refined sugar.
There’s this book called Love in the time of cholera. If you haven’t already read it, do. I won’t tell you what it’s about, but there is a hint in the title. As for me, I had already realized that life hasn’t changed all that much for me in this time of Corona, with the ongoing lockdown and isolation, but an Italian friend’s question got me thinking about why that is the case.
There are several reasons: having no family nearby apart from my children and few close friends – those who are close live far away, if you see what I mean? – has meant that I’m used to spending my time on my own, and/or interacting with people via WhatsApp.
Having worked part time ever since the children were born I have become accustomed to spending a lot of time at home, and I am in the habit of scheduling my time to make sure that I get things done, so even before the lockdown my day would consist of an hour of French, reading, piano, gardening, workout, drawing, etcetera. I have a treadmill in the garage and a basement gym, so I don’t have to leave home for my fitness, and the garden provides plenty of opportunity for outdoor activities and fresh air – if anything I’m grateful that I now have enough time to keep up with the weeds… All this means that my daily routine hasn’t changed – on the contrary, it has meant I was readily equipped with a roadmap for how to navigate lockdown.
As for shopping, I’m happy to do most of it online. Groceries are a bit of a hassle to buy without venturing to the store, but I tend to buy in bulk anyway, so nothing has really changed in that regard, apart from there being fewer people (and goods) in Delhaize. I bake my own bread, so the sudden Belgian interest in yeast and flour is the only real drawback of the hoarding that I have experienced so far.
I do tend to travel a great deal, and that has obviously been interrupted by recent developments, but part of me rejoices in the fact that mass tourism is presently interrupted, and besides, spring has sprung and it’s lovely to behold in the little paradise thatnis my backyard – birds are scoping out nesting sites, sleepy bumble bees have started to appear, and every branch is covered with the first coating of tender green that heralds sun, warmth and growth. There’s wonder and wisdom everywhere if you are willing to look for it.
It might sound depressing, as another Italian friend put it, but I honestly think my lifestyle is quite harmonious. If anything – and I don’t want to sound flippant here; people are dying from Covid-19, after all – I think the world would be a much better place if we practiced lockdown regularly. Let’s close Earth for business a couple of months per year. Let people concentrate on what is really important in life – happiness, relationships, tending to the earth (worshipping it, as the Danes would have it) and all living things instead of chasing wealth and power. It would be a better world for all.
You know that feeling when you arrive at the train station only to see the train you need to be on pull out? That was me this morning. Why? Well, I was slow, due to being dead tired from having been unable to sleep most of the night, and the reason for that was undoubtedly the two large whiskeys and enormous chunk of gingerbread dough that I had late last night.
As I stood there watching the train disappear in the distance it felt like I was watching an illustration of what was happening, as if life itself was showing me a metaphor; everything you put inside your body is either helping it or destroying it, and this was a clear picture of what I had been allowing myself to do more and more of lately. Eat and drink enough poison (sugar and alcohol) and you cannot act surprised when the metaphorical train of life leaves without you.
So. It was decision time. It’s not like I haven’t stopped before. I gave up both sweets and booze in the past, but those were just trials, test balloons if you will. Just like I knew it was time to give up on a carnivorous lifestyle over a year ago, so now the time has come for refined sugar and ethanol.
“Rewarding” ourselves by consuming chemicals that are harmful is hardly intelligent, nor particularly evolved. Humans are happy to munch on sugar as soon as opportunity presents itself, because it is scarce in nature, so evolutionarily speaking it is a good thing, but with the abundance now on offer that instinct works against us. On the other hand we need not be dogs who get treats when behaving correctly.
The same is true for alcohol – several species are known to enjoy a tipple; moose eat fermented fruit, dolphins get high on puffer fish, and so on, but these are rare treats (koalas spend most of their STD-infested lives high as kites on eucalyptus, but we won’t go into that now…) unlike the constant availability of wine, beer, spirits that humans face nowadays.
So no more. Detox is a load of mumbo-jumbo, but notox will be my watchword from now on. As of today I will live without all kinds of refined sugar (juices, marmalade, candy, confection, cakes, ice cream, you name it) and any and all Ju-Ju juice. Having put on four kilos in three months isn’t sustainable, and hopefully this change will bring about an improved situation in this regard as well. I will not bore you with the details, but I will publish updates here below of how my body changes (not to worry, no nudes forthcoming) and together we will see what happens. Only time (and my new, smart scales) will tell.
Update: So that was the starting point. Two weeks in (2/12), and the picture is looking brighter already; total weight down 700g, fat percentage down 0,4%, V-fat down 0,5kg. Less good: muscle loss 0,3kg, but then I haven’t met exercised at all.
January is at an end, and as always when things are ending there is a bit of apprehension: did I do everything I could? In my case, the first month of the year is always a bit of an indication of how I will fare over the rest of the year in my intentions and ambitions, so how did I do?
I am still plagued by injuries, but indoor biking has worked remarkably well, as has core exercises and stretching, which I hope will eventually see me back on my feet. In total I biked some 250 kilometres in January, which is a good start. I have to ease off on the weights for the time being, so having the bike is a bit of a life line, honestly.
I learnt a new piece of music on the piano (Bohemian Rhapsody), and I read two non-fiction books (one guide to Stockholm’s culture and history, and another on the failed polar expedition of Andre – the former so-so, the latter spectacular -) but I didn’t study enough French.
I was in Sweden twice and Italy once, and I kept my diary going, so all in all I’m doing well as far as my new year’s resolutions are concerned. Thus far, at any rate. How are you doing?
We’re in for a new year again, and I feel I have found a model that works for me (no, not Claudia Schiffer): Keep your ambitions S.M.A.R.T. and make sure to make the most of time,.
So I’ll stick with the familiar format – develop as a human (intellectually and physically), travel, have new experiences, and set myself new challenges – one trip or challenge per month on average, for a total of twelve.
Trips: I have nothing planned (beyond the fact that I am in Rome celebrating New Year as I’m writing this), but hiking somewhere with my brother, taking the kids on several trips (the first one in February), and paragliding in either Spain or Switzerland (back allowing) are definitely happening.
Challenges: As last year was plagued with injuries, I don’t dare set any fitness goals at the moment. I do hope to improve my fitness, but in what way remains uncertain as of yet. The ideal is a workout per day, of some sort.
In the workplace things are equally up in the air, with my job as a roving reporter having come to an end, and nothing concrete to replace it. I want to keep writing and working with communication one way or another, tho, and I have a few ideas – let’s see what happens.
I already know I want to stay vegetarian for the coming year (having stuck with it for two months I see no reason to change back to a carnivorous diet), and I want to continue to stay off refined sugar, so that’s two. I really want to learn how to paraglide properly, which makes three. Also, limit time spent on social media (more difficult than it sounds?) – four. Keep a diary – five. Read (at least) one non-fictional book per month – six. Improve my piano and French skills, for a total of eight. And linked to all this: use my time more efficiently and wisely.
There is a funny passage from the book About a boy (later filmed with Hugh Grant in the lead) that has stuck with me:
His way of coping with the days was to think of activities as units of time, each unit consisting of about thirty minutes. Whole hours, he found, were more intimidating, and most things one could do in a day took half an hour. Reading the paper, having a bath, tidying the flat, watching Home and Away and Countdown, doing a quick crossword on the toilet, eating breakfast and lunch, going to the local shops… That was nine units of a twenty-unit day (the evenings didn’t count) filled by just the basic necessities. In fact, he had reached a stage where he wondered how his friends could juggle life and a job. Life took up so much time, so how could one work and, say, take a bath on the same day? He suspected that one or two people he knew were making some pretty unsavoury short cuts.
The protagonist of the book is a time waster, but the concept works: divide your day into time slots, and make sure to use them. That will be another challenge.
Why do this? Well, first of all, because, as the poet Herrick wrote in To Virgins, to make much of time:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying
and this same flower that smiles today
tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
the higher he is getting,
the sooner will his race be run,
and nearer he is to setting.
In other words: Our time is limited, and every breath takes us closer to death. That’s grim, as realizations go, but if that doesn’t light a fire under your ass to get things done, nothing will. Also, to quote Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”
At the outset of every year I pause and think about what I want to achieve. This year was different.
Or rather, I wanted to make sure that I would be more likely to achieve my goals, so I resolved to be smart and make ’em S.M.A.R.T.– Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.
Did I succeed? Yes and no.
Chess: ✅ I played every day for a month and got the rating I had set my mind on. (Then promptly lost it.)
Reading: ✅ One non-fictional book per month. Done.
Piano: ❎ I did play, but didn’t learn as many pieces as I had hoped. The temptation is to stick with the ones you know…
French: ❎ I didn’t learn anywhere near as much as I had planned, mainly because I had to focus on Danish.
Travel: ✅ I went to Morocco, Egypt, the Seychelles, Norway, Italy (thrice), and Denmark (plus Sweden), which is less than usual, but still acceptable, especially since Egypt, Italy and Norway was with the kids.
Fitness: ✅ The year was marred with injuries – first recovering after the paragliding incident, then a wonky neck, a messed up Achilles’ tendon, a tennis elbow, and finally a slipped disk – so running and biking and swimming suffered. I did manage the Paris marathon, and a runstreak of 100 days, but I’m nowhere near the distance goals I set myself for runs and biking. Nor did I learn to crawl, but I’ve racked up some 100 gym sessions, including an ironstreak of 40 days or so, which has meant three or four extra kilos’ worth of muscles.
Challenges: ✅ Apart from the aforementioned run- and ironstreaks I’ve successfully given up coffee, tried intermittent fasting for a month, I’ve become vegetarian, and I’m currently on a no sugar diet, so that’s gone well. Less well went my attempt at keeping a diary – I kept it up until Denmark, but then fell out of habit, unfortunately.
Work: ✅ I added Danish to my language combination, and continued working in Communications. In addition to that I MC’d a couple of conferences using participatory leadership, which was fun, too.
Blog: ✅ I increased my readership quite spectacularly this year (from just shy of 3,000 readers to 5,500, and from 5,000 views to nearly 10,000), which is really gratifying.
So. What worked and what didn’t? Some goals turned out to be insufficiently specific, such as “learn a piece of music”; others were unattainable due to factors beyond my control (the fitness targets) or had to be downgraded in terms of priority (French, when I was paid to go learn Danish), but overall it’s a sound principle, and one I will continue to use in 2019.
Now all I have to do is decide what those goals should be…
One of the first challenges I ever undertook was going without sweets and candy for a year. My parents came up with that one, and the gauntlet was eagerly picked up by me and my sister, since there was pecuniary compensation involved – money which was then spent on an obscene amount of chocolate on January 1st the following year.
That one-day indulgence aside, we did very well to avoid sugar, since there is a great deal of scientific evidence that it is very, very bad for you – and the more refined it is, the worse it is for your organism.
Alas, we didn’t keep this up for more than three years. Now fast forward 35 years and we’re headed towards the end of 2018, a year during which it’s safe to say that I haven’t been abstemious so far (at least not where sugar is concerned), so I will set myself one last challenge for the year:
Starting today and until the end of the year, I will eat no sugar. Not candy, nor cookies, chocolates, cakes, and whatever else is brim-filled with brain-addling white poison. If I can manage that, then I will continue throughout next year. It won’t necessarily make for a Merry Christmas, but it will bring a healthier and Happy New Year!
A month ago I set out on a journey. I was going somewhere very special. I was going to go vegetarian.
Like all ventures into the unknown it was preceded by trepidation, as I contemplated the prospect of future challenges as-yet vaguely comprehended. This journey didn’t involve me actually moving, but I felt like an intrepid explorer none-the-less – I needed to discover whether some long-held notions about myself really were true: Was I really going to be able to survive on vegetables alone? Would I not wilt just like the greenery I’d be eating? Would not my natural carnivorous instinct to devour meat take over, and have me clawing at the butcher’s door the very first evening, like an alcoholic sitting outside the liquor store all night?
One month on, I know the answer to all these questions is simply No. It’s telling however that the real hurdle to succeeding at this endeavour was the initial uncertainty, the step into unchartered territory. I am still not well versed in vegetarian cooking by any means, and it is a little cumbersome sometimes to find appetising food in some places when you go out, but these are minor hindrances – the real obstacle to going green was in my head.
So it can be done. Fine. I knew that. I’m stubborn and disciplined enough that if I set my mind to something I can do it for a month. But what about how I feel? What about the training regime?
Well, I’m happy to report that I feel just fine, as energetic as ever. I injured my back, and then had a week when I was ill, which meant I didn’t work out as much as I would have otherwise, but I’ve still racked up twelve training sessions in the last month, so the diet isn’t doing any harm to my energy levels.
I didn’t keep track of what I ate in the end, and I know I ate more sweets than I usually would, but I didn’t gain (or lose) any weight, so I assume it’s not been a bad diet in terms of nutrition. I’ve obviously eaten more greens than I normally do, too, and my body is still – erm – adjusting to the amount of lenses and beans I’m consuming, but all told I think I’m eating at least as healthily as before.
And of course no animals had to die for me to live this month, which is a really nice thought.
So will I continue? Yep. I don’t see that I can justify not doing it. I do miss some things, like salmon sushi when we have our family Friday sushi dinners, but not enough that I can’t do without, and as long as that is the case, I feel a moral obligation to try to do so. I might not stay vegetarian forever, but for now I’ve officially Gone Green.
I stated at the beginning of the year that I wanted to try to go vegetarian, and since skipping meat and dairy is apparently among the top things a person can do to combat global warming, it seems only self-preserving to do so.
Of course, the notion of devouring other living beings is only normal because our culture tells us it is**. I will have to challenge my own inherent belief system.
Besides, having read the great book The Inner Life of Animals I can’t morally defend taking the lives of other sentient, feeling beings for my (unnecessary) pleasure any more, if I can learn to do without. The real question is, can I?
It will be a big change, that’s for sure, and an even greater mental leap – merely thinking about forsaking meat makes me have visions of entrecôte, bacon, smoked salmon… carnal thoughts indeed.
This personal carnival will also entail quite a steep learning curve, as none of my go-to recipes are the least bit vegetarian. I have identified as a cis-carnivore all my life, after all. I’ve not been as much as a little bivorous – I didn’t even experiment with veg during my college years. Salads were for bunnies when I grew up, and that was the end of it.
Luckily I have two good veggie restaurants near my work place, so I can eat out, but cooking is a different matter. Simply put: I will have to re-learn how to fend for myself in the kitchen. I have asked vegetarian friends to provide me with recipes for their favourite, easy-to-make dishes, but still, I anticipate that the transition will not be entirely smooth, and certainly not easy.
Since I’m continuing with weight-lifting for fitness, getting enough protein is another concern, but I won’t be going vegan, so eggs and cheese and other dairy are still on the table***, at least. I’ll track what I’m eating via the MyFitnessPal app to be sure I get what I need.
Will it work? Time will tell, I guess. I will publish weekly updates, so if you want, you will be able to follow my progress (or lack thereof) here in Diary of a Hesitant Herbivore. Any and all efforts to help will be greatly appreciated!
—–
*Literally…
** And yet we curiously delineate between this and that species – no one I know thinks eating cats or dogs is normal, and yet they happily munch on piglets and lambs.
One of the things I wanted to try this year was to work out more consistently in the gym. If running proved too difficult after multiple injuries, I figured it would be a good opportunity to try to improve my fitness in a new way.
Going to Denmark for three weeks in August seemed a good time to start this experiment, and so I sought out a gym (the excellent fitness.dk) and made sure I went every day. Every day? Yep. Every. Single. Day.
To ensure that I didn’t overdo it, I followed a simple schematic: a rotating schedule, focusing on arms/shoulders day 1, chest and back day 2, and legs day 3. Rinse and repeat. This seemed to work. Sure, I’d have muscle aches, but since I isolated muscle groups as much as possible, it never interfered with the workout of the day.
I tried to eat well, three or four meals per day, staying clear of sugar and fast carbs (but not avoiding beer – I was in Denmark, after all!). I took magnesium and turmeric every day, plus a supplement called Clear Muscle.
So how did it go? Unlike the runstreak, my iron streak feels like it’s actually increasing my strength, rather than slowly grinding it down. This experiment has been going on one month today, and I have no intention of stopping, even though I’m now back in Belgium. I feel great. I have gained one or two kilos but don’t feel bloated or pudgy, so am hopeful it’s actually due to increased muscle mass.
Being a skinny guy (ectomorph to fans of word porn) I will never get beefy, so you won’t be seeing my face on a Schwarzenegger bod with air bag-pecs and biceps like normal people’s quads (unless my photoshop skills increase exponentially) but it feels like it’s probably a worthwhile pursuit for all people, young and old, skinny, fit or flabby – after all, tuning the engine will make it function better, longer.
Next step will be to find a gym close to work, so I can get out of the basement (where I keep my weights at home!) and keep up the good work. For that, if nothing else, I feel pumped!
”Closer, God, to Thee”, I mumble to myself through gritted teeth. It’s the song the orchestra played as the Titanic went down, and I share their sentiment – and yet I couldn’t be further from their ordeal. Nor is it the Christian God I have in mind, when now I stand to meet my maker, but Thor, or Jupiter, gods of thunder.
I’m in the Dolomites, the UNESCO-protected Italian-Austrian outlier of the alps, and it’s the first of four days of hiking. Only now I’m beginning to wonder if it will be my last. And yet it started out so well.
I arrived in Val Gardena last night and took the funicular first thing in the morning. True, there had been an almighty thunder storm in the night, but now the skies were blue, the air imbued with that particular cool freshness that follows a summer rain. And to start with the hike was as bucolic as can be: through the pine forests lining the sides of the garden valley, where intensely pink alpine roses covered the forest floor, to pastures with an astonishingly rich flora, where mountain cows of the Milka variety grazed happily, quite unconcerned with the lone wanderer in their midst.
My plan was to hike la Curona de Gherdëina – the crown of Gardena, a circular route taking me all around the valley in question, staying at different rifugios, mountain huts, along the way.
All together now: 🎶The hills are ahlaaahhiiivvvveee…!
The first rifugio I came upon was a working farm, in a setting so picture perfect that you’d expect a von Trapp to come dancing past at any moment. The meadows were all aflower, an old woman was churning butter in the morning sun, and a smiling serving girl got me my Aplfelshorle – apple juice and sparkling water. It was wonderful. To the right loomed one of the sharp, jagged mountain ridges that are emblematic to the Dolomites, like the broken teeth of some buried giant with a serious dentist aversion, but I wasn’t overly concerned, since I felt sure the path would skirt around it. How wrong I was!
As I set out again it became alarmingly clear that the path wasn’t going to swerve – instead it went straight up towards the escarpment and then continued in the shape of a via ferrata (literally “iron road”), with crampons and steel wires hammered into the rockface for the intrepid hiker/climber to hang on to. Like a very small and inefficient dental floss I struggled onwards and upwards between the serrated teeth, acutely aware that mistakes were not an option, only to suddenly reach the crest, and the astonishing view of a gently sloping valley filled with restaurants and scores of elderly day-trippers.
This is where I came up. Still can’t quite believe it.
I felt quite annoyed at this sight: having worked so hard, surely I deserved better than to have groups of selfie-taking pensioners blocking my path? (It turned out that this was the result of a Seilbahn nearby, making for easy access to all and sundry.) I pressed on, and soon entered another valley, this one gorgeously empty apart from a dry river bed made up of the white sandstone that abounds here. It was like having a pristine, meandering road to myself, leading into the interior and away from the unwashed masses. I was overjoyed.
Alas, the only way out of a valley if you move away from its mouth is by climbing, and this is where my troubles began. By now it was close to 30 degrees in the shade – and no shade – and my legs were fair shaking after four hours of hard hiking when the climb up the escarpment began in earnest. Looking behind me I was also aware that dark clouds were beginning to form, so I didn’t want to linger, even though my muscles were protesting loudly.
Sweaty beyond belief I made my way higher and higher, over gravel of the kind I learnt to loathe in France, past the first patches of perma-snow – somewhat surprisingly a pretty pink colour, which is apparently caused by bacteria. I might have been a pretty pink colour by this stage as well for all I know, climbing up sheer rock walls in the midday sun. When I finally reached the crest high above it was to find an illustration from Tolkien immediately in front of me: the darkest, most evil-looking clouds I’ve ever seen were hanging around the next broken-toothed ridge, itself an ominous sight. All that was missing was a fiery eye in the sky, and I would have been staring at the gates of Mordor.
We ain’t in the Shire no more, master Frodo…!
As it was, the very real danger was that the thunder clouds would catch up with me and I would find myself stuck on this ridge. Quite apart from the downpour rendering the sheer rock dangerously slippery to traverse, the combination of me swinging on iron crampons near the summit and lightning from on high was one I didn’t particularly care to contemplate. I also knew that I had precious little to protect myself in the event of a real downpour – only a very light rain jacket and an emergency blanket – so I didn’t fancy my chances much if I had to try to bivouac, but what choice did I have?
Only one. On shaky legs – exhaustion and fear and adrenaline being a potent brew – I half walked, half ran the last three quarters of an hour to the refugio where I was to spend the night, caught up in the cold front that precedes proper storms, shorts and tshirt soaked through with icy sweat, but I made it.
Not half an hour after I dash through the door to the refugio, the world outside was lost to clouds and lightning and torrential rain, but by that time I was bedded down in my bunk, utterly exhausted and trying to regain some warmth, dry and pleased with having outrun Jupiter.
The rest of the day was spent acclimatising to life in a refugio; the dormitories have a dozen bunk beds each, piled three high, with the commotion this brings. Showers are four euros and five minutes each, and only available after six, dinner is served between seven and eight. Thankfully, in this regimented microcosm I’m seated with a lovely New York couple and an equally charming English ditto for dinner, which makes it a very pleasant affair, but I am spent and back in bed by nine.
Sleep comes hard, however, as I mull over the possibility that I have bitten off more than I can chew. The second day promises even more kilometres and height difference – will I really manage that, with my body already one big, dull ache, and more thunder storms a distinct possibility?
So I decided to try intermittent fasting. Not for religious reasons, but to see if all the beneficial things I had read about limiting your food intake to a restricted number of hours per day were true. Depending on who you ask, this alternative eating pattern will decrease your blood pressure and cholesterol, increase the efficiency of your metabolism, and even invigorate you on a cellular level. Now I have no way of knowing if all this is true, but I do know Hugh Jackman claimed intermittent fasting was an integral part in his transformation to play Wolverine, and the evidence there is pretty good…!
Me after a month of intermittent fasting. Not.
I’ve done it for a month now. Eating between noon and eight in the evening, and nothing but water the rest of the time. So how did it feel? I was afraid it was going to be incapacitating and overall horrible, but it wasn’t. Turns out you can function quite well on an empty stomach. You can even go running for two hours on a hot day with high humidity and feel none the worse for wear (well, in terms of hunger and stamina – don’t ask me about my Achilles’ tendon!). If anything I felt a lot better for skipping breakfast. You feel sharper, less prone to carb-induced lows (since you haven’t had any!). There was suddenly a lot of free time in the morning, but that never seemed to be a problem, and quite apart from that, the fact that I was genuinely hungry by the time noon came around meant that I really appreciated what I ate – hunger really is the best condiment.
What about all the health benefits? I don’t know. I didn’t lose any weight (and that wasn’t the purpose of the experiment anyway) but I feel slimmer. Researchers have shown that what will happen when you fast is that you’re depleting the liver of glucose, which means your organism will have to start burning fat instead. This is known as ketosis, and since this happens within 16-24 hours of your last meal pretty much regardless of what or how much you eat, maybe I achieved ketosis in spite of eating lots of carbs. That’s my story anyway, and I’m sticking to it.
More to the point tho, will I be sticking with this new eating regime? In as far as it is practical, I think I will. Like other changes to my diet – notably giving up coffee and alcohol – people around me seem to think it a little weird, but just because we have been brought up to take three meals a day as a given doesn’t mean it should be. Our ancestors certainly couldn’t count on that kind of regular food intake, and – as is the case with the paleo diet – I think there are strong arguments for trying to emulate the way nature intended for us to live. That’s not to say I won’t have the occasional all-out breakfasts occasionally – after all, what’s the point of evolution if you cannot have American pancakes with butter and maple syrup every now and then?
For my first challenge this year I signed up for a runstreak in January. The concept is straightforward: you run every day for as long a streak of days as you can muster. The notion had intrigued me for a while, but two factors made me decide to give it a go; first my need to do rehab to recover from my paragliding injury, and second the fact that Paceonearth initiated a Facebook group for people who wanted to give it a try for a month.
The rules are simple: you have to get changed into running gear (so having to run to catch the bus doesn’t count), and you have to run for at least twenty consecutive minutes per day (so ten minutes in the morning and ten in the afternoon won’t do, and neither will running forty minutes one day and nothing the next). And so run I did.
You would think that it would be easy to find twenty minutes per day, especially if you are used to making space for workouts, but an increased workload and a couple of unexpected trips to Sweden presented certain logistical challenges – often runs were squeezed in between shopping groceries and picking up kids from their activities, and on travel days I sometimes had to run at ungodly hours to fit them in at all (squatting at night in a forest because I’d been doubled up in an airplane all day and the run had initiated hitherto suppressed and therefore quite urgent bowel movements? Memorable, as was the realisation that I had no toilet paper…). Running in a crowded Marrakesh (with a woman!) presented its own challenges.
I’m not entirely convinced that it is good for you to run every single day. I certainly felt stiffer and slower than when I was mixing running with biking and swimming and lifting weights. In fact my one gripe is that it steals too much time away from those activities. Of course, my decreased capacity could also be the result of my injury.
But still I ran. As did the other participants. The one aspect of this challenge that I hadn’t anticipated was how much I would come to appreciate the fellowship I felt with the other runners, none of which I ever met in real life (with the exception of my sister). There were 700 initially, and although many fell by the wayside (some unfortunate souls quite literally!), we shared laughs (an informal competition for worst-looking running gear was an assault on the senses), gripes, hardships, cheered each other on, and ran in all kinds of conditions – neither rain nor storm nor gloom of night may stop these couriers, as the postal services once put it. In a sense it is not unlike an ultra – you do run for a month, after all, you just take reaaalllly long potty breaks 😋 – in that the main obstacle is in your brain, telling you it can’t be done, and in that respect (much like in an ultra) your fellow co-runners can provide invaluable help with just a word of encouragement at the right time.
So the question is, will I continue? I’ve done 40 days now (OK, so I jump started a little…), and I am tempted to go on, but I honestly think it is better to mix things up a little, so I will change my runstreak to a cardio streak instead – I will continue to run OR bike twenty minutes or more every day. On top of that I will add an iron streak – lifting weights (including body weight) for the same amount of time per day. Bring on February!
I was thinking about what I want to try to achieve in 2018 when I came across some good advice that really resonated with me. If I have failed to reach my goals in the past, it’s nearly always been because I haven’t made sure they were S.M.A.R.T. – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. So that shall be my credo for 2018: be smart about what tasks I set myself.
The fundamentals haven’t changed: I want to develop as a person, intellectually and physically, by testing my limits, working diligently and hard towards certain goals, and I want to travel to see the world and broaden my horizons, ensuring that by the end of the year I can look back and see progress and time well spent.
So: smart intellectual challenges – the ones I’ve worked on for a couple of years now still remain the same: I want to read more non-fiction, get better at piano, French, and chess. That’s not very specific, tho, so measuring progress will be key; I need targets I can quantify. One book per month. One new piece of music learnt every two months. One hundred French words per month. And as for chess… well, getting a rating of 1400 before the end of the year would be an easily measurable goal, if not necessarily that easily attainable. (I’m hovering around the 1300-mark as I’m writing this…). Plus I will note down every half hour spent on each activity, thus keeping a tally for accountability purposes.
So I’ve got all of those down to an A.R.T. Physical challenges are a little different, mainly because of the uncertainty I’m living with at the moment, so for 2018, I have decided to change tack a little. For my first challenge in January I will do a runstreak. Running every day will hopefully allow me to rebuild what was damaged in the accident in November. If that goes to plan, Paris marathon in April will be another milestone on the road to recovery, and if that goes well I’ll sign up for either another ultra marathon, or a full length Ironman. Or both.
Alas, there are too many unknowns at this stage for me to know if I will be able to run such distances again, but if I can, then a total of 1500k each of running and biking seem attainable goals overall. At least I know I can bike, so if running is out then I’m doubling that number for biking (and only watching Netflix while on the stationary bike will kill two birds with one stone – limiting my Netflix binging AND encouraging more time in the saddle!).
Weights have never been anything but a complement to my other workouts – now more so than ever as I try to strengthen my weak leg – but again, if I find I don’t recover my running capacity, I will focus more on getting strong/building muscle. Having always been skinny it would be interesting to see if I could actually muscle up.
As for swimming, I want to learn how to crawl properly! At present I can hardly do one length in the pool, and even though I managed the Ironman 70.3 anyway it would be nice to shave off five or ten minutes from that time, so learning how to crawl at least a kilometre is another challenge.
I will be working more in 2018 than I have for a decade, which will hopefully have the dual effect of giving me the opportunity to take on more interesting work on the job, and allowing me a bigger travel budget, as, happily, my children have said they want to travel more with me, so that will affect what trips I take this year.
2018 promises an Arab spring once more, as I’m going back to Morocco in January and have another trip to Egypt in February (with the kids). I have a week of holidays in March that I don’t know what to do with yet – downhill skiing would be nice, but again it’s dependent on me making a complete recovery. I want to go back to Spain and get a fully-fledged paragliding pilot’s licence. Hiking in Iceland would be lovely, the last part of Bergslagsleden still beckons, and I want to do at least one journey further afield – maybe watching the great sardine run in South Africa? Or taking the kids to the US? There’s no shortage of possibilities.
Other challenges: I wouldn’t mind doing more for the environment. This could involve installing geothermal heating in the house, keeping hens for eggs, joining a wind power collective or other changes. One thing I do know I want to try is becoming a vegetarian. At least for a month.
Not eating any sugar in any shape or form may be another challenge, and limiting my social media intake to half an hour per day wouldn’t be a bad idea either.
And of course I want to continue building my blog, writing about my experiences for the joy of writing, but also as a living testament to what I do with my life when I don’t have my kids. Hopefully my readership will continue to grow, but that is less important. If I can inspire only two people, that is more than enough for me.
Here’s to a S.M.A.R.T.er future!
P.S. All this goes out the window if I were to get my dream job, of course… 😄
I still haven’t run since the accident in Spain three weeks ago, but rehab is progressing and I remain optimistic. I really, really want to get back out there and start running again!
And then today a couple of ultra runners I follow on Facebook (Paceonearth) posted about a challenge that would suit me really well: doing a runstreak through the entire month of January. I signed up immediately!
If you’re not familiar with the concept, it means running for at least a mile and twenty minutes per day. Incredibly, there are people who have done this for decades, never missing a day. One half of the couple behind the initiative (Ellen) has done it for over four years, and shows no signs of stopping – even going out for a shuffling run the day after completing the UTMB!
Anyway, the idea is for people to sign up for this and find motivation in others doing the same, so if you want to join up, you can do so here. Let’s beat the elements, fatigue, laziness, and accomplish something together!
As some of you may know, I have an old injury in my left leg, which leaves me with a structural imbalance. It’s always been a fear that this would someday get even worse, and, well, one forceful step was all it took: As I was running down a hill in Spain last month I heard something tear in my groin, while a flash of intense pain shot up through my buttock.
I was hardly able to stand afterwards, let alone walk or run. I managed to do the rest of the paragliding course, literally limping across the finishing line, but the damage was done, so now I have to undo it as best I can. This will have to be my challenge for December then: Operation Shed A Tear.
I signed up with a physiotherapist, which is a misnomer. She gets very physical, that much is true. Therapeutic? If you’re a masochist, perhaps.
Now, it would be wrong to say she gets Medieval on my ass. More Chilean – under Pinochet. There’s horse liniment, a plunger(!), electrodes hooked up to a car battery, duct tape, needles. All these things go onto or into my ass. And groin. Then there’s exercises. Core exercises, balance, stretching – all those things you should do all the time, but never do (at least I don’t). Plus biking, as much as I can take. And drinking lots of water to keep the cells nice and supple.
I haven’t run for two weeks (the scales know this already!) but I seem to be working out as hard as ever. Hopefully I’ll be back on track (again quite literally) before the end of the month. That’s the goal. It’s already taken blood and sweat. If it can alleviate the tears? We’ll see. Paris marathon in April is still on, as far as I’m concerned.
So far this year, I’ve been smashing personal bests (PBs) running. I am training hard, and it shows. One kilometre, five, ten, half marathon, all those distances have been crushed. But the Big One remained. The marathon. And so I signed up for Amsterdam marathon, knowing that it was flat and that I’d have a good chance of improving my PB of 3:46 from Barcelona.
42k is a long distance tho. Anything can happen that will throw a spanner in the works. And it seemed everything that could, would.
The railway decided this weekend would be a good time to do maintenance, meaning I wasn’t even sure I’d get to Amsterdam. In the end I managed to puzzle together a route that is best called scenic, as it took in most of the Low Lands, criss-crossing this corner of Europe the way Moses “led” his people through the desert – it shouldn’t be possible to take so long to cover such a short distance, but six hours later I finally stepped off a train in A’dam.
As for lodgings, the Airbnb host I had picked out cancelled with less than a week to go, leaving me homeless. I had a couple of panicky days – even considering online dating to find a place to stay – but in the end a colleague came through for me; he had a friend who lives in A’dam who was likely going to run the marathon as well, and if I were willing to sleep on a mattress I’d probably be more than welcome. Yay!
I wrote the guy, Tobias, and he offered to take me on. It turns out we have another friend in common, namely my sister’s running coach, the reigning 100k world champion runner. This made me pause, and after a little digging it turns out my host-to-be was fresh back from having run his third spartathlon (that’s 268k under the Greek sun), so he “wasn’t expecting to win the Amsterdam marathon this year either”. Yeah, you and me both, brother…!
So when we finally met up for dinner the night before, it was a great dollop of humble pie for me with a side dish of sushi, but he was just as pleasant as can be, and we got on fine, with me trying to (politely) pick his brain on how on earth he manages to do those races. Another mate of Tobias was visiting from Spain, and it turned out Johan and I had a more similar level of ambition; I figured anything between 3:30 and 3:45 is possible, and he wanted to beat his wife, who had done 3:37, so we decided to go together.
The race day starts out well enough: we bike through the deserted streets to the Olympic stadium, where the start and finish will be. A nice surprise is that Tobias works for TCS, the company sponsoring the marathon, so we get into the VIP tent in the middle of the stadium rather than having to stand in line for toilets and clothes storage with the hoi polloi. The weather is beautiful, too. Crisp autumnal air, not a cloud in sight, perfect temperature. 3:30 here I come! Or so I thought.
And so at 0930 we set off, with me leading through the outskirts of the city centre, sticking to between 04:50 and 05:05 per k – easy as anything. Right? Wrong. It worked well enough for the first 26 kilometres, running along the canals and then out along the Amstel river and back for a tour of the affluent countryside, with barges being used as floating DJ booths, and hoverboarders cheering us on from on high above the water. I even knocked a minute off my PB on the half marathon distance. But by then it’s getting warm, and the decision not to bring any water doesn’t seem so great any more.
Best made plans of mice, men and marathoners… Before long, calves and quads are protesting, and threatening to cramp up. By thirty k I can no longer keep my 5min/k speed up. Johan has long since disappeared. Around me, more and more people stop and grimace as muscles seize up. The only thing preventing me from suffering the same fate is the little baggie of salt my ultra marathon-running sister has taught me to bring along on longer runs. Dipping a finger tip in the bag and licking it off is all that’s required, and it works fine, but it’s not a miracle cure – it can’t do anything to prevent armpits and nipples and even more private parts from being rubbed raw against sodden, sweat-drenched clothes.
And so I trudge on. I try to do maths in my head, to see what it will take to get me to the finish in this or that time, but it’s no good. The kilometres take longer and longer, and it’s only bloody mindedness and sullen determination that enable me to continue. The crowds are good, quite supportive and enthusiastic, or at least I think they are; I hardly notice them beyond one point where the smell of ganja is particularly heavy in the air.
It’s funny, though. When the stadium finally comes into view. I straighten up and find untapped resources, enough to overtake quite a few runners and finish strong. That’s how long it lasts though. I hobble into the VIP tent and get a massage – the only thing standing between me and a full body cramp – or so it feels.
Tobias ran the marathon in 2:58 – two weeks after Spartathlon! – Johan fell prey to the heat (in spite of living in southern Spain!) and couldn’t beat his wife, and I, well, I didn’t get anywhere near 3:30, but I still improved upon my old PB with five minutes. It certainly felt good after the DNF at the X-trail! And of course, once reunited, we immediately said we’d do it all again next year. I’ll be Amsterdamned!
Home from the hills. Après les alps, le deluge. Or so it feels. Coming-home blues is a real thing, as hard a come-down as anything ever sung of in the Mississippi river delta.
To alleviate my ills, I turn to friend Florian, a man so well-travelled he makes Magellan look like a kid playing with his toy boat in a tub. His journeys are so many and far-reaching it’s as if Marco Polo popped out for a quart of milk at the corner shop by comparison. He suggests the Haute Fagne, or High Moor, as a best place in Belgium for a day trip, and who am to disagree?
Located in the easternmost part of Belgium, straddling the border to Germany, it’s a peculiar highland, more akin to the Scottish peat bogs than anything else. A big bog to take my mind off things? Well, I’ll give it a try. Maybe seeking out the antithesis to what you miss is the way to go? And so off I, well, go. I don’t pack hiking gear, figuring I can run the 30k trail F suggests. Famous last words…
When I get there, looking out across the moor, the landscape looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic dystopia: nothing but a few stunted shrubs and dead trees. The nuclear heat of the day does nothing to detract from this illusion. Once out there, running along the duckboards, it’s a different matter. The marshland is home to hundreds of plants, mainly grasses and flowers, and it’s quite pretty in a low key way.
There isn’t much time to look out across the landscape, however. The duckboards prove to be quite difficult to run on, in spite of being perfectly dry. The bog swallows everything eventually, but since it isn’t happening equally fast everywhere, this means one part may be perfectly stable, and the next one might tip to the side as you step on it, bounce, or simply break. It makes for a rollercoaster run.
This feature of the bog landscape is of course the main reason it has been a borderland for as long as can be remembered. The oldest border markers found here date back to the 7th century, and several imposing stone markers still show where the borderline between Prussia and Belgium once ran. Much like marshlands elsewhere, they were simply too difficult to traverse, and of too little economic interest for countries to fight for.
Unfortunately, Belgian budgetary authorities share this view. Many paths through the moors are being abandoned, and only a few kept open – the others are allowed to sink into the boggy ground and disappear. I run along the main route towards Germany, and after only four kilometres I am suddenly off the beaten path. No longer able to run, I walk along a brook. It’s hard going, but very pretty, reminiscent of Swedish forests, with ferns and firs growing high, and not a living soul around. Pieces of abandoned duckboards appear intermittently, but it’s clear that not many people come here any more.
Like a Zorn painting. Only one thing missing…
I have long since left Florian’s suggested route behind, and decide to turn around before I walk back into Germany, and there, suddenly, I’m no longer alone. A photographer and his two nude models are hard at work under a tree!
It’s difficult to know what to do in certain situations. Do you say “hi”? Stop and admire an artist’s work? I briefly consider asking if they need another model, but I figure this blog has seen enough of me in a state of undress recently, and besides, the couple are twenty years and twenty kilos each past attractive. I get back to running instead.
I run back through ferns and grasses and dead trees, the ground muddy and slippery and mostly hidden by the undergrowth. It’s a hard slog, the ground either sucking at my shoes or sliding away and a couple of times I come close to wiping out. After a painful misstep and a near face plant, I slow down to a walk again, but once back on the duckboards I force myself to run once more – mainly to get out of the sun.
After two hours I’m back where I started, at the one inn on the one road leading across the moors. The Baraque Michel (or the Obama Inn, as I like to think of it) has been a beacon to weary wanderers for well over two hundred years, and it’s easy to see why the family-run establishment is doing brisk business: my feet are wet and hurt, my shins and calves will require at least two showers to just be dirty again, my clothes are soaked through with sweat – I can’t bring myself to leave.
I’ve done about half the suggested route, but I’m quite done. Properly bogged down by Belgium.
The Bavarian Alps. The most German setting imaginable. Marvellous mountains, nestling green valleys with villages taken straight out of Grimm fairy tales. Birthplace of the grimmest of ideologies.
I’ve come here for a week of peaceful hiking with my friends Florian and Iris. It doesn’t quite turn out that way.
We come by train from Munich (where a local beer hall made our layover as enjoyable as can be), through pleasant rolling hills, and arrive in Oberstdorf (lit. “The highest village”) in sunny, warm weather. That’s a nice surprise in itself, since the forecast is promising thunderstorms and rain for most of the week.
Florian suggests a “light” hike for the first day, climbing the nearest alp, Rubihorn. Coming in at 1,950m high, it’s no more than a 500-metre climb from the first lift station, but the sun is out in force, and by the time I reach the summit I’m wobbly-legged and woozy from the effort. That’s nothing compared to F and I, however. They arrive wheezing and gasping for air. But once heart rates have come down to something resembling normal we have a splendid 360 degree view for our efforts. We are at the edge of the alps, so to one side are the lowlands, and on the other there are hundreds of peaks as far as the eye can see.
What draws the eye more than anything, however, is the incredibly blue waters of the lake hidden right underneath us, shimmering in the heat like a Fata Morgana. Declining the kind offer of summit schnapps from a friendly local, we begin to make our way down a slippery slope towards it. When we finally reach its shores I’m so hot that the lure of the cristalline water takes over, and I join the friendly local and his buddies going in for the coldest dip of my life.
Afterwards I will read up on it and learn that the lake is source-fed from below and therefore maintains a steady – low – temperature all year around (never glazing over in winter), but getting out of the water Iris sums up the experience rather succinctly: “I see it was this cold”, she says, grinning, showing a most unflattering distance between thumb and index finger. Suffice to say when the offer was made anew, I gratefully accepted the (plummet) schnapps this time around.
Playa del Rubihorn
The next day we make for Fellhorngrad and a ridge walk that would have been ideal as a first day introduction to the area. Straddling the border between Germany and Austria, it’s a pleasant enough hike, but too crowded and pedestrianised for my taste. The best that can be said for it is that it offers splendid views into the Austrian valley where we will be exploring next day.
The vale is effectively an Austrian enclave in Germany, because there is only one real road into the valley and it arrives there from Bavaria, which must have made everyday life for the inhabitants rather cumbersome back in the day of border controls. More importantly (to us) it’s also home to one of the more impressive gorges in Europe, the Breitachklamm. And so our third day sees us going to Austria.
Getting off the bus well above the Klamm (“pinch”) itself, we follow the Breitach downriver in glorious sunshine along a very pretty road that would have been a joy to run. I say as much to my hiking friends, forgetting the adage that you should be careful what you wish for. You see, after an hour or so of hiking Florian discovers that he has left his outrageously expensive camera hanging on a bench where we took a break. It’s a good kilometre back up the road, so I offer to run and get it before someone else does.
Unfortunately someone else already has, and so I continue running back to the last lodge we passed, yet another kilometre upriver. When I finally arrive I’m drenched in sweat, but the camera is there, handed in by the finder (hikers are nice people!), and so all that remains is for me to race back to my friends. By the time I get back after this unexpected detour I’m once more so over-heated that I just tear my clothes off and let the river cool me down, with unexpectedly homoerotic / rubberducky results, as captured by my gleeful friends.
When I post a pic of me on FB/when I’m tagged in one.
The Klamm itself is gorge-eous. The valley narrows, steep walls looming above us, waterfalls forcing their way ever deeper into the rock beneath us, as we clamber along walkways hewn into the cliff-face or precariously hanging on to the outside of the bare rock. Like a cut into the flesh of Mother Earth, the gorge is so deep that some of it hasn’t seen the sun for two million years. The debris left behind by winter floods bear witness to the brute force of the water: entire trees are lodged between the walls in places, and markers show the water levels sometimes reached, metres above our heads. It’s awe-inspiring.
Since Florian is leaving in the afternoon to visit a friend, Iris and I decide to try something both of us have been itching to do for a long time: tandem paragliding. We’ve signed up to do their longest flight, using the thermals to stay up in the air for up to forty minutes. Unfortunately, the flight school is incredibly badly organised, with numerous reschedulings and one pilot not showing up until an hour and a half too late, by which time it’s so late in the afternoon that the thermals are gone. This in turn means our flight is less than half the length promised, but for all that it’s an incredible experience!
We run off the top of the Nebelhorn and take flight as easy as anything, then go down the valley close to the forest-clad sides, gliding effortlessly and smoothly through the air. It’s such a high I’m just grinning and laughing the whole time. Iris, meanwhile, is screaming at the top of her lungs – something she has forewarned both me and her pilot is a sign of joy. She soon has cause to scream for other reasons, though, because then they start showing off their skills, making us swing around our axes, spinning around in half loops in the best roller-coaster tradition. It’s fantastically good fun, if quite disorienting.
Iris earning her new nickname, with me in the background.
Before we land I’m given the reigns and told to steer towards the village church, which I do as best I can, before finally we come down soft as can be on a field, grinning from ear to ear from the adrenaline high, and me at least more convinced than ever that this is something so want to learn for myself! The rest of the evening is spent in a Biergarten, mulling over the minutest of details, riding the air waves over and over again.
Next day Florian is back, but the worse for wear from last night’s birthday do, so Iris and I ride the Bergbahn to the top of the Nebelhorn on our own. We set out along the ridge together before parting ways, with me attempting the Entchenkopf alone.
It’s sits across from the Rubihorn, but is 300 metres higher, and significantly more difficult going, with several passages being senkrecht climbing. I had been wanting to try the via ferrata, the climbing paths that you traverse with guides and equipment, but nae more. This is worse by far. With no back-up or climbing gear, the ground slippery from last night’s rain, and drops of anything between ten and fifty metres onto sheer rock, any mistake would be my last. It’s no coincidence Todesangst is a German word, I think.
What do we say to Death? Not today.
When I finally reach the summit, my legs are shaking from fear-induced adrenaline, and I don’t dare stand up for quite some time. But fear is good. Fear – if harnessed – makes you more alive, more focused. As I sit there, taking in the never-ending views, the air as clean as can be, I feel like a million bucks.
And then the moment is over, and I slide down the other side of the mountain towards the Hütte where Iris awaits my return, and the best Kaiserschmarren pancakes known to man.
That was Iris’s last day, so next day Florian and I set out on our own to do the Sonnenköpfe, three lower peaks that form the continuation of the Entchenkopf. They looked more like rolling hills from the summit the day before, but as we hike them they turn out to be quite formidable, too, and it’s only the knowledge that there will be even more of the same Kaiserschmarren that spurs us on til the end.
Next we want to try the stony Gottesacker plateau (lit. “God’s plowing field”), but when we get there the lift is under repair, and faced with the prospect of an additional 1,000 vertical metres in full sun – the weather forecast having turned out to be quite wrong yet again – we opt for an alternative route through a Naturschutzgebiet up to another lodge, seated on the Austrian-German border, and down the other side. It turns out to be Florian’s favourite walk of the entire week, but I can’t help feeling a bit wistful about having missed the plateau, especially since it looks just like a sleeping dragon from below…
Climb every mountain!
The very last day the weather forecast is finally correct, and the rain is pouring down. F can’t be bothered to leave the Gasthaus, but I go for a quick run and then a solo hike in the southernmost valley in all of Germany. It’s wet and misty and moist and slippery, but I don’t mind. The low-hanging mist lends the nature here a mystical aura of veiled beauty, and besides it’s reminiscent of the hikes of my youth, when – as I remember it – the alps were always clad in clouds.
And so my travels with Sonnenkopf and Nebelhorn (lit. “Sunny head” and “Fog horn”) are at an end. The lovely Martin and Andrea, who run the Gasthaus Birkenhof where we have been staying, hug and kiss us goodbye and drive us to the railway station, and then all that remains is one more visit to a beer hall in Munich (with succulent Schweinshaxe and Augustiner beer), before finally flying home.
So today I participated in Courchevel X-trail, a particularly cunning name for an extreme trail run in the Courchevel region (of the French alps). An orgie of gruelling ascents and descents – 54km, to be exact, and nary a flat surface in sight.
It started at four in the morning, so in fairness there was no way to see the wall-like mountain towering immediately in front us either, but as soon as we were off you could tell just how murderously steep and long it was from the headlamps of runners ahead and behind you, like a string of pearls in the night.
It took me two hours to reach the first aid station, 10k into the race. Normally I would have covered more than twice that distance in that time, so it wasn’t running so much as climbing. By this time the sun had climbed into the sky as well, and revealed that this first mountain wasn’t anywhere near done with us yet: we were only halfway up it, in fact.
And so on we climbed. The sun stayed resolutely hidden behind clouds and mist, but even so I was pouring with sweat, in spite of it being only six or so in the morning. When I finally crested the first mountain, realisation dawned: descending is almost as bad as ascending! The first descent of the day was relatively doable, but as the day wore on, gravel and treacherous stones in combination with deadened legs meant it was just a different kind if torture.
If I had seen a contour map of the route I dont think I would’ve ever signed up: the second mountain was even higher than the first, 600 metres straight up in the air (over something like four kilometres) to the second aid station, along its ridge for another handful of kilometres (where the fog thankfully hid the abysses we were tightroping along!) and then down impossibly steep roads into a rather wonderful valley. Here a number of fast flowing rivers with water the colour of blue clay, conspired with stone chalets and grazing cows straight out of a Milka commercial to make a rather enchanted place, the enclosing mountain ridges adding to the feeling of a lost paradise.
Unfortunately that paradise was quickly lost again, as a third ascent began at the valley’s end, this one leading up across alp meadows with incredible numbers of flowers and then into a seemingly never-ending field of boulders, where one false move would have meant instant reenactment of the pivotal scene from “128 hours”.
By this time I had given up running apart from a slow jog on the downhill sections, but the boulders provided the straw that broke the camel’s back. There was no way I could walk fast enough to make the next rope time, and running across them (either up- or downhill) wasn’t an option, so after seven hours and 30k I had to resign myself to the fact that today would earn me my first ever DNF (Did Not Finish).
It’s obviously not an accolade I was hoping for, but at the same time I can’t be unhappy. A number of factors combined to make today a bad day: I slept atrociously bad the night before the race – two days of stressful travelling to get here plus sleeping in a tent after a day of 34 degrees heat and no shower saw to that – and I’m obviously not good enough at running in this kind of terrain (hardly surprising as I’ve never done it!).
So my spirit wasn’t in it, and I stepped off while still feeling ok physically, rather than push myself to the absolute limit, knowing that this way I’d be able to come back to enjoy the alps in a week’s time – this time for less strenuous hiking, hopefully – and that’s a choice I’m happy with.
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A final note on race organisation: while overall it was a very smooth operation, there are some points that might be of interest to potential runners. First of all, Courchevel isn’t one place. There are at least three villages called Courchevel, and having had more information about the actual location of the point of departure would have saved me an hour or so of admittedly scenic but very stressful driving as the closing time for registration drew ever neigher.
The goodie bag deserves a special mention: apart from the usual array of vouchers and marketing material for other races it contained a plastic gobelet (useful?), a local beer (very drinkable, I’m happy to report), and a condom! That’s a first. Whether it was there to serve as a sort of talisman, to keep and preserve you in the mountains (condom in French is “preservatif”, after all), or whether its presence had anything to do with the imminent proximity of Pussy (a French hamlet nearby) I don’t know.
There were no medals and t-shirts on offer for finishers. Instead you got a mug and a pin – full marks for novelty here as well, but I’m not sure I would have been very happy with that offering upon completion.
Finally a word on safety. The race organisers had done what they could: the trail was well blazoned throughout, and there were even a handful of volounteers scattered about the mountains in the iffier spots, but there’s no denying that rescue operations would have been very difficult. In the darkness and the fog there was no way a helicopter could have got to the site of an accident, even if there was someone to report where it happened (and the potential for accidents was unlimited). In the same vein, I was incredulous to discover that the only way of getting down from the aid station where my race came to an end was to hike twelve kilometres unsupported “mostly downhill”. It was only luck that saw me being able to hitch a ride with a ranger, otherwise I’d still be out there now…
…and it’s time to summarise what’s happened this far 2017. As has been the case these last couple of years, I set myself certain tasks in January, to be completed over the next twelve months, and at the halfway mark it makes sense to take stock, to see what has gone according to plan, and what hasn’t.
Looking back, it’s quite a lot crammed into six months, so I’m pleased with that.
I’ve managed to work out quite a lot (unsurprisingly, what with the races) but not as much as I had set out to do in total – weeks of hiking and skiing and diving have prevented me from reaching the goal of a marathon run and biked every week, and I haven’t done much yoga either. But then there’s still six months left to remedy that.
Have I developed my French, my piano and chess playing, and done more non-fiction reading? I certainly got off to a good start, doing thirty minutes per day of each, but a good friend giving me a Netflix password threw a big spanner in that particular structure. I haven’t completely derailed, but there have been leafs on the tracks, shall we say.
As for taking on new tasks at work, I have, happily. And not least because of this very blog, in fact. Turns out people at work read it and thought I might do good in Internal Communications, so from now on I will spend one day per week as a roving reporter, highlighting goings-on in my work place. Very happy about that.
So what’s next? I will try to make up for lost time in those areas where I haven’t quite managed to reach my targets, obviously.
I’ve still got the mountain ultra X-trail coming up in the beginning of August, and ten days of hiking the Bavarian alps hot on the heels of that. After those ten days I don’t really have any plans for the rest of the year. An acquaintance has invited me to Bilbao, and another to Nepal, so those things might happen. Or not. Readers should feel free to make suggestions.
I still want to try and beat my marathon record before the end of the year – I’ve improved significantly on my personal best for shorter distances, but whether that will translate into a new marathon PB remains to be seen. Time to start looking for a fast race, in any event.
At work I have made a promise to attempt to add Danish to my official language combination, so that should keep me busy for quite some time (maybe there are Danish movies on Netflix?!), and the new job will hopefully continue to present new challenges, as well.
All in all I feel quietly confident that the second half of this journey will be as filled to the brim as the first half was. Come fly with me!
…there’s no denying that – with less than three weeks to go before Luxembourg, my first Ironman 70.3 – this whole triathlon idea is starting to feel quite intimidating!
I mean, I can swim my “granny crawl” (you know that stately progression through the water ladies of a certain age who’ve just come from the hairdresser specialise in) well enough, and I can run – if not fast, then at least for a long time – but I have yet to go more than 30k on the bike in one session (In my defense, I only got my race bike less than a week ago, but still…) And then of course there’s the small matter of putting it all together, all three disciplines one after the other. Who in their right mind does that??
Like all participants I got the email containing race rules and regulations this week. You get penalties for everything, it seems. Some of them things I didn’t even know existed! Like drafting. Apparently you can’t stay close behind someone when biking, because that way you benefit from them pushing the air out of your way. I would have thought that was a bit superfluous as a rule. No one objects to that when swimming or running (in the first case because you’d get your teeth kicked out if you tried, and stumble in the latter), so is it really necessary to have a rule like that?
There’s also the “no indecent exposure” rule… in my experience, people participating in a race don’t give a damn (mass peeing before a marathon, anyone?), and if someone were to actually expose themselves “with intent” I reckon he would have to answer to every other participant present, rule or no rule, but better safe than sorry, I suppose.
You even get a penalty if you hang a balloon or similar from your bike so as to find it easily after the swim. That’s a bit stingy, isn’t it? It was one of the best tips I picked up reading about triathlons, and I was looking forward to seeing a sea of bright balloons, scarves, and what have you in the transit area, but that’s not to be, it seems.
Anyway, those are just minor details. For now, the main challenge – beyond the ever-present question of whether you’ve trained enough – lies in the logistics of the thing; How do you transport your bike safely? How do I organise all the kit so as not to forget something vital? What do I bring to eat/drink? Will I be able to drive back after the race or will I be stranded from sheer exhaustion?
I guess freaking out a little is normal at this stage. I try to tell myself, One step at a time. Before long, that principle will apply to the race day itself.
So for the month of May I challenged myself to go on a paleo diet, in order to see how this might affect my well-being and physical performance. Here are some of the highlights of what happened:
Day -1: Panic. I’m supposed to not have any sugar for a month!?
The healthy thing to do would have been to research recipes and prepare. What do I do? I run out to the local night shop and get an overpriced bucket of Haagen-Daez ice cream and down it all in one sitting, then – predictably – feel horrible about it. At least I didn’t have a beer as well.
Day 1: Breakfast is made up of bullet-proof coffee (black coffee with a dollop of coconut oil in it) and left-over oven-baked chicken with mozzarella; how’s that for high fat, low carb? It feels a little weird, eating chicken first thing in the morning, but hey, embrace change, right? Only I have the same thing for lunch AND dinner, and now I do feel a real need for change.
In terms of training I don’t do anything more strenuous than a short run, which a post-workout banana covers just fine. It remains to be seen how longer bouts of exercise affect me…
Day 2: Reading up more on paleo, I discover all legumes are banned. No beans. I literally had cans and cans lined up on the kitchen counter to make a big batch of chili con carne! No sweat, old bean.
Also, no dairy is allowed, so my buffala mozzarella yesterday wasn’t caveman kosher either, in spite of the fact that trying to milk a buffalo is a pretty Neanderthal thing to do. Crud. Two days in and I’m failing. There’s a learning curve to this, clearly.
I buy a spiralizer to make zucchini “pasta” for dinner and find it surprisingly edible. The kids threaten to go on hunger strike, then devour almost an entire cheesecake with raspberry coulis for dessert while I watch.
Day 3: Weight-lifting after an English breakfast goes well. A banana, a date and some walnuts plus lemon water with a shot of flax seed oil replaces my usual (milk-based) protein shake. So far so good.
In the afternoon the kids have an hour each of breakdance (L) and hiphop (R) with an hour in between, so the plan is to run while they dance. First hour is no problem, the second one I struggle, but more because I’m tired from this morning than anything else. And three workouts in a day is a fair amount, caveman or no.
Day 4: Brought carrots, strawberries, dates and walnuts to work to tidy me over until lunch. Worked well.
Dinner I’m invited to an Italian friend whom I’ve completely forgotten to inform about my new habits. Shit! In my mind’s eye I see a mountain of Parmesan-powdered pasta looming, followed by troughs of tiramisu, but my gracious host is very understanding, and beyond the guilty pleasure of a smallish plate of spaghetti vongole I don’t stray from the path.
Day 7: I want to test myself (and the diet), to see if no carbs for a week will mean bonking when keeping up a sustained effort. So I do an hour of swimming (2k) followed by a three hour walk (13k), stop for lunch, then go biking one hour and a bit (25k). Admittedly this isn’t anywhere near as much as a marathon or triathlon, but I do it all without getting particularly tired or feeling any need for carbs. Yay!
Day 9: 16k run. No problem.
Day 10: Becoming accustomed to eating “nuts and roots”, as my sister put it. Breakfast is dates and cashew nuts, carrots and hummus, plus a couple of eggs. Apart from the coffee, it feels like something the first guy to climb down from the trees might have eaten. He probably didn’t read his New York Times daily briefing while doing so, but so what?
Day 12 I run equal parts nuts (pecan, walnuts and cashew) and medjoul dates in a blender to create the simplest and best “cake” ever (1 cup of each; calories: approximately 1 gazillion). Who said troglodytes didn’t know how to party?
Ate it all in one sitting, and a good thing too, because Day 13 I swim 3,000m for the first time since I was 18. And then do an hour of weights.
Day 14: Brunch with a friend. Half of what they serve is bread, or sugar, or both. I try a teaspoon of tiramisu (which I normally adore) and it’s so sweet I can hardly bring myself to swollow. Luckily the other half is made up of yummy veggie dishes, so emerge quite sated.
In the afternoon I run a half marathon on nothing but water. 1:52:50. Good time, given previous day’s workouts. Still don’t feel the need to refuel during the run. Scales show I’ve lost three kilos in two weeks. Not a bad first half!
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(A friend objected that people get paleo wrong, in that they eat meat a lot more often than our palaeolithic forefathers and -mothers did; this is an objection I would say is probably correct. Even so, I’m buying a lot more veg than usual, and I feel good: slimmer, lighter, never quite as ravenous nor as zonked out before or after meals as I normally get.)
Urgh. Gruff. What is this M&M’s of which you speak?
Remember the bit in Pulp Fiction where Marcellus Wallace promised to get medieval on someone’s ass? Always sounded like a good threat to me. (I imagine it would involve building cathedrals and trading in relics…)
However, the whole world seems to be hellbent on going much further back in time, with Trump wanting to bomb everyone into primordial soup (presumably to level with his intellectual discours). So in keeping with that spirit, I figured the month of May might be a good time to challenge myself in a new way: by getting Stone Age on my own ass.
It’s not as mad as it seems. I’m not proposing to go live naked in a cave and hunt mastodons for breakfast (although that would be fun, too), no, what I will do is go on a Paleo diet for a month, to see what happens. Paleo is essentially about eating the way our earliest ancestors did, in an attempt to get away from starch, sugar and carbs – something which those early hunter-gatherers didn’t find much of on their menu.*
It will require quite the change to my eating habits: no more oatmeal and milk for breakfast, no pasta, beer or pizza post long runs, no sushi on Fridays, and certainly no sneaky Haegen-Daaz ice cream orgies late at night.
I’m getting hungry just writing about these guilty pleasures, and chances are you are, too, which is due to the fact that our bodies are hard-wired to like this kind of food. The problem is it used to be a very rare treat back in the palaeolithic, whereas now there’s sugar everywhere, and our bodies cannot deal with such quantities of the stuff – hence diabetes, obesity, cardio-vascular diseases; the list goes on and on.
The physical effects of switching to paleo are interesting for another reason too, because after a while – anything from a few days to a few weeks – the body goes into a state where it stops craving carbs and starts using fat as its prime source of fuel. This will supposedly make you much more efficient in long distance races, as the body’s supply of fat is vastly bigger than its stores of sugar (the difference between your muffin top and the muffin you just ate, if you will).
Now, I experimented with this prior to running Ultravasan, but chickened out during the race. But my triathlon is coming up, and if I can do that without craving sugar then this diet must be the real McCoy.
As always, there will be an update afterwards to account for how I did during the challenge – the practical aspects of it as well as any changes to my physique/performance. Now, what’s the best way to cook mastodon for breakfast?
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*This sounds like an excellent idea to me, particularly since some studies show dementia to be caused by an accumulated inability to break down sugar, similar to diabetes, and I really don’t want to go down that path.
After Pemba and Mallorca, my island-hopping circumnavigation of Africa has taken me to Madeira, off the northwestern coast of the continent. Unlike no man, Madeira is an island, but also the name of the entire archipelago, somewhat confusingly.
Known as the Isles of the Blessed to the Ancient Romans (although no one knows who the blessed in question were), Madeira has been part of Portugal for most of the last 500 years, but geographically speaking it is a part of Africa – and geographically this is probably the most dramatic landscape I’ve ever seen; the volcanic mountains rise up steeply everywhere, and verdantly lush jungle covers every square metre not claimed by man. This is Sardinia on steroids, a place where Kong might feel at home.
Funchal, the main city, is my base. It rises up the mountainsides in a natural amphitheatre facing out towards the sea. This means the whole town is terraced, with houses literally being built on top of one another – a car parked on the roof of a house, or a house where the entrance is on the topmost floor because it’s perched on an outcrop far below; these are common sights – and traversing it is calf-killing business.
On my first day I want to see the Monte palace gardens, which lie at the top of the town. There’s a funicular that takes people up there, but the asking price is staggeringly high (much like the gardens) so I make my way on foot from downtown. Three kilometres of hiking and over half a vertical kilometre later, I arrive at the gates, legs shaking and dripping with perspiration, questioning my sanity.
The gardens – first created by a British consul – were beautiful and well worth it, however, with bulbous clouds of bougainvilleas spilling out over the paths, palm trees and jacarandas and tulip trees and African lilies and Austin roses and bottlebrush flowers and endless arrays of other plants. Azaleas the size of trees, ferns taller than I am, and water features everywhere. It was a sight to behold, once my breathing and heartbeat were back to normal.
There is a lovely little church next to the gardens, where the last Austro-Hungarian emperor rests (having lived the last few months of his life in exile here after he lost his empire), and his grave was filled with ribbons bearing greetings like “our last emperor” in German and Czech. Some people never learn.
The only other claim to fame for the church (beyond having the best views and the sweatiest congregation of all time) ought to be its altarpiece, which consisted of a printed picture of a painting of Jesus with the words “Jesus, eu confio em Vós” printed in Times New Roman (italics) on it. Why anyone thought this a good idea, I don’t know. It looked like the religious equivalent of the first Christmas card you ever DIY’d online. A far cry from the faux perspective cupola in Gozo, it was.
Pro-empire statements to the left, pro-EU statements to the right…
Below the church are the famous wicker toboggans that tourists are ferried down the mountain in by surprisingly beer-bellied Portugeezers wearing white outfits and jaunty straw hats, nattering away while the tourists shriek with delight. The asphalt is worn silky smooth by their passage. It looks fun, but the prices are as steep as the roads, so having recovered somewhat, I walked back down again.
This was a fitting overture to the main reason for my coming to Madeira. I want to hike the levadas. Levadas are ingenious works of engineering that the Portuguese set about creating immediately upon discovering the island (It was known to the Romans but subsequently lost to history, before Portuguese seafarers “rediscovered” it in 1419, and never mind that it was inhabited by runaway slaves and others when they did.). For five hundred years they have expanded this network of aqueducts hewn out of the cliff-face to channel fresh water from natural sources in the centre of the island out towards more habitable areas.
Today, they make for perfect hiking trails, taking wanderers straight into the laurissilva forests that cover much of the centre of the island – it is literally a walk in prehistoric environs, as this type of laurel trees (many of them a thousand years old) covered large swathes of Europe tens of thousands of years ago, but only continue to exist here nowadays due to the island’s unique climate.
And so I find a company that takes small groups of people into the mountains to hike the most scenic routes. I had initially planned on bringing my tent and thru-hiking the island from one end to the other, but that didn’t seem possible, so here I am, doing the light version, coming home to a bed and breakfast every night instead of camping out.
First off is Levada do Rei, the king’s levada, or the king of levadas, I’m not sure which – my Portuguese being somewhat nonexistent. The hiking is easy as can be, but it’s not for the faint of heart. More often than not there is a ledge no more than fifty centimetres wide between the levadas and a drop-off of dizzying height. Fifty or even a hundred metres below, the roar of the river can be heard, and one false move will send you tumbling. It’s a puckering thought, and the last to go through the mind of many a slave (before the rest of them did) – as they were often forced to work on these projects (a fact that guidebooks find convenient to gloss over).
Trail with built-in shower.
The levada goes six kilometres inland, through the most dramatically inhospitable terrain imaginable – once even inside a waterfall – to finally end in a gully where every leaf and frond is dripping water into the stream. Having left the group far, far behind, I explore the area, have my lunch in a spot that looks like it’s straight out of the Jurassic, and a bit of a rest before setting out again. I finally reencounter them ten minutes away from the gully. Possibly this group hiking thing isn’t for me…
On the way back, the guide drops me five hundred metres from my hotel. Whether it’s punishment for having strayed from the group, or just bad service, I don’t know.
The next day, the pickup is fifty minutes late due to no-shows, and the guide (another one) is in an understandably foul mood. I try to not let it affect me, but he is frankly rude, repeating “I’m sorry but it’s not my fault”, when no one has claimed as much. The drive across the island is breathtaking, climbing up these alp-like jungle-clad mountains that dwarf everything humans can ever hope to create.
We reach today’s levada, and I go on ahead again, leaving the group behind, enjoying the solitude and the different fauna of these higher altitudes. Here, it’s tree heathers and laurels forming a roof over the path, ferns are back to normal size, but blueberry bushes tower above me, and the odd wild geranium brightens the shade, while little trout swim in the levada by my side. It’s lovely.
I reach the halfway point of the “four hour” trail in under an hour, and spend a pleasant while by a beautiful waterfall and rock pool reminiscent of the ones I plunged into in Switzerland when canyoning, sharing my lunch with a chaffinch that happily takes pieces of cheese from my fingers.
Who do you finch took the picture…?
By the time I’m done, the others have arrived, but trundling back the same way doesn’t appeal to me, and after some talking to the guide he grudgingly gives me leave to take a circular path. This is proper hiking – all roots and rocks, not strolling along a concrete sidewalk – and I nearly slip a couple of times, but in the end I’m back by the minibus well before the rest of the group.
By this time the guide’s temperament and the false marketing combined have most of the hikers grumbling, so he takes us on an extra loop of a kilometre through an area destroyed by forest fire last year. It’s difficult to know how to react: on the one hand he is trying to make good on the company’s overblown promise, on the other hand it’s not like we’re just looking to walk any old where just for the sake of it. And he’s clearly pissed off, so that even if he is genuinely looking to do something for us, no one feels inclined to take him up on his offer.
In the end we call it a day, and I say nothing, but a couple of exchanged e-mails later I’m looking at a third day at a third of the original asking price. Seems fair.
Next day couldn’t have been more different: the pickup is on the dot, the guide Duarte is a real Mensch who has me pegged in seconds. “You go on your own, you fast”. And so I do. We go into the mountains proper, to hike between the two highest peaks on the island, Pico do Areeiro and Pico Ruivo, both over 1,800 metres. The path used to take in a third peak, but it’s been closed to hikers since a rockslide obliterated a stretch of it – a stark reminder that geological time is now.
It’s an old path that locals on the north side of the island used to ferry their wares to the south side market place, however unlikely that sounds. Nowadays at least it’s paved, and a good thing too, as the ever-present tufa pebbles make for easy slipping.
It’s hard going but incredibly beautiful: the path snakes its way up and down the sides of mountains, balancing on razor edge crests and burrowing through sheer rock. The fauna here consists of heather trees and broom, and the ground is covered by alpines such as indigenous orchids, buttercups, saxifrage and sedums, with oversized bumblebees brumming about. It’s overwhelming in its splendour.
What’s more, it is all to be a part of the Madeira Island Ultra Trail tomorrow, so every so often there are waymarkers attached to the scant protective wires. I doff my sweaty cap in the direction of the runners: the race is 115 kilometres across the island, and I would not want to try to run many of the metres I cover here today…! (I did 15k today, with 1k elevation loss and 1k ditto gain. The X-trail is four times as much. Lord knows what the MIUT equivalent is!)
I predictably arrive long before the rest of our party, so when they do show, Duarte simply tells me to go on for another hour and then meet them back at the Pico. I happily do, taking in the utter isolation that is the Village of the Nuns way below in the next valley. It’s hard to imagine a more secluded place, and it looks quite magical, nested in between the mountains, but alas, the clouds come in and cover the nuns (and everything else) from my prying eyes, which I take as a signal to turn around and go find my posse, incredibly pleased with my day.
I spoke more to Duarte on the way back, as he was understandably interested in the previous day’s debacle, but he also tipped me off about a longer trek that he recommended I do, even going so far as to find me the right bus to take, so my last day will be spent hiking properly on my own, just as I had originally envisaged.
And so my last morning sees me boarding a local bus that will take me up the Ribeira Brava valley (the same one that blew me away two days ago). It takes its time getting there, but I enjoy every minute of the two hour drive, moving at a stately place down the coast, the driver navigating hairpin bends while I gaze in amazement at the landscape and all the gardens.
The bus stops twice for ten-minute breaks – once to give passengers a chance to take a look at Cabo Girão, a glass-bottomed walkway over a cliff that drops 580m straight down into the ocean, and once, at eleven o’clock sharp, for coffee. My father would have approved – of the latter.
When the driver drops me off, it’s in a place that almost defies description. At 1,500m, its high above the valley floor, offering breathtaking views, but unlike previous hikes, I move along this path in glorious solitude. For the first hour I encounter no one at all. Lizards rustling in the undergrowth, birdsong and the burbling brooks are the only sounds I hear as I walk through the dappled shade of a eucalyptus forest, the warm aroma of the trees’ esoteric oils filling my every breath. Truly, this is forest bathing at its finest.
Jump in at the deep end!
By noon, just as the trail starts ascending, I come upon my first runner. He seems in good shape, considering he’s been running for twelve hours by now, but he’s only done some 50 kilometres, and yesterday’s trail is still ahead of him. We talk a little, and I encourage him in his efforts, offering a few choice tips – I am the author of Seven Tips for a Painful Marathon and a successful ultra marathon runner myself, after all! ?
After that, I overtake more and more runners as I make my way up to Pico Grande, and then steeply down the next valley to the village of Curral das Freiras.
See the people on the trail?
I make it to the village and down two cold beers in quick succession at the local bar (at the very fair price of 1€ per bottle), thankful that I haven’t traversed 65km, nor have 45 left to go. There’s only one problem: the only bus back to Funchal isn’t leaving for another two hours.
I arrived just before the halfway break-off point of the race – any runner who hasn’t made it there by 15:30 isn’t allowed to continue – and this proves to be a stroke of luck for me, as the volunteers begin to pack up and get ready to leave. I start talking to a group of five women all in MIUT sweaters, and they offer me a lift back to Funchal.
I would have been super happy with any ride, but the women turn out to be sweet, chatty and very interesting (children of emigrants to South Africa and Venezuela who have returned to their “homeland”). I simply couldn’t have asked for a better end to my holiday here.
One of my goals for this year is to run the equivalent of a marathon per week, so why not get an actual marathon in early on, I thought, as I sat on my cozy couch, slightly woozy from the heat of the fireplace and the inner fire lit by a fine single malt. Why not indeed?
One month later and I’m in a pine forest on the outskirts of Genk, in the Belgian rump region of Limburg. It’s cold and has just stopped raining. Looks like it could start again any moment, too.
There are three hundred of us (the maximum number of participants allowed in the Louis Persoon Memorial Marathon), lined up like lambs for the slaughter, or a band of brothers (and a few sisters), and maybe that’s why, or maybe it’s just the mood I’m in these days, the first of the dystopian nightmare that is the Trump regime, but my thoughts go to Thermopylae.
The tradition of running marathons comes from the first Persian invasion of Greece, when Pheidippides was sent to tell the citizens of Athens about the victory at Marathon. This wasn’t the Persians’ only attempt, however. They came back for more, and when they did, they came via the Hot Gates (i.e. Thermopylae), a narrow pass through the mountains.
There, three hundred Spartans under King Leonidas made a stand, and held off an infinitely superior Persian force long enough that democracy could live and flourish. They knew they would perish in the process, but they did it anyway.
It’s a little like that today. The three hundred of us fight through a seemingly endless onslaught of kilometres, battling it out up and down long inclines, pushing against the waves of oncoming Persian pines, lap after lap.
The seven laps of the race are essentially made up of three kilometres uphill, then another three back down, both taking their toll. A month isn’t enough to prepare for a new record, and after the (still fairly good) first half, I realise that it won’t happen. I can’t help but feel a little defeated. What’s the point?
My feet hurt so much from the repeated impact of poor soles against the asphalt that I’m forced to walk even if I could have run otherwise. Dehydration proves another obstacle. I simply hadn’t taken into account how much more you sweat wearing multiple layers, so my muscles start cramping, and when I pee it’s the colour of Earl Grey. Nutrition becomes a problem, too, as I get heartburn, which turns every breath into Greek fire, but thankfully a Pepsid allows me to keep that more or less under control.
The rain holds off, but the overcast skies stay with us all day. When told the Persian archers were so numerous that their volleys of arrows would darken the sky and block out the sun, the Spartans’ only comment was “then at least we will be fighting in the shade”. I try to channel that super-cool attitude in the face of hardship, but my heart isn’t in it.
But then THAT’s not the way to take on a challenge like this. As the Spartan queen told Leonidas, “Come home with your shield, or on it”; quitting simply is not an option. With that in mind I make it a point to go into these races with three goals, where the first one is – always – to finish, the second one is a reasonably good time, and the third a personal best.
I’m nowhere near a PB, but that’s ok. I came fairly close to the second, which was sub-four hours, and I reached the most important one. I persevered. Maybe sometimes that’s all one can hope for. We need to fight seemingly insurmountable odds, knowing that something is impossible and doing it anyway, sacrificing for the greater good.
And whatever doesn’t kill you…
Before and after. No way of telling how bad it was in between…
P.S. At Thermopylae there is an inscription in a rock that’s been there ever since the battle. It says, simply, “Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.”
Words to live and die by. I recovered from the race by eating a whole box of chocolates. Leonidas, of course.
You know that feeling when you arrive at the train station only to see the train you need to be on pull out? That was me this morning. Why? Well, I was slow, due to being dead tired from having been unable to sleep most of the night, and the reason for that was undoubtedly the two large whiskeys and enormous chunk of gingerbread dough that I had late last night.
Snow in the forest; the timber wolf wakes,
We’re in for a new year again, and I feel I have found a model that works for me (no, not Claudia Schiffer): Keep your ambitions 
At the outset of every year I pause and think about what I want to achieve. This year was different.
One of the first challenges I ever undertook was going without sweets and candy for a year. My parents came up with that one, and the gauntlet was eagerly picked up by me and my sister, since there was pecuniary compensation involved – money which was then spent on an obscene amount of chocolate on January 1st the following year.
Hot on the heels* of the UN report on 
”Closer, God, to Thee”, I mumble to myself through gritted teeth. It’s the song the orchestra played as the Titanic went down, and I share their sentiment – and yet I couldn’t be further from their ordeal. Nor is it the Christian God I have in mind, when now I stand to meet my maker, but Thor, or Jupiter, gods of thunder.
I was thinking about what I want to try to achieve in 2018 when I came across 
I still haven’t run since
