My favorite thing

Simple steps to happiness:

Travel

Wake early

Find small, local coffee shop. (Pro tip- the more out of the way and granola people the better.)

Sit and watch/smell/taste the a new world.

Today's observations:

The French still smoke a lot

I should learn French. 

Needles half marathon Isle of Wight

 I suppose I should start writing about running again. Now you'll have to give me some slack because I've taken a bit of a break from both running and writing for a fair piece. The legs don't carry me quite like they used to and the words don't either. But one thing I love about running is that it's always there for you whenever you get your butt back around to it. I'm hoping words work the same way. 

A whole bunch of stuff happened over the last couple years. It probably doesn't belong here and it sure as hell isn't going to dance off these old out of practice fingers onto this page. So let's just let it be.

I'm a good bit heavier and a whole bit slower, so how do you think I'm going to get back on that horse? Run some miles. Best way to do that is to get in some races around this new country I'm calling home. There's a not so little island that I see everyday when I go walk along the ocean. The Isle of Wight is just a short ferry ride from where I live. I've lived here for over 2 years and I've never ventured over there. Now mind you, a younger me used to watch a concert that's held on this island many times back when Rock and Roll was real but alas, I still had never been. So what better way to kick off my next running career than to run a half marathon over there. 

I scheduled the ferry for the morning of the race. I had never done this ferry before but I had watched it leave from just up the road many times. So I figured that's where it always left from. I showed up early and got a nice seat where I could watch the ocean go by. It was a nice relaxing ride until I realized it wasn't going where I thought it was. It landed up the coast a bit from the 'normal' spot I'd seen the ferry go. Where they put me was a bit out of the way so the bus I'd planned to take out to the race start wasn't waiting for me like I'd planned. I did a quick search on old Google and found that the bus stops just up the road a bit from the ferry landing. So I took a walk, and a chance, and headed up to the bus stop. To my luck the bus showed up and I was on my way to the race. 

The Isle of Wight is bigger than I thought. The bus(es) from my side of the island to the other side where the race started was a good hour or so. Thanks to Google I got there in plenty of time. Got my number and chip and a quick cup of tea and I was ready. It was a small race, which I like, so the race director did the briefing to all of us in short time. I had my hydropack full, a gel, and my phone and was off. 

England has this wonderful thing where the public trails have right-of-way across the country. We were running through farmland and pasture before long. I was feeling pretty good and had fallen into a nice easy pace. I do love running through the woods. Everything was going pretty well until we started to climb. I never knew an island could have so many hills. Up and up we went. Not long ago, when I was in pretty good shape, I could always run a hill. I used to enjoy running up Mount Scott back in Oklahoma. It was never fast but it was a nice long grind up hill. I could run the whole thing without stopping. Well, on these hills there was no running. Or maybe these old bones just couldn't do it. Although I will say everyone else was walking too. One thing that jumping back on the horse does to you though is put some humility in you. I didn't care, walking up the climbs was fine, as long as I was moving. Somewhere near the top of one of the climbs someone looked over at me and said, "at least that's the last hill". I took them at their word and started pushing the pace a bit on the top. Well it turns out Brits can lie just as well as Americans because not long after that we started going up again. Bloody Brits! 

The good thing about all the hills were the views from the tops. England sits on one big block of chalk. Beautiful white steep rocks line the whole island. This makes for some amazing views out over the ocean. Needles is the southwestern tip of the Isle of Wight. It's one big empty pasture that ends, very quickly, in a cliff of brilliant white. The white cliffs of Dover are the well-known spot, but most of England coast is made up of those. Needles is one of the best. I wish everyone could see it.