Next stop, Big Sur!

Holy, moly! I can't believe three weeks have gone by already. I had a great time in Portugal, but it's not much of a city to run in. The streets (and sidewalks) are paved with cobblestone. It's really pretty, but not a very forgiving surface.

I managed a few training runs on my vacation. I did do the 16 mile run that I mentioned in the previous post. I wish I could say it was spectacular, but it wasn't. It was too crowded to run in the street, so I had to stay on the sidewalk, and there weren't a lot of bathrooms. I tried to be positive, but the best I could come up with was how cool it was to be running along the mouth of the river that Vasco de Gama sailed out of when he sailed around the tip of Africa and discovered an alternate path to India. Yes, I read that out of a guide book; I never would have remembered that tidbit from 5th grade geography. The run was so blah that I postponed my 18 miler until I got home. It worked out much better for many reasons.

We drove up to Porto with some friends of ours, and on the way stopped in at a town called Coimbra. It is home to one of the world's oldest universities in continuous operation. We arrived at night and went out to dinner. I tried what I was told was a typical Portuguese meal, octopus. It was cooked in red wine, so it took on a hideous color. I ate it, but I didn't like the way it looked. I had two more opportunities to try octopus, but each was prepared a different way than the first dish and it was absolutely delicious.

In the morning I went for a run along the river, while SD went for a walk around the university. I ran through a park with well kept gardens and admired how pretty the town was. When SD returned from his walk I commented on what a nice town it was and he had just the opposite impression. I guess I got lucky that I ran where I did.

All this leads up to Big Sur. The race is this weekend and I'm nervous but excited. I did an 18 mile run ten days ago and it was tough. But I got through it and so I guess I can get through Sunday. My goal is simply to finish and enjoy myself, but as I said in the previous post, there are some killer hills!

I'm looking forward to a blogger meet-up with Michelle, her husband Eric, who likes to read hot chocolate cups, and Donald who organized the meet-up. Donald's post from last year about Big Sur is the reason I'm running it. I've driven that route many times, but how often does a person get the opportunity to run with the highway closed to traffic? Uh, once a year.

While I was in Portugal, my dad was having the tumor on his neck removed. He had been going through chemo for the past year, treating the tumor on his neck as well as his lung and kidney. He was supposed to have two years of chemo, but the spot on my kidney is gone, the one on his lung is the size of a pencil point, and so they were able to operate on his neck. He's recovering nicely and is overjoyed to be rid of the cancer. Now he can get on with living his life. Way to go, Dad!

Oh, I got a comment today from a woman that ran the Nike marathon. She came across my Nike race report and I mentioned her in it because we ran together for a little while. This is one of the reason's I like to blog, because it gives me running friends on other coasts and other continents. :-)