Fortunately, I'm not blond.....

Since last Saturday, I've been under the weather with a mild stomach upset, a mild headache, and just enough dizziness to make life fairly pesky. Typical fibromyalgia sindrome. Yesterday, however, a plan was set afoot to collect a donation from those of us who volunteer some funds in order to surprise Adrián this weekend because Teacher's Day is coming up. (Mexico never misses a chance to party, by God! You'll have to read Octavio Paz in order to understand why.)

So in spite of my condition, weaving like a drunkard, I made my way to the park early in the morning. I stealthily handed off my donation to Ana, the one in charge of the surprise, said hello to my fellow trainees, and then thought, what the haitch, I'm here so let's trot a bit. You'll realize we are now brushing up against the skirts of fanaticism when the sick, the lame, and the halt drag themselves to the running path in order not to miss out on a training session.


My warm-up walk was somewhat uneven since I had a bit of trouble sticking to my lane; it crossed my mind to rejoice in my non-blond hair since I couldn't be accused of being a dizzy blond, although several people may have wondered if I was, in fact, a drunken grey-headed old gal who had partied all night and was still feeling the effects. Oh God, if only such carousing were possible! It was, however, quite true that I had been up all night feeling the effects, but these latter belonged to an anti-dizziness medication that contained enough caffeine to wire a cast of thousands.

By this time you may be asking yourself if the medication also destroyed neurons by the millions. Well, let me just tell you that it doesn't matter, because in that state I managed a 3.4K run without stopping so much as to tie a shoelace or rescue fallen glasses, and even ended with a small but significant (for me) sprint. You know how training seems to progess by a series of plateaus; I am now past the eight-minutes-of-this, two-minutes-of-that stage and am aiming for a very, very slow 5K now.

I can see now the newspapers that will appear next February: "All categories of Austin 5K taken by old lady expat living in Mexico; drug testing reveals humongous quatities of caffeine. Fight breaks out at finish line as victor's Asics are stolen by infuriated younger contenders who demand that shoes also undergo drug testing."

At last, rain!

On Saturday, my husband and I took three of our grand-daughters to the countryside, and to our infinite pleasure, it rained! It rained after seven months of drought. After the rain had let up a little, the girls dashed around finding all our "pet" toads, which had left their dens: a couple of them are so big that over the years we have given them names, such as Marcus Aurelius and Julius Caesar. My daughter's mother-in-law, who went with us, said she's never seen toads so big as the crew that inhabit our place in the country.


It has rained for three days so far here in town, and today will be my first day training since the weekend. The weather is downright cold. Great!

Hal, redeemed...

Hal must have gotten religion, because he replaced the two blogs he had wiped out. Either that, or he is planning something worse. On the other hand, what could be worse than a robot with religion? Sarah Palin?

The Righty-Tighty, Lefty-Loosey Condundrum, or The Single Boob Paradigm

Let's digress right away: Hal is back, just as I predicted, and he eliminated two whole blogs. There is no measuring his degree of resentment, apparently.

Also, since TrainingPeaks seems to be on the blink also, I haven't received my training program by email, so this morning (after two days of aches and fatigue) the functional part of me dragged my body out to the running path and I finished 3K without stopping--I've done it before, once, but this time it was a lot easier. Not having to keep tabs on my timer, my mind wandered. I started two hours later than my usual time, so it was like a Tokyo traffic jam. But the viewing was even funnier that usual as a result.

At the beginning of the running path, people gather to stretch, exchange running anecdotes, or drink water. Off to the left is a dumbell (I refer to the weight, not to any individual) made up of an iron bar with two big clumps of dried cement at each end--the poor man's version of gym equipment, I guess. It's always there because no one in his right mind would want to steal the thing. Today a man was standing right by the path lifting the dumbell, stopping every lift or so to look around, oh so casually, to see if anyone was watching him. It must have been frustrating, because no one paid him any attention at all. He moved closer to the path. We saw him, all right, and had to swerve away from him in case he dropped the blasted weight on someone's foot. It was fortunately at the beginning of my run because I was struck by an attack of laughter which, had it occurred later on, would have brought my run to a halt. The real burning question is, did whoever had the dumbell constructed choose cement in order to prevent thievery? It worked.

On to our subject. It has been mentioned in another writing that the running culture doesn't care what you wear. It should have been noted that it also doesn't care what you don´t wear. People run without shoes, and in Austin at least not even pants are de rigueur, which adds quite a bit to the general atmosphere of high spirits. And, you can run without a sports bra. It's painful to watch--you can almost feel the tissues tearing and you know that woman's old age will find her boobs down around her knees.

It never occurred to me that anyone might object to the Kevlar-steel-reinforced, no-boobs-at-all look my own apparel produces. I love it, because with my washboard fat bouncing along with each trot, I don't want to add anything else to the sad spectacle.

But one of my virtual running mates revealed that she just doesn't like the single-boob look. She may have more to work with than I do, however, which would explain her tastes in this vital matter. I didn't even know there was a single-boob option. This means that the classification of sports bras needs a revamping. My suggestion would be to eliminate most of the sizes now available and replace them with: No-Boobs, Single-Boob, and Double-Boob options. This latter could even take into account the one-size-fits-no-two-boobs problem and include Righty-Tighty, Lefty-Loosey fitting choices so you could pull up or let off on the reins, so to speak, for each boob.

You'd think someone would have come up with an idea this great long before this, wouldn't you?

Footnote...

It has to be experienced to be believed. I am online with a ghostly presence who announces his name on the chat support network, and then disappears. My blackest suspicions have been confirmed--people are running like crazy to get away from having to help this old gal in Mexico and her wayward computer. I have actually typed in "Mexico to India, Mexico to India, is anyone there?", only to get no response. When I ended the chat, made another chat request, and got someone on the other end, it turned out to be the same person!


Rosetta Stone wants my profile so it can get me going online, but the profile must be so harrowing the program withdraws like a salted snail. Does Rosetta Stone tremble at the part about me living in Mexico, or just Monterrey? Meanwhile, my messages on the chat are getting more and more, ah, shall we say, original and non-formal in nature. God, I hope I haven't started some kind of international incident....

The Rosetta Stone Nightmare

Yesterday and today have been fibromyalgia days, so I have scaled back my activity. It seemed like a great time to fire up my Rosetta Stone course in Italian, which has an online option so you can speak with other students, play games, and also talk to native speakers.

How can I possibly explain the almost insurmountable glitches trying to register for the course and have access to the online options? I have spent literally HOURS during the past few days as a bunch of very patient, very kind people in India have worked through every problem that comes up. And let me tell you, the problems have been at every single step of the way.

First, I couldn't activate my course. The activation code is a string of numbers so long that if I lay the series down on the sidewalk, I'd have to run a 5K just to read them all. When some poor bloke in India finally got that straightened out on the chat support service, it turned out that my course was activated, but I could not access the online options.

Why could I not activate the online options? Well, among all the other things, I had two IDs for the course. This morning, working on the initial part of the problem, again with some poor soul in India, our chat was cut off in mid-solution. Natch, when I tried to get this person back, he was busy with someone else, so I began again with another long-suffering computer nerd who must have thought I was severely challenged, intellectually speaking. Okay, we discovered that my computer was a day ahead of the date, and thus my requests to get online with others involved a time warp the system couldn't handle. We got that fixed. (No, I had never noticed my computer was a day ahead of the date because I never look at the date.)

Now another in what seems to be an endless stream of glitches and malfunctions has taken place: a nice little webpage asks me to tell them something about myself in order to "enhance my learning experience". What I've learned, however, is that the webpage can't save my data, so this is as far as I've gotten now that I'm online. I'm almost afraid to contact those folks in India on the chat support, for fear of getting someone I've already spoken to. I can see people fleeing their computers at the very mention of my name.

All this is subsequent, of course, to other more manageable issues such as installing a headset with integrated microphone so the language program can correct my pronunciation. The reason these issues are manageable is because I didn't manage them--my reliable computer nerd did it for me. He's a nice fellow who insists on showing me what he is doing on the benighted assumption it is going to sink in, so I hate to disappoint him. I nod sagely, every now and then inserting an enlightened "Ah, now I see!" or "Yes, of course", just to prevent him from launching into an even more bone-headed explanation on the outside chance of lowering his standards of teaching to reach even me.

My bravery falters at the prospect of going back to the online chat support, but there is nothing for it. My husband is coming home for lunch early today, so I am going to relax in the kitchen before tackling the next Rosetta Stone problem. Fortunately, I can now tell you che io sono una donna, which does not mean that I'm a donut. I can identify articles of clothing, activities, and conjugate a verb or two. The rest of the course is marvelous, but I refuse to give up on the chance to play games in Italian or talk to others as confused by the online options as I am--assuming there are actually others out there who have managed to get online. Stay tuned.

The Running Culture

In a place where our headlines every day document the shoot-outs provoked by drug cartels, the arrests, people stealing iron and steel from cargo trains, international problems of intolerance and violence, the epic, abysmal stupidity of our congress in Mexico and the know-no-nothing minority in the States that redefines how low the human race can descend, it is a joy to be among people who don't care how old you are, what you look like, or how much you can do. Whether you are trying to get into shape or training for an Iron Man competition, you are going to be supported because everyone who is part of the running culture knows how hard you have to work to reach your goal. It doesn't matter whether you are brown, black, orange or purple, what kind of clothes you wear, or what language you speak. It is assumed that if you are making the effort, you belong with the rest of the crowd.

People who run suffer much less depression than the general population, and that may be one of the reasons for this atmosphere of happy support. There are not many places outside of family--and certainly not every family--where the negative de-emphasized to this extent. The complaining and whining one hears, from the newspapers to so-called news networks with their ranting proponents of hate, fear, and stupidity, have no place in the running culture. They are consciously set aside.

Maybe for these reasons alone, it is worth the effort to get into better shape. It works on much more than your body. Your soul can use it too.