I've been tapering all my life + ChCh

Route through Pacific Grove; return route on Oceanview Blvd.

Path along Oceanside Blvd., Pacific Grove, CA

It is 1 week from tomorrow until the Napa Valley Marathon.  Training the last two weeks has been poor and spotty: few runs, none of much quality.   Forecast for race day looks to be cold and rainy (though out here, the weather forecasts seem notoriously inaccurate so far out).  Since I last posted...the day of the great climb up Cantelow hill (see previous post), I've run two times.  Earlier in the week, we took a short, impromptu trip down the coast to Monterey Bay, one of our favorite places, and stayed at Asilomar.  I think one of my top 5 favorite roads to run on can be found here: Oceanview Blvd., which runs from the Monterey Bay Aquarium through Pacific Grove and to Asilomar State Beach.  It is a spectacularly beautiful road and no matter how poorly I feel, I get a thrill just to lay down the few miles this road covers.  Distance was a little over 7.5 miles and pace was around 7:41 (I was tired and legs still hurt from Cantelow; note from route profile that I found myself another nice hill.) 

The trip to Asilomar was a bit surreal.  Beautiful weather, the sound of the sea, great times with Arlen and Jackson...that all was great + a trip to one of my favorite restaurants in America: Passionfish.  Yet upon arrival--literally the moment we were checking in to Asilomar (and unbeknownst to us at the time)--the terrible earthquake that left Christchurch, NZ in ruins was hitting.  At that moment, as we are checking in to a beautiful resort on a sublimely beautiful day, 100s of people were dead or dying.  

We found out about the quake a couple of hours later (Asilomar has no tvs or internet connectivity in the rooms) when our son Mitchell called. 

You see, my wife Arlen and her two sons are New Zealanders.  Mitchell and my other son Daniel were born in Christchurch and lived there before moving to the USA.  Arlen, although born and raised in Wellington, NZ, always considered Christchurch (hereafter ChCh) her New Zealand home.  As for me, a midwest boy raised in Kansas City, MO, what connections might I have?  Well most obviously, I'm married to a Kiwi who was severely traumatized by the news.  Additionally, I have a courtesy appointment at the University of Canterbury (National Centre for Research on Europe) which is in ChCh.  I have some friends who work there, including a very dear friend, Martin.  Needless to say, we were deeply worried about him. 

I visited ChCh for several days in 2005.  I loved the city.  Absolutely loved the vibe of it.  As a runner, the city had everything: coast, beautiful trails, hills, Hagley Park, a nice central city.  We stayed in a hotel in the central city overlooking the city skyline. Well, "skyline" isn't really the right word as there really were very few tall buildings. 

Of course now there are none.  Including the CTV building where (as I write this) an estimated 120 people are still missing, most likely dead.  Overall, 200+ people are missing.  Probably dead.  Meaning the death toll will hit close to 400.  A terrible tragedy.  Our friend Martin is ok, but he has no house to live in.  So I guess "ok" is relative.  We have a house.  We were on vacation when this happened.  He has no house.  No power. No water.  As do 10s of thousands of Kiwis.

June 2005: ChCh Cathedral (I took this)

[Interlude: the Haiti earthquake, which had a magnitude similar to the Sept. ChCh quake (the first ChCh quake resulted in 0 deaths), lead to an estimated death toll of well over 200,000.  That's 200 hundred THOUSAND.   I suppose tragedies are relative.  Some ARE worse than others.  Clearly.  Obviously.   But when the first ChCh quake hit, my wife was upset (for obvious reasons) and posted her worries on Facebook.  She received several replies along the lines of ... "well, it's not Haiti" [or some other massively tragic event].  True.  Obviously true.  Nevertheless, when it is your home, your country then relative differences are less meaningful in that moment.  So 400 dead is a terrible tragedy. Obviously.  And 200,000 dead is inconceivably tragic.  But when it hits home, it hits home.  And when your home is ChCh, then it is an incredibly relevant, incredibly hard-hitting event. [For the record, we contributed money to Catholic Relief Services and to the Timkatec School in Haiti to help foster Haitian recovery and I encourage anyone reading this to do the same].  But for my wife, this event has deeply affected her.]

Feb. 2011: ChCh Cathedral

  So what does ChCh have to do with running?  Nothing, really.  But in the context of having a bad training week, a bad training week really doesn't matter, right?  In the context of ChCh, worries about rainy, cold weather on race day seem utterly irrelevant.  Right?  Obviously right.

I'm looking forward to the NVM.  Thoughts of ChCh will run through me.  I ran some memorable runs there.  There is that connective tissue...I suppose that is the beauty of running.  It connects you to where you run, to where you have been.  It creates memories.  I have wonderful memories of ChCh. 

Out.
B.