In Another life

In another life, Steve and I would have been in Graz, Austria at this moment in time. We would have got here probably yesterday to give ourselves an unhurried approach to our race; Ironman 70.3 Graz. We might have driven around the 56 mile/90km bike course to check it out. Then we might have taken a stroll around the city centre and walked part of the two lap run course. We have looked at all the travel websites so we would know what we wanted to go and see, maybe take a tour around inside the Opera House. It looks lovely on the outside in the photos. We did that in Dresden during a weekend visit there a couple of years ago.

There are some marvellous opera houses in old cities and Steve and I are both keen fans and to point out how keen; this morning I had searched You Tube for Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Jonas Kaufmann singing the duet from the Pearl Fishers when Steve asked me to turn it off. I was a bit surprised but when I turned to him he had tears running down his face and it was only half way through. Two cords into the overture of La Traviata and he is off! Worse than me, or as bad anyway.

With the fact of the postponement of this event in Graz, that we had so looked forward to since we entered it ages back, last year even possibly. The only good side of the coin is that we will have the full glory of our climbing roses this year, whereas we are usually away somewhere at this time and so very often miss them at their best in the first flush of summer. We set to thinking what we should do this year.

 

As you know because I am sure I have mentioned, we like to make a big thing of our special celebration days. E.G. last year for our anniversary, which most people miss because we married on Ascension Day and celebrate each year on Ascension Day. The confusion arises because it is a moveable feast. For many years, only Steve’s mother knew when it was and made sure that we knew she knew it was our special day. Now she is gone, only we are sure to remember the day in a special way.

Last year Steve had done all the planning and surprised me with a very special day when as we drank our morning coffee he told me that I had better hurry as we had a train to catch. We took the train to Victoria, walked past Buck House, along through the park and past Horse Guards Parade to our hotel for the night. Then having ditched our wheelie bag, we went to our favourite Russian restaurant Bob-Bob Ricard for late into afternoon lunch. We prefer to walk around London and never tire of all the marvellous buildings and monuments and crowds from all over the world.

Then later in the evening we walked from the hotel to the Coliseum to see The Man from La Mancha. That musical is a big all time favourite of mine, in fact my daughter bought me the DVD years ago and I still sometimes run it as I do the ironing.  This time it had Kelsey Grammer, Peter Polycarpu and Daniele de Niese and Nicholas Lyndhurst. We stayed in London overnight and came back on the train the next morning.

We had to think again for this year with no possibility of travel. So we have decided to do the run distance that we would have been doing this Sunday were we, as planned in Graz for our big race. So we plan to link two local runs together to make a half marathon like the Graz race that we are missing off from the calendar now.

We will start our anniversary half marathon as per blinking usual these days at 5.30am tomorrow morning. Steve has been watching measurements on the Garmin Forerunner that he is a total slave to, noting parts of the runs we have been doing of late, and he has devised the perfect route for us. There will not be crowds of people to cheer us on, there will not be race atmosphere, there will not be a finish line to hold our focus on as we run, or a finish photo. There will not be a finisher’s medal or tee shirt moreover. It will however still be a special day for us and we will have marked it in a special way.

This morning dear diary, my coach told me that we would have an easier day before our effort tomorrow; we don’t usually do long runs, way too injurious for us oldies to run too far too often.

So we started the day today with three consecutive Qigong sessions, then an easy spin on the turbo for an hour. After that I did some washing, pegging out and some more gardening. Steve took advantage of the sunny day and topped up his tan a bit in the garden listening to talk radio.

Years and years ago Steve bought the contents of a small ladies dress boutique that had been stored in the spare room of the family home after the woman who ran the shop had died unexpectedly. The family of the lady had kept the clothes for forty years. We put most of them in a retro auction and made a small profit even after I had picked a half dozen items out for myself that I wore often in those days.

The reason to mention this today is that one of the items was a Russian lamb coat that I wore for years. It was very warm but quite heavy. In recent years it has just hung in one of my cupboards and I noticed that it was literally falling apart, splitting here and there; well it was as old as I am. So this morning I cut the top section off, both sleeves and collar were removed. The lining and the facing cloth of the pelts, then folded the piece to make a luxurious window seat for my little cat Birdy who enjoys sitting at the upstairs front window on my desk/sewing table to survey the world that she used to roam free in. It’s not that extravagant since the repairs would have cost the earth, and it was my coat anyway so I can do what I want, it was well past its best and totally un-saleable. Birdy loves it.