As it was in the beginning, is now….

 Ironman Austria finish

Another day that seems like a Sunday, there have been so many of them. Not that I am complaining because I like Sundays. In an old life not long ago, it more often than not meant that Steve and I would start the day casually and after our morning hit of the evil caffeine, we would drive out for our Sunday run. We would leave the car at 8.10 am and start off on the standard 10 km route. Provided that she had not been late arriving, our friend Birgit would start her run of the same route ten minutes later than us and she would catch us somewhere along the route. Whether it was sooner or later depended on a number of things; one of those things would be how tired any of us were or more rarely and less likely, how full of energy we were. Other things that factored it to the possibilities would be, if any of us stopped to look at an animal/ bird/scene to take a photo.

Birgit is much more green minded than we are, although we do what we can. She carries a soft draw string bag on her back and should she see a discarded beer can on the route she would pick it up and pop it into her little back pack. She more than likely would stop at the end of the metaled pathway and take her trainers off, then to run barefoot for the mud and grass miles. She will also be reciting the Rime of the Ancient Mariner that she has been trying to learn by heart. Meanwhile, Steve and I would be jogging along enjoying the gift of nature or chatting to each other at any time we walked up a hill section somewhere.

We don’t concentrate totally as we run, because the session as much about enjoying our surroundings and being with our best friend as it is about fitness, though a need to keep our race fitness is another thing we share.

By the time we get to the finish point of the run, Birgit will be enjoying a good stretch, with her leg up on a fence somewhere. We do slightly different post run moves. We have a brief chat about how the run went and did you see this and did you see that, (bird /hare/flower/ beetle) along the way. Then we take a vote as to which tea room in Arundel we will grace with our company and meet there for coffee and cake and a more in depth talk about our own lives, what we have read, what we have seen and any plans for the coming week and anything of note in the news.

There would nearly always be an argument about whose turn it was to pay. We would then pop into the Co-op before saying “See you soon”, and returning to our homes. It’s strange how much more time we had then. Now we do three of four different types of exercise and have many more things on the go or in the pipeline.

It will be Stephen’s 70^th birthday next Sunday and we have talked about how we will spend the day, since birthdays have traditionally been well celebrated and a special age like 70 would have involved at least a night out somewhere. We spoke of it this only this morning and agreed; Fancy dinner out in a nice restaurant? No. Night at the theatre? No. Off on a mini holiday for a few days? Definitely no.  Hand stitched, self thought up, little triathlon event is a maybe, maybe early.

The best and worst of the countryside

  

                           

 Having taken our ultra early run today on a sunny morning, instead of the gales that had been howling most of last week it was a double pleasure that the run went well and we were both quite comfortable even after the 5 x 55 minute turbo training set yesterday. That at least shows that we are both in good shape; there again is a double meaning since we have both lost a bit of weight during the Covid lockdown stretch. We were determined from the start not to eat our way through the house arrest. Neither of us has any clothes left in the closet that we can’t get into easily. Steve has lost more than I have but to show the effort we have made; in my case I had two summer maxi dresses made a few years ago to cover the blubber lumps. These are now being used to wear around the house because they are too loose as besties any more; I can put them on over my head and slip them easily down without undoing the zip fastener.

I have been meaning to mention something that has been irking me when we go out running in the most beautiful countryside that is a private estate but is open to walkers, mountain bike riders and the horsey crowd. When we have such a lovely area near to us it goes without saying that when you are taking advantage of a grand estate like this one that you should show a little respect in return for having access to it.

Simple things like closing gates, goes without saying. The thing that really gets my back up is the dog walkers who make a pretence at being responsible members of society when there is anybody else there, picking up their doggies doos into one of the little black bags carried for the purpose but then when the coast is clear leaving the offensive bag with is contents on the path. It would actually be better to leave the droppings rather than a bag full of stinky stuff. Dog poo is, if you think about I, mainly meat and would, in the countryside, end up feeding smaller country creatures, mice, voles and insects. The abandoned black bag full will still be there for ages. Take your dog poo home with you people; you don’t deserve a wonderful, faithful friend, if you do not tend to the back end of the job. It is not the dogs fault.

Horse droppings are another subject altogether and not in the least offensive in fact. After our run was finished this morning we went back to the car and I took two carrier bags out of the boot. We then retraced the last section of our route and I used one bag to pick up some convenient horse droppings and place them in the second bag to take home for my garden. Steve raised an eyebrow, but said not a word when on a previous run I mentioned my intention to do this for a while, to give the garden a bit of a tonic.

When we spot any nice fresh jobbies that were close to the parking area, that is also a start point for some riders there are free for the taking. This little extra task could not have been easier this morning because there were two riders approaching us as we got to our car after finishing running and taking a couple of photos. The gentleman rider called across to me to ask if I still did all that triathlon, and went on to ask what I had lined up in the future. We waited for them to pass and walked a little way behind them until one of the horses obliged. There is nothing nasty about picking up horse droppings after all. How fresh can you get? 

Ironman Austria in Spirit

Sometimes when people have asked me how I manage to get through Ironman races, either 70.3 or in the past one of the eighteen long distance races that I have competed in, I think that it is as much a mental thing as much as anything else. There have often been times when I have been racing at Olympic distance when I have found it really hard and have asked myself why I had found a shorter race as hard as a longer one. The answer that I have come up with is, that I think you just set yourself up for the job in hand and get on with it.

When you have been racing for a few years, I tend to think that you can pull anything out of the bag when you have to. All the time you are keeping up a sound training schedule, I am sure that’s true. Of course I am not and have never been an elite triathlete; they are another breed like an expensive violin rather than one you bought on Amazon as a beginner.

The reason I am thinking this over again is that today according to my diary would have been Ironman Austria in Klagenfurt today. That is a great race and I would recommend it do any triathlete looking to try a longer race after a couple of years at standard distance. The swim is in the most beautiful crystal clear clean waters of the Wörtersee in Kärnten. We have taken many a holiday there for that race over the years. I have lost count of how many times Steve has done that race and I have competed there a good few times myself, in fact a got one of my three Hawaii slots in that event.  

Today would have been the day for Ironman Austria this year had disaster not struck the world causing cancellations for events of all kinds far and wide. Our entire race programme was postponed until 2021 as was everybody else’s.

 

Steve and I have banged on with our training determined not to get depressed and jack the whole thing in. That would have been such a waste of so many years struggling to stay fit, strong and healthy and so this morning we launched ourselves on an endurance set to mark the day.

We took a day off training yesterday and giving the light healthy eating regime a rest, ate a well planned pre event menu. This morning, my computer pinged up a notice that it was Ironman Austria several times before I deleted it. We waited until a time when we would not disturb our neighbours then set about a series of 5 x 55 minute turbo sets. Then a quick break to answer the call of nature, grab something to eat and cup of something different to drink each time.

We watched five episodes of The West Wing that we have been re-watching during lockdown. I can honestly say that the last one was not any harder than the first and that my legs were spinning at the same rate all the way through the set and the same goes for Steve. The episodes are forty minutes long and we caught some news before we started each episode making sure each set was exactly the same.

It was good fun and we really enjoyed getting through it so well. Afterwards we jumped in the bath and after that, Steve stretched out on the sun bed in the garden whilst I prepared the last stage of a little embroidery project I have been working on and I am pleased with that too.   

  

The Joy or Madness of Freedom day

                                             

So, today is the day when pubs, bars, restaurant, cafes and hairdressers etc. will be allowed to open again. They are supposed to adhere to very strict guidelines for social distancing. The TV and radio have been full of the news. Outside presenters are talking about all the excitement and that tonight is expected to be busier than New Years Eve. Well if that is the case, how in Gods name will they get the newly released public to stay two metres behind the person in front of them on a single blue line on the way in and single red line on the way out of the building? If it is a free for all like New Years Eve generally is, the crowd will be shoulder to shoulder in the pub and outside where they are expected to sit at tables the required distance apart.  Old witch that I am, looking in my crystal ball I can tell you this. It ain’t gonna happen. This is not a country where young people do as they are advised. The pub and club crowd will take it that the whole annoying period is all over.

My husband and I are still looking at this time through spectacles of a normal hue and not the rose tinted variety that is so popular just now. We will not be going out to eat or meet of mates inside anywhere for a while yet still. This is even in the light of the almost up to date- and may possibly be accepted as true- if you are that gullible-lowering death figures. Oh and of course that is provided you don’t count the couple of cities that are having a serious second wave.

We both think we will take a look at how things are at the end of this month. As a pair of older people we took our own advice in the early days of this virus outbreak and we will rely on our own assessment of the state of the world as to when we consider it safe to go out in company again. By this coming Monday it will be 18 weeks for my own lockdown and 17 weeks for Steve. Even if a couple of weeks pass in the UK when there are no recorded deaths from Covid 19 at all, we will still be careful for a while. Neither of us sees a day ahead yet when we will go out to dinner or visit the theatre or cinema or (heaven forbid) go to a party for the rest of the year quite frankly. We are happy with our open air outing every other day to run in the woods or over the downs.

Last evening after dinner Steve and I made ourselves comfy and settled down to watch La Bohème from the Royal Opera House at 7 pm. We knew it would all end in tears because we have seen this opera a number of times but none the less we did both end up in tears. It was beautifully sung and took us away for the nasty world outside for 2 hours (no interval time) and still tucked up in bed well before 10pm.

At 11.30 I was woken up by the wind blasting away at the doors and windows. Steve sleeps through anything and so it was me who got up the close all the windows that we had been leaving just cracked open at night. Having gone into every room in the house to batten down the hatches I was then wide awake, as was our little cat Birdy who had another noise to cope with. In addition to the wind, her ex boy friend, the big fluffy tom cat from down the street had come to call in the middle of the storm and was belly aching alarmingly because I had shut the garden door to the garage, where he has been known to shelter in bad weather.

I made myself a hot chocolate and played on the computer for half an hour until I felt sleepy again and thankfully the alarm was not set too early because Steve had designated today a rest day in readiness for a big bash on the turbo trainers tomorrow to mark the day when we should have been in Klagenfurt for Ironman Austria.

This morning Steve was ready for his appointment to have his hair, beard, and eyebrows cut to a close race level. This is the second time he has made race preparations for one of the important races that have been put off until next year. This is the earliest by a long way that we have ever had a full list of important races set in stone for the next year. Our 2020 race programme now has moved forward and is re-titled race programme 2021 with one extra race on it. Ironman 70.3 Venice-Jesolo in early May. 

Birdy sat and grumbled the whole time while I carefully snipped away at Steve’s hair and beard and after a while, had one of those maniac tear abouts, know only to cats, when she declared war on one of a couple of long shoe laces that we leave on the banisters for her to play with. At one point she sat completely still but looking quite mad with the lace around her shoulders like a chain of office, then howled appallingly as she dragged it downstairs for the kill. Talk about attention seeking.

Hall of Mirrors

                                                                            

 Out of nowhere I have started thinking about an idea that drifted into my dreams a few times over the last week or so. It is the seed on a new poem and that pleased me as if it had entered my head through the curly-fizzy mass that is my hair, seeped into my brain and pooled in the warmth of my heart. So I will not rush it into anything more for the moment. It can have time to germinate, roll itself around in peace and calm. I will leave it undisturbed and hopefully it will come into bud and blossom into something all on its own, all of its own.

If I were to try to make a list of the things that had been damaged in my life during the course of the slimy swamp of Covid, my poetry that was a full flooding river that just poured out when I had a quiet moment, has been incarcerated inside me. This has not concerned me unduly since I have still been writing and having decided to record this strange time as fully as I my feelings went, all thought went in that direction. Poetry needs better than what the world has had to offer for the last four months.

That is not to say that I have not written any poems at all, but because with the amount of time and thought that my diary has taken from each day I have only written a handful of my little flowers as I think of them. I have used my creative side in the peaceful quiet world of my sewing projects that have flourished.

The aim of the diary these past months has been to make sure that I have a record of how one little old lady learned to cope with a complete change of lifestyle, not quite in total isolation because my husband has been by my side every moment of the fairground adventure ride this has been. Like a cross between a ghost train, roller coaster and an evil hall of mirrors.

It has been a time of reflection every bit as much as if I had been looking into a mystic wormhole into the future. In a time like this you can’t help but mull things over, wondering if you are on the right course, doing your best to stay positive even though at times you are not at all sure about anything at all.

Time will tell, as it does. My main focus has been to try to stay healthy and that involved not just going through the motions of keeping up my training regime, but to get it done with a better attitude. The whole time has been a tremendous test for us all. Some simply found that it sure was a test, and that the test was not easy, the result was dissatisfying and most depressing. From the start I wanted to avoid feeling sorry for myself since this hateful period has been happening to everybody worldwide. Rich and poor.

The end is not clearly in sight from where I am standing though the figures are starting to look less horrifying, the fact remains that in some places where people have simply carried on as usual, a new wave of cases has occurred. That had to happen as far as I can see which is further than the end of my nose, further than my own person pleasure.

Our own small antiques export and shipping business has taken the most horrendous nose dive and that will not recover for a very long time, since most of our clients are from other parts of the world. Historically most of our clients have been from the USA and they are in a worse state that we were. They are seeing the worst of it right now and it seems to me that the only person giving out ‘Fake News’…… Is in charge of the United States of America.  

The Runday Hike

This morning it was a Runday but we changed that to a hike day. The reason was that I have been rationing out my Quinine tablets that the doctor prescribed for my some years ago after a series of dreadful night cramps in my legs. Sometimes the cramp was so bad that it caused damage to the muscles leaving bruising and swelling and what looked like bleeding inside the muscles, that slowly sank down to my foot. Right now I am getting a little bit short of the Quinine and so I have not been taking it every night to eek the supply out a bit. I usually have my prescription sent from the surgery to Lloyds Pharmacy in Sainsburys having ordered the inhalers for my Asthma and the Quinine from the surgery. I have been staying indoors since the beginning of March and so I have not been in to Sainsburys to pick up my prescription. In fact I have not been into any shop, anywhere at all since the end of February. The only reason I have left the house is, to go running at 5am every other morning. Rain or shine.

Last night I had an attack of cramp in my right calf that was bad enough for me get up in the night to find a cold floor to stand on, that helps a bit. I drank some water a slathered the calf with muscle relief gel and after I while it unlocked. This morning the calf felt bruised though, not dreadful, but a bit tight and as I said, it felt as any muscle does when bruised. Steve was concerns about it and asked if I wanted to forget the run after seeing me looking a little stiff walking. Firmly I said that it was not by any standards anything to be over concerned about and I told him that it felt better for having walked around a while at home.

So we left the house at the usual time having smoothed more of the muscle relief gel on to the calf even though it was not painful as such, just slightly tight at most. Steve said it was stupid to take chances and so we opted for a very nice walk, staying on woodland trails and the calf improved gradually as we walked along and the slight discomfort disappeared altogether quite soon. I have always been a strong walker, something I was trained to be by my mother as a young child. She was a very fast walker and I had to keep up or else.

We had a delightful walk, and all on trails that we don’t use as a rule, in fact only the first and last section was on the same old tramping ground as ever. It was so still and quiet in the woods and Steve and I never stop saying how lucky we are to have such a wonderland close to our home; a couple of miles as the crow flies.

After taking a little drive around Arundel just for the heck of it, we went home for our second coffee of the day and sat to catch the news. It seems that not only Leicester is having a new spike of the Covid virus but Bradford is also having a big rise in cases again. I do not think it is time for me to break my Covid routine and Steve is not taking any chances either after taking care so long to shield me. He will be seventy in just over a week which is a month before I am eighty one. I am so fortunate to have just a caring husband.

The read out of our outing on the ever present Garmin Forerunner this morning has the route measuring 8 km just over five miles. Five glorious miles by the way, with birds singing their little hearts out everywhere. The deer count was low. Only three of the tiny darling things on the whole walk.

We had a delivery from Ocado that arrived a little earlier than the booking and at such times the driver always rings to check that an early delivery is convenient. We are getting a delivery slot almost once a week now and so we are able to have more of the fresh food. That has been the main thing that has been a problem to a pair of people who are a bit obsessive about the importance of fresh food and vegetables. Steve uses lemons by the ton in his cooking and we are both crazy about fresh salad.

Our most common meal (every weekday), is confirmed here as either fresh salmon fillets or chicken breast with just lambs leaf salad. Lambs leaf has so many names doesn’t it? Feld salad, Nüssli, Rapunzel and no doubt many more names since it is so popular everywhere in Europe. The poor selection of fresh fruit and the infrequency of deliveries has changed our dessert eating habits that were always fresh fruit and ice cream. Now we have a home made rice pudding, or blancmange or jelly while the stay at home time continues. We also keep frozen berries in the freezer now and both enjoy hot berries over vanilla ice cream more than any other dessert. It reminds us of holidays in St Moritz around Christmas time where it is on the dessert menu at the Hotel Hauser.

The Way

London 1997 At the Excel Centre that became the Nightingale Hospital for the Covid 19 days

Every day still seems like Sunday to me and the alternate pattern of, one day drive out to run in the woods or the other day of stay indoors and turbo train as the main set, make it even harder to know what day it is. That is because we get four runs in one week and three turbo training days and then switch around. The main run doesn’t necessarily come on Sunday as it always used to. A Sunday run only comes once in a fortnight now and it may well not be the biggest or most important run of the week any more. The important point for me though is that on the alternate days we go out into the countryside, no matter which of our runs we do and those are the best days by far when we get a couple of hours with the outside world empty and all to ourselves, the birds and the deer.

There does not seem to be much reason to go out on our bikes, well not to me anyway.  The added nightmare currently is that the traffic around here is worst than ever with all the road works for the new main road into town and so driving even further to ride is not good use of time unless it seems that some hills would help.

With every event cancelled or postponed until next year the point of the high level of training is not the next race any more because that is a very distant place to focus on. So the reason to keep training is holding the health and fitness level for ourselves and whatever else life may throw at us. It keeps us safe from the unruly young, who are ignoring all guidance and endangering their elders. Their lives must mean less to them than our lives mean to us. If the only important thing worth looking forward to is to get into a bar or a beach and get drunk no matter the risk. Their lives seem to have little or no aim, purpose or direction not to mention goals, achievement or ambition.

At this very moment my husband is upstairs in our shared work room; office to him and sewing and ironing room to me. He is busy making the point that life will eventually go on, in something vaguely resembling the lines it did before the dreaded diseased days crept in. He is planning places to stay for a triple race holiday in early summer next year. However he is also making allowances for how life will have changed and also how this time in our lives has changed us. We are more cautious it’s true. We will stay in apartments and not hotels. We will only eat food prepared and cooked ourselves; we do not trust the hygiene levels of others.

On TV this week we have totally lost the plot and have been watching Alex Ryder. I can’t recommend it, although it is an interesting idea because it’s all a bit teeny for me and I presume that it is aimed at teens and the young adults. It was a mistake to start it. So I don’t even think we will make it to the end. It also seems like a very poor mans version of The Institute by Stephen King which was excellent.

We are still listening to Kindred by Octavia Butler on audible over the dinner period or any other sit down times with a cup of coffee. It will take us a while to get through it at that rate but it is very good indeed and is an excellent study of life in the dark days of slavery in the USA as well as the ‘What If’ side it has to it. Brilliantly told and beautifully read.

This morning’s training involved the same ballet workout that we have found to be beneficial in a number of ways and we both get totally absorbed within it and know we have had a workout at the end. After that we sat on our Turbo’s for a gentle spinning session and were surprised yet again when to fill the time, Steve found another episode of Frasier that we had not seen; which is hard to believe since we watched it for years and it’s still funny. Then episode 13 of The West Wing carried us through the time scale seamlessly.