Marathon WR and Job Searchs

Last week I had my first speed session in... I don't remember how long, and as I have a very good memory, that's a sure sign this means it was way too long ago.

I got this sudden urge to do something intense which would get me out of breath and with my thights burning, something I don't do often these days, mostly it is all too tempting to go and hit the trails instead. (Pause... actually, bad example : trails do get me out of breath with my tights burning). But this time, speed work seemed like a good option : I only had 50 minutes to spare, and a very crowded mind which needed to focus on just keeping oxygenated to avoid thinking of hundreds of potentially not so pleasant other things.

So here I went, in our local forest, which has 2 distincts advantages, namely shade (important when training, as one does, at 11am in true summer heat) and a flat, half-tarmac half-dust, straight lane. Incidentally, it also had an in-residence flasher it seems, but I was never lucky enough to experience it for myself, I'll stick to only two advantages.

Considering that, see above, this is the first speed session in a very, very long time, it went well (maybe probably surely a sign that I have not pushed hard enough). I was sprinting at 20.8km/hr in the third repeat, and was pretty pleased with that (if only because I had nothing to compare it with).

But as I was running back home, I realised : this was only roughly 0.30kms/hr faster than the average speed at which Haile Gebrselassie  ran the entire Berlin Marathon when he broke the world record in 2008. And then, he did look pretty smooth, and he definitely did not look like he was sprinting.

Then, as I was running back home, I made a note to myself : as I am currently in between jobs and considering which option to pursue next, there is at least one job I clearly should NOT consider, and it is that of men's marathon record holder*.

Martin, who most of the time reads my posts before they get, precisely, posted - which means that, technically, he does not read my posts, but I am as usual disgressing – comments that this one is neither funny nor very interesting.

He's right.

Still. If you think about it, it is crazy that guy is running a marathon at my 200m-repeat pace.

Malo's Mini Milestones

Every new month , every new week since Malo came into our life, I tell myself how much I love this particular phase he is going through. Since I have been saying this every week since he was born, I have had over 80 weeks of total bliss. And every week I catch myself thinking this cannot get any better, any more fun, watching him grow. And every week, it does.

And these days, weeks are packed to the ceiling with new discoveries, new things Malo is learning, understanding, doing, experimenting, enjoying.

I keep telling myself I shoudl write them all, because I can picture him, in 20 years, having a lot of fun reading about them, but each time I forget, and I realise I have myself already forgotten so many of the small milestones he has reached, which I thought I would always remember.

So I may as well start now, and maybe it'll motivate me to write others, so that people don't think my son once reached the "saying Mama" stage... and decided it would stop there, for good.

-Martin and I always take off our shoes first thing when we get home. Now, Malo's first move when we get home from day care, or a run at the weekend, is to go and fetch our sleepers wherever we've dropped them before leaving home, and make sure they are on our feet pronto. He does not always give the right pair to the right owner, which means I may be walking around in Martin's size 46 sleepers while Martin barely fits his toes in my size 35s, but still, that's pretty neat. Now I guess we just have to train him bringing us the newspaper and a glass of wine, and we'll save ourselves getting a dog and a maid.

- he wants to do everything we do : brushing teeths, combing hair (not that he has much to comb yet), reading, driving the car (and honking in the building's garage - neighbours must love us), eating our food, sweeping the floor (see, no need for a maid) ,etc, etc, oh, and, running. He just loves running. Well, he's my son after all. And given that I suspect that, in a few years time, he'll rather go climing with his dad that running with his mum, I am making the most of it now, even if that only means, for now, running back and forth in the corridor.

- he has his own language - in his head, as he is not really talking yet - an interesting combination of German and French. He only knows Spagat (a "split" in gymnastics) and Kugelbauch (literally a belly like a ball) in German, and some only in French (altough you will have to take my word for it since I cannot come up with one single word). Food stuff however he seems to understand in both languages... special things justify special efforts. Meanwhile, I am also, thanks to my son, improving my German, although I doubt that knowing how to say "changing nappies" in German justifies changing my German from "basic knowledge" to "fluent" on my CV.

- His first word, apart from Maman, wooah wooah (indifferently any types of animal, plus his doudou), and brroom brroom (cars), was "danke" ("thank you"). His dad was proud beyond belief Malo's first "real" word was German, and I consoled myself by thinking that, if "thank you" was if his first word, I have not completely failed his education yet (although I am fully aware there will be many years to make up for this).

- Although Malo knows perfectly his dad is "Vati", he is Malo and I am Maman when I or somebody else talk about us, he will still refer to the three of us indifferently as "maman". Because I am me, and therefore genetically have to worry about things, I sometimes can't help wandering if, at 18 months, he should not be, by now, making the distinction between the three of us, I am easily convinced when Martin tells me this is just Malo's way of designating our little family, the cell in which, as long as the three of us are here, nothing bad can happen. And truth be told, the fact he does makes me feel that way, too...

- Malo has recently entered a phase where he points at us, him, or his grand parents when he recently saw them, or friends, or friends of friends, and he expects you to tell him This is Malo, This is Vati, This is Maman, and so on. The last week he started going this with everything. So right now, the only hour we have together in the evening between coming back from day care and going to bed is spent saying This is Malo's car, This is a chair, This is Malo's truck, this is Maman's head, this is Malo's arm, and so on, 20 times each. Or 30. Or 40. And I am not even bored (granted, I realise I may be, if, in a month time, he has not moved on).

- I am also just amazed how this little man who cannot even talk understand every single thing I say. I'll ask him to go into my bedroom, slide the wardrobe door open, get the red jumper on the second shelf and get it back to me, and he'll do it. On the other hand, we've been telling him for months not to throw his spoon on the floor when having dinner, and he still does. Maybe that's just too easy an order to be acted on.

- Last week, as we were on holiday, we took him to the play ground, which had a few climbing holds. You should have seen his dad almost crying of joy and pride (ok, I admit, me too) when Malo actually managed to climb up some of them. Granted, he had been reading the right stuff for a while...

PS - you may have noticed most of the photos were 100% unrelated to the theme of this post, but I just happen to love them so wanted to post them. So I may as well indulge... and add a last one...

PSS - You may also have noticed that this is my first post in a very, very, long time. I am under no illusion that anybody missed them, but in case some of you were wondering... My family aside, the rest of my life is a big of a mess these days, and I most of the time feel I am between the rock and a hard place. So, since this blog is supposed to be about fun stuff, or failing this, about not-so-fun-stuff-told-in-a-hopefull-fun-way, I just prefered not posting...

Single

I am back to being single. Well, not really single. And only for a week. But surely the longest week that ever existed.

Last Saturday, Martin and Malo left for Austria, where we will be celebrating Xmas. The particularities of French labor meaning that I won’t have any proper holiday until the end of 2011 (yes, end of 2011, and yes, that sucks), I will therefore only fly there late on Thursday night, and spend total of 1.5 days in Austria (I am so lucky). If you can count, you'll see that this means six (six!) days and seven (seven!) nights without my son. For my sin, I can count, too, which means I was already feeling dreadful last week in anticipation of them leaving, and was feeling even more so after they had left.

My mother implied I needed to toughen up a bit, to which I implied back replied tersely that she had zero credibility here, given she had clearly forgotten she herself cried the whole drive from Lyon, France, to Venice, Italy, the first time my Dad and her left me with my grand mother, aged one or so, to do and spend a long weekend in Italy's most city. Still, in all her mum wisdom, she suggested I use this week to do all the things I normally struggle to do, or dream I could do but can’t, when Malo is around.

Credible or not, she was right, obviously, and I quickly did a mental and not exhaustive list of the things I would be doing while single, in no particular order (that's my poorly disguised attempt at avoiding to be too predictable by putting all the running related things at the top of my list):

1. Take a bath and have a facial.
2. Think about something to do about this grey hair which have started to grow on my head like bad weeds since I started to work again.
3. Go for a long run without having to think it is time taken off the little time I can spend with Malo.
4. Get on my mountain bike (not because I enjoy riding on ice so much, but because Martin and Malo have left with our car) to visit friends in the mountains above Annecy.
5. Go to the movies
6. Make the traditional calendar with family photos we have been giving my grand dad every Xmas for the past few years, which I have not yet had time to do this year.
7. Think of a way to get to one of the nearest nordic skiing spots without a car, since Martin left with ours (yes, we do have only one car, which we did by choice and out of principle, and is usually not a problem, except in emergency situations such as the need to go skiing while the car is 900kms away).
8. Write posts for Malo’s and my blog in a last minute desperate attempt to avoid having zero posts written in either blog in December.
9. Go to a Christmas carol concert given by a children choir at the town's cathedral
10. Get some sleep
11. Eat rubbish (well, cheese in fact, which is not that rubbish, and which is our usual evening dinner, lazy b*** that I am. For Martin, it is different, it is a culture thing), seated on the floor or in the sofa with a book in one hand and the computer near the other, strictly forbidden by Martin, on top of being very bad for digestion.

My newly (if only temporarily) found single life started on Saturday with neither of the above, since I had to deal, instead, with one of the worst migraine I had in a long time, which started pretty the minute the minute Martin and Malo were gone. If you're tempted to see a correlation between these two facts, well… you are right. And if you're also tempted to think I am a pathetic slob, well, you're right, yet again.

I did slightly better last Sunday, since I at least manage to get out of the house. Yeah me. Initial plan was to run in the morning, then go to a friend's place and spend time with her and her two babies (aged 6 weeks and 16 months, meaning I make a mental note not to complain about being busy with Malo each time I go and visit her), then go to the concert, then go to the movies with a friend. In the end, only the visit to my friend happened, although I did also find time to post on Malo's blog. As for the runs... well, there is not much to say about the runs, since there were none. And the best thing is, I am fine with that. I am telling you, I am going to finish 2010 a zen master (Now, I pause for a minute, to allow you laughing your heart out before you resume reading).

Yesterday: I managed to write a post at lunchtime (well, admittedly, only because a lunch I had scheduled got cancelled and I could not go running instead since I had stupidly left my gear at home), thus ensuring I would have at least one post written in December. Not that this makes me feel like a prolific blogger deserving some kind of Pulizer Prize of the blogsphere or anything, but that way I may just manage not to have my account deactivated for being inactive for too long.

I also went to a spinning class in the evening. That was the first one in so long that I can’t even remember when the last time was. It is not like I am lazy or anything. In fact, I miss spinning a lot. I would even go as far as getting up super early to make it to the gym before work, and believe me, given how sleep deprived I am, that’s saying something. But the problem is, this is France, worst even, this is a small provincial town in France, and that means one can forget about gym opening at 6am and closing at 10pm like I was used to in London. Spinning classes are only scheduled in the early evening, in other words when I have my only time of the day with Malo. That means that something has to give, and since it was not going to be Malo, it has to be spinning.

But since Malo has abandoned me for six days (six days!) and seven nights (seven nights!), spinning it was last night. And man, was that first session in ages hard! It was only an hour, but after all these spinning-less months, this felt harder than the 1h30 sessions I used to go too while heavily pregnant. Coming to think about it, even my heart rate seemed to be going higher than when spinning heavily pregnant. It felt so hard that I don’t think I managed to think about Malo more than a couple of times in 60 minutes. Yep, that hard.

It was so good to be back that I decided to go back tonight. In the end, it did not happen because I got so soaked cycling back from work that my only options were going straight home or risk “catching death”, as my grand mother would put it, by having to put my soaked clothes back on to cycle back home after the session. Instead, I went home, changed into dry warm stuff, got to the supermarket, bought Baileys, walked back, sat on the floor, ate rubbish, blogged and drank Baileys, which is not that bad given I now get to tick a few things off my wishlist, and even one which did not. And man, which one! I had not drank Baileys in years, and that reminded me of my student years when, being broke, we would buy some cheap ersatz to drink between two essays on Saturday nights (Cécile, are you reading?). In a nutshell, the perfect drink for a (temporarily) single girl. And despite the spinning-free, Baileys-full evening, I am not even completely lost for sports yet, since I had gone on my usual mountain run at lunchtime. Isn't life just perfect sometimes?

Tomorrow maybe be movie night. Like spinning, that would be the first time in a while. Again, living in a small city where the latest evening show-times are at 7.00pm and 7.30pm in Annecy’s only two movie theatres, means going to see a movie is not really compatible with spending time with a one year old, who has his daily bath, eats dinner and go to bed precisely between 7.00 pm and 7.30pm.

Seeing that it is now close to midnight here, one thing I may not be able to tick off the list though, is getting some sleep. But at least I'll have had some Baileys.

A Race Report and a Christmas Tree

This is the only race photo you will see from the last race I signed up for. Which, if you think about it, it makes sense given that this is where my trail running shoes spent the entire time of the race.

I had planned everything really well. We were supposed to go and celebrate an early Xmas with my parents and brother’s family down at my parents' in the South of France. Given that I was the one suggesting it, I chose a weekend where I could kill two birds with one stone, and run as well as wait for Santa's Christmas bonenza. I am usually a specialist of deciding to do a race, talk about it a lot, train for it even more, then realise when registration is closed that I forgot to sign up. This time, I had even managed to avoid that pitfall, which can undoubtedly be earmarked as my best 2010 running achievement.

I was not best prepared. The race is 35kms long of hard single trails, when I had only done hourly runs at lunchtime and nothing longer. It is characterised by a succession of steep and short climbs and downhills, and my training sessions consisted of a 40-climb followed by 20 minutes running back down, since this is what is available near work (not that I am complaining to “have to” run in the mountains on week days, mind you).

Still, I was looking forward to it, since the scenery was said to be amazing (when, unlike last year, it does not rain sheets and you feel the entire race, this being clay, is like trying to run on a giant slide): the sea down to the South, the mountains East and West, and this huge sky that is typical of Southern France. In spite of the inappropriate training, I was still feeling confident I could place decently, since I was feeling in good shape.

In good shape, until two weeks before the race that is. Then Malo, who had not felt too well for a while, started being quite ill. And work got even busier than usual. And I started feeling quite ropey myself.

Two days before the race, I started having a very bad sore throat and could not talk anymore. A blessing for most people around me, I am sure, but one which did not mean too much good as far as the race was concerned. On Saturday, with the race being the following day, I was feeling like walking required a huge effort, and it did not take too much brain power to realise that running a hard race may not necessarily feel easier than walking.

Most of Saturday was then spent with this dilemma: run, or not run on Sunday? I was sure I could finish the race. What I was less sure of was in which state. Plus, was the point to race, or to race and enjoy it? The answer seemed to be crystal clear for the rest of the family, but as far as I was concerned, there was still this nagging little voice at the back of my mind, suggesting that pulling out would be the decision of a wimp. Well, I have gone further on the “a race should be fun, or at least, should also be fun”-road, but I am not totally there yet!

In the end, I decided to be a wimp. Why? Because this race will still be there next year. Or the one after next. Because I thought, based on previous experience, that I would deal better with not racing than with having a bad race, or even only what I would perceive to be a bad race. Because this was supposed to also be a Xmas weekend, and it did not seem to make any sense to miss quality time (note to myself: why am I using this expression since I hate it?) with the family, and especially with Malo, to participate in a race I clearly should not be doing.

This is how my trail running shoes, on that Saturday night, ended up under the Xmas tree, waiting for Santa to turn up, instead of in a sports bag waiting for an early morning start.

At least Santa ended up being considerate: for the first time in years, my shoes did not get filled with sports related stuff: he must have realised I would not have handle the frustration so well. Such consideration: clearly a sign Santa does exist, isn’t it?

 (PS - in case this post sounded a bit bitter, it would only be because I am a bad writer, not because I am bitter. It actually ended up being easier than expected not to race. Sure, I felt a bit of envy, at the time of the start, seeing that the sky was of a cloudless blue, at the thought of the runners about to start. Sure I could not help myself checking out the results in the evening, and trying to figure how I would have beemotivan able to place. But there will be other races, and, as I have said many times, I don't need races to enjoy my running and to be motivated to run hard. In the meantime, 10 days later, I am still feeling quite ill, so racing would probably have been quite stupid... oh wait, does it mean I am going to finish 2010 a reasonnable girl? Now, that would be an expected turn of event...)

Doudou Disaster

Last week could have ended up in a disaster.  

On Monday, I took Malo to the doctor to check his then two-week old ear infection. 

The appointment was at 6pm, by which time I am usually still at work.

I had a 5.00pm meeting which started late. It has begun to rain in the afternoon and I was cycling.

When I got to daycare, the Chariot, which we leave outside the building during the day, looked more like a sinking boat than a child carrier, filled as it was with water.

Then, when we arrived in front of the doctor's building, I had to struggle trying to simultaneously hold my son, try to protect him from the rain, lock the bike, close the Chariot's cover, all under the judging eyes of an old lady sheltered under her umbrella and clearly not impressed by my riding my baby around in torrential rain.

In a nutshell, all the conditions were not met to get to the appointment all cool and relax.

Considering things had not gone too smoothly until then, the doctor's appointment went surprisingly well. Not that Malo's ear was getting much better, but at least, he was really well behaved in spite of the late hour. 

45 minutes later, we were all ready to go.

Then the fateful realisation struck: WE-DID-NOT-HAVE-MALO'S-DOUDOU-ANYMORE.

Now, in case you are 1. not French, 2. not a parent yet, 3. lucky parents, like mine were, of a child without a doudou, you'll be forgiven for not knowing what a doudou is, or how important it is. To sum it up, a doudou is quite simply, for many children, most likely the third most important thing on the world after his mum and dad. And sometimes, you would be forgiven for thinking it is the most important thing in his life. He sleeps with it, needs it when he is sad, to day care, to go for a walk, and, in Malo's case, even tries to convince me I should let him take it in the bathtub. 

Malo did not have a doudou until, aged 4 months, he started going to daycare once a week, so that I could  have a bit of free time to (relunctantly) look for a job.  In daycare, the ladies looking after him suggested I gave him something that would remind him of me, ideally that would smell of me. I briefly thought about an old running shoe, realised it was not that practical, so settled on a Provence-style, rawsberry-red cotton scarf, that seemed bright enough for a small baby to be interested in it.

That worked beyond any hopes, Malo was carrying his doudou everywhere, and the only trouble was that, once in a while, I had to find a trick to separate him from his doudou so that I could wash it  dry it with a hairdryer so that it would dry faster, spray a bit of perfume on my neck, the scarf around the neck, and  give it back to Malo before he realised part of him had been stolen.

Now that Malo is in daycare 50 hours a week as a result of me working  full time, the doudou has become more important than ever. He has it to fall asleep, when he's sad, when he's tired. He even crawls around with it, and I strongly suspect the daycare manager seriously considers downsizing the cleaning staff since Malo is mopping the floor with his doudou 10 hours a day.

Now that the context is set, you can easily imagine me, standing in pouring rain with my one year old son under my arm, realising disaster had just struck and the doudou was gone.

After a last look in the surgery, the hall and outside the building, I frantically loaded Malo in the Chariot, sprinted back to daycare thinking that maybe a miracle had happened and I would find the doudou in the hall or where I park the Chariot.  No such luck.

Then Martin rang on my mobile. "I LOST THE DOUDOU", I cried in lieu of hello.

And this there was nothing else to do, I cycled back home, tears running down my cheeks. 

Things carried on going wrong. Malo was tired and crying, and did not understand why we were not giving him the only thing which soothes him straight away. Then it was story time before going to bed. Except Malo's favourite story is that of a little bear who has lost his doudou (a red one too, would you believe the coincidence?). The story ends up with the bear's cat finding the doudou and the little bear being very happy, but since Malo always needs to have his own doudou in his hand when we read the story, doing this tonight was not an option. Hell, even whispering the word "doudou" was not something we envisaged doing that evening.

It is not that we had not thought this may happen one day. We even tried to prepare ourselves, putting aside some scarves which, altough not identical to Malo's, may do the job. As tonight was clearly the night to resort to Plan B, I gave him that other scarf, a brown one, thinking that, with dim light, that may just work. It did not, and although he did end up falling asleep, it took much longer than the (admittedly quite short) 3 minutes it usually takes.

To say I was not productive at work the next day would be an understatement. I was feeling miserable, plus had a lot on my plate.  Like try to reach the other doctor from the surgery since I thought maybe some kid patients of hers may have seen and taken the doudou. Or prepare signs that I wanted to pin on the trees in front of the doctor's office and in the hall, asking anybody would would have information about the doudou to call me (yes, I was that desperate, which is why being ridiculous was not something I cared about anylonger). Gave up my lunchbreak run to instead rush to the doctor's and placard my little signs.  Giving up a run. Now, if you had not realised how bad the situation was, that should give it away, shouldn't it?

Now, if you are not a parent, the chance is you are by now finding the whole story beyong ridiculous, and feel you now need to stop reading and have a good laugh at me. Hell, maybe I would have done just that has I read the story from someone else, pre-Malo.  On second thoughts, I wouldn't, but that only because you're talking to someone who, well into her 30s, cried when she saw a lion driven around in a cage by some circus staff.

Problem is, now, I am a mum, and I tell you there was not much I would not have done that day to make sure I would not see this sad look in my baby's eyes. 

Early afternoon, I could not help calling daycare to check on Malo and how he managed without the doudou. OK, said the lady, but he clearly felt something was off, and he had refused to nap, throwing the erastz of a doudou at the bottom of the bed. Not exactly what I wanted to hear. 

Next step was to try and find a new scarf which looked like the lost one. Not an easy task, since I had been enough of a fool to give my son a scarf from a brand which has known better days and is now only sold in a few shops in Provence, and of a pattern which they have stopped producing years ago. Well done, me.


After a day feeling like the most useless and miserable mum earth has ever produced, I got home, still wondering how to deal with Malo and his loss.

Then I realised I had a message on my mobile phone. I checked the caller: it was the doctor. I checked the message: SHE HAD FOUND THE DOUDOU! We would not be able to get it before the following morning, but now, we knew we would manage another night.

We now have the doudou back. My mum has managed, through a friend who works at the firm producing the scarves, to get the exact same one (that was the last one:  I cannot believe my luck!), so we have a spare one (although I'd better keep it around my neck night and day if I want it to feel the same as the old one - good thing we're getting into Winter).

Malo has also developped a fondness for another scarf of mine, of the same pattern but bright yellow this time, so I have hopes that, if we were to lose both the old and the new red scarves, we may be able to survive with the yellow one.

And now, if the Company producing these scarves does not have anything against child labour, they may  want to consider using Malo as their new top model...  They could pay him in scarves: if he carries on being a scarf addict until he's in his 20s, that may prove a good deal for me.