The Flaws of Paradise

We have been living in our new home for three months now, and we love it every bit as much as we thought we would.

Kid n°1, with no uses of a garden and despite our best endeavour to turn him as an outdoor kid, spend the first 2 1/2 years of his life trying to levitate rather than risking touching the grass barefoot. Two days after we had moved in, he was running in the garden not only sans shoes but in the rain. That in itself probably justifies the lifetime mortgage. As for Kid n°2, she is lucky enough she will not need to know the meaning of the word "apartment" for the years to come. 

Another reason for buying a house was that we thought it would be easier to invite scattered friends and family without having them stay squeeze in the office-cum-laundry-cum-ancillary-library-cum-fitness-room-cum-bedroom-for- baby-n°2 and accommodate them in a proper guest-room instead. This has worked beyond our wildest dream, since it has barely been a week without any visits since we moved in, and we may soon need to ask for advance booking. 

Talking about fitness room, we are now the proud owners of a mazot. Mazots are little wooden huts located in the main house’s garden, where people used to store the household's valuables in the event of a fire on the main house. Well, our mazot will definitely carry on serving its initial purpose since we intend, as soon as we have some spare time (famous last words) to refurbish it and house in there our dearest valuables: turbo trainers, bikes, weights and yoga mats and use it as our in-house fitness centre. 

There is no rush though, since the main selling point for our new home, especially that time of the year, is this:

A (beautiful, can I say it again) mountain, steep single trails, direct access to said trails from home. In other words, the perfect training camp literally on our door step. 

If you're fit. 

Because nothing, I repeat, nothing around here is flat. Not a single metre of trail. And this is tough when motivation is high but stamina inexistent, the result of several months of flat pregnant running followed by a couple of months of running-less post-partum (me) or weekends spent working in the house (husband). 

Initially, it was not all that bad. As I started running again, I was only allowed ridiculously short runs, and had managed to design a loop doing figures of eight in the fields which did not involved climbing Mt Blanc twice elevation-wise. It is now that I have been able to increase speed and distance than the issue has risen, since any hour-long run around here involves at least 700 vertical metres of climbing.

I guess the answer is: get fit. FAST.

Then, as I discovered, paradise can also be scary. Why, because every house or farm I run past seem to have at least one big, bad, barking dog which has waited all day that I pass by to start running after me with an unmistakable interest for my calves. Did I tell you I was s***-scared of dogs?  

I then decided the way to go was to go away from the fields and houses and in the forest on the hills. So far, the route I am doing on my hourly evening runs involves some steep, stony trails as well as a stretch of single trail snaking amongst brambles and high grasses. 

In other words, the perfect place for runs, and for snakes, and for me to walk on said snakes. And did I also tell you I was s***-scared of snakes? And here you start thinking that it is a bit rich of me to make fun of Kid n°1 for not being outdoorsy enough, and you'll be right: I am a sissie.

As if my fight against wildlife would be stopping when I by miracle come back alive from my runs. But it isn't so: we also fighting a hopeless battle in our own garden against moles and field mice. Our garden is in a state which reminds of the most vivid descriptions of WWI battle of Verdun. I spend every morning trying to fight molehills and mice’s holes, flatten the former out and fill the later with soil from the former (knowing they'll both be back minutes later), filled with a rage that will soon make me lose all credibility when telling my kids violence is never the way.

Three months here and I have found the secret: paradise is only for the Fit, the Fearless and the Fighter. For the others, there's purgatory first, paved with steep hills, barking dogs, biting snakes and omnipresent moles. The good news is, I think I can deal with purgatory for a few years.

Good People Run

Well, some don’t, and probably not all runners are to be found in the good people category either, but that’s not the topic of this post, in spite of the (therefore misleading) title.

Today was a special day. I went for a run. Any chance for a run is good to take these days, following Adam Smith’s principle that what is rare is dear, but what made this run special was that it was a group run. And not any group run, but my first group run in… 4.5 years!

The last 4.5 years, over which we starting to live in Annecy, were not very conducive to being both a social and a running animal, between an ankle still on the mend (year 1), a baby on the way (year 2), a toddler to take care of and a demanding job (year 3), re-a baby on the way (year 4). On a side note, and for those wondering why no group runs in years 2 and 4, you may have gathered from previous posts that pregnant running is not exactly common here (I am actually still waiting to meet another Frenchie who ran while pregnant). I therefore did not want to push my fellow runners in a corner where they would have felt they had to chose between immediately reporting me to social services for acts of torture on un unborn child, or calling 911 for the inevitable premature labour that my run would induce. Hence the lone running.

Until this week that is. Having “met” another runner-cum-blogger-cum-Annecy-dweller online, she suggested I joined the GoodPeopleRun’s Wednesday night group run. First thought was: “small world”. I had actually come across that website only hours earlier while doing some work related (yes, really) research. Second thought was : “thank you, but no thank you”, since the run started at 7pm, which, in Mum’s land, is pretty much the worse time I can think of for a run, between cooking dinner for kid n°1 (everyday), breastfeeding kid n°2 (everyday), giving baths to both kid n°1 and kid n°2 (should also be everyday but is not)… in a nutshell, pick your choice and the chance is it needs to be done in the 7-7.30pm slot.

In spite (or because?) of this the little voice started working: 

 “Sure, 7pm is not very practical a time, but wouldn’t it be nice to run at a civilised time of the day, and with other people, for a change.”

…

 “Actually, if Martin, just that one day, could leave work a bit earlier that he’s supposed to and take over at home, I could probably just about make it.”

…

“… and if dinner is ready and baths taken (or skipped), this should be pretty stress-free for him and consequently pretty guilt-free for me.”

…

 “Well, it is only for 10kms anyway, so it is not like I am going to be away from home for hours.” 

Here the little voice had become so convinced that my going running at 7pm was the best thing since sliced bread that it had switched from conditional tense to infinitive.

The little voice was sold and so was I.

So here am I, on Wednesday evening, ready to fly. Martin has done his bit by being home at 6.15pm on the dot and Meije has done hers by nursing later than she normally does, meaning that I had a chance to be back on time for “dinner” without worrying too much about her being starved. As for Malo, he has cried a bit but only because he “wanted to go running in Annecy by the lake too”, which was not so convenient but made me pretty happy because any signs he may become a true runner, one day, is good to take. 

As I park and jog to the meeting place I am quite curious to see who will turn up, since a group run organised via a social media is not something I would necessarily associate with the French way of doing things. Clearly I have been away too long or am the only one stuck in the 20^Th century, because the buzz has clearly worked, and a good 20 people are there. 

Tips for always being at the front on group photos : be a girl, or better, be a short girl. I am very good at both.

Introductions, on the other hand, are done the way I remembered introductions to work in France, meaning there are none. As we set off, I resort to silently refer to my new running buddies as Runner 1, Runner 2 and so on. As I will eventually gather all my courage to ask his name to the guy running on my left, he will seem a bit shocked.  First group run, and a 50-something guy thinks I am hitting on him. Way to go and make friends, girl… 

The unbreakable Thou-shall-never-ask-your-fellow-runners’-name-on-a-social-run rule aside, some other things will never change. Like... me, for instance. Me being worried terrified I am either going to be the one lagging behind (bad) or (much worse) the one making the rest of the group slow down because I can’t keep up the pace. And I am wearing a skirt, meaning I am at risk of being mistaken for the-girly-chick-who-jogs-but-cares-more-about-appearance-but-performance. Horror.

  “Which pace should I start at if there are several pace groups”, am I debating with myself. “I mean, there is no point in starting too slow, because I can do slow on my own, and today’s group run may be the only one for a while. On the other hand, which pace am I able to hold for 10 kms, these days?”  There I realise that, 4.5 years after moving back from London, I can still only talk about pace in min/mile. This immediately spices up the debate by having me trying to decide the pace I can hold without incurring death nor shame while simultaneously trying to do the miles-to-kms conversion. 

Bottom line is, as things indeed never change, I end up being in the leading pack. At first, we’re only “leading” at 12km/hr (or, as I calculate while running – thanks Dad for all those hours of mental arithmetic - roughly 8min/mile). That’s slow, slower than my usual runs in fact, but I remind myself this is supposed to be a social run, so I refrain the temptation to start like I am running for my life be a total arse and I stick with the other-runners-whose-names-I-still-don’t-know.

At the turnaround point, we suddenly accelerate. I swear I did not do it but truth be told, I am one happy bunny. A check at my watch tells me we’re now doing 14.5km/hr… Quick mental math again. 6.5min/m? Well, it starts looking like my kind of group run. If group run = social run = chatting while jogging along, then I am not the most social runner, but surely we can do the talking later, can’t we?

Obviously, as we speed up, the little voice comes back. “Hey, it is getting faster, and I’ve not done fast for a while. I am going to look really stupid if I can’t hold the pace until the end or make the others slow down.” By now however, a competing little voice is also saying: “ helloooo! I am pushing! I am sweating! My legs are working! I am getting in the zone! I am feeling strong! I AM HAVING FUN!”

It looks like if I finish red-faced, it won't be because of shame anyway, because we're back to our starting point and I have not caved in nor have I held anybody back. I am elated, not dead.  Sure, I have been faster and for longer, but it now feels like it can all come back if I want it and try hard enough... and go to group runs. Which is fine by me, because I am ready for the next one.

And there I realise I have missed them, the group runs.

I love running. On my own. With my man. Trail running for the scenery, the ever-changing pace, the feeling of wanting to throw up when it gets real steep. Road running for the regularity which allows these “meditation runs” by the lake, lost in my thoughts, or even sometimes free of any. But I also love running trying for sheer speed. That, I have missed over these past few years because the “group factor” was missing, and I never push myself as hard as when I run in a group (and am scared of slowing everybody down or being labelled the-slow-girl-in-the-running-skirt). And isn’t that also “social”, after all, enjoying the company of other runners while using each other to push ourselves? Which is probably what the GoodPeopleRun’s “making running a team sport” motto means…

There was a time

There was a time when I knew it all.

I knew I loved running.

I knew I loved travelling.

I knew kids were fun... ish... At least for a while. Actually, only for a while.

I knew lots of running and lots of travelling did not match too well with kids (even not a lot of kids) so I knew I did not want kids.

After a while, I also knew what to reply to people (read "my mother") telling me that was selfish : wasn't making babies who had clearly not asked for it the true selfish thing?

There was a time when I still loved running but could not do it anymore because love hurts, sometimes, and sometimes it even leads to surgery, and to a 9-month running ban.

There was a time when I met Martin, who, against expectations, was probably a bit *mentally impaired* (or drunk?) since he fell in love with me.

There was a time, less than six months later, when I still did not want kids, still loved running, still could not run, when Martin's mind was still not 100% operational, and when we went on holiday in the Southern Alps Ecrins Massif. Since I could not run nor climbed, we biked, and Martin proposed.

One day, after a gruelling day-ride on the Plateau d'Emparis, we stopped by a lake, starring at the magnificient Meije Peak on the other side of the valley. 

We said that if one day we had a daughter, she would be named after that peak, the symbol of our love for the mountains, for each other, and for mountaing biking, of course.Which, of course, was a joke, since I did not want kids.

There was a time where the having-kids joke had become (a nice fantastic) reality. The reality was a boy, whose name brings pictures of rough waters and blue-grey skies instead of mountains. Meije-the-mountain was still in our life though, and running was back into it. By then, having discovered something magic going by the name of Chariot,  I begged to differ when hearing that running did not mix well with kids. And when even Chariot (or our legs) was defeated by the terrain, we could sometimes count on grand-parents to look after our boy for a few hours while his parents had decided to run and get a close-up at the Meije. 

Bless them for understanding the attraction... or maybe had they just learned the painful way how it feels to be next to me when I am run-deprived and realised it was way more pleasant to be baby-sitting Malo instead.  

There was a time, almost five years to the day after our ride in front of the Meije, when we found out I was expecting our second child. Five months later, we were told it would be a girl. Eight and a half months later - having inherited her mum's limietd patience, or heard so much about mountains she wanted to check for herself what the big deal was about, and nine months seemed to long - Meije was born.

It has been four monts now... 

 ... and our life of adventures with the two Meijes is only starting.

Oh look Maman, it's you and Meije!

... is what Malo said when he opened this, a present from his Granny :

No need to say I took it as a compliment, was chuffed Malo immediately associated a running Playmobil with his mum (note / the key word here is "running") and will make sure this playmobil set will never, ever, get lost.

Hell on the Hill

Now that you’ve clicked on the link, hoping for some gore story or a detailed account of a disaster of some kind, I can tell you this was not as awful as it could have been. 

Last Sunday was Meije’s three month-“birthday”. Since it also happened to be 30°C with clear sky, it seemed like the perfect Sunday to do our first “real” mountain hike as a family of four. This is what we see from our house…

The Parmelan behind our house

This also happens to be the mountain Martin and I often used to run up to on those pre-Meije Saturday mornings where The-girl-who-help-us-staying-sane(-and-fit), namely Elodie the baby-sitter, came to look after Malo, and where we’re hoping dying to get back for weekend trail runs very soon. This seemed like two perfect reasons to choose the Parmelan as the destination for our first family-of-four hike. 

It did not start well. 

Since we had attempted to do that same hike last weekend only to bail out when we realised it had taken us so long to get ready that it was time for lunch, we got more organised this time, packing as much as we can on Saturday night. That’s when problems actually started. You know you can forget about light, alpine-style ascents when equipped with a toddler and a baby. But alpine-style notwithstanding, how are you still supposed to pack everything you need when one parent will be carrying kid n°1 in a backpack, the other will be carrying kid n°2 in a sling, and there none of you can therefore carry any proper backpack? And thank God for inventing breastfeeding because at least I did not have to think about packing a baby bottle, a container with solution milk, water to transform said solution milk in something edible by a 3-month old, extra milk in case she is unexpectedly hungry again, therefore extra water, etc, etc… So, despite our Saturday night pre-packing, and despite Malo’s help in trying for a reasonably early start by waking up at 6.15am, it was not so early when we finally had managed to fit nappies, pads, spare clothes, wind-proof jackets, water and food-but-only-for-Malo-because-there-is-not-enough-space-to-take-fod-for-everybody. Finally we set of. By car, because it will still be a while before we can do with the kids the 1100m climb that is involved if leaving from the house, and we therefore had chosen to start from a hut half way up. 

And that’s where problems carried on. Because Parmelan being one of the mountains overlooking Annecy and parking space being available half-way up, it (unfortunately) attracts a big crowd on sunny summer days, even the usually-does-not-do-sports-unless-one-counts-watching-soccer-in-front-of-TV-as-a-sport crowd.  That means we found ourselves, 10 minutes after leaving home, stuck behind a massive SUV on the steep and narrow dirt road leading to the hut, said SUV being itself stuck because of two extra long rows of cars parked on both sides of the dirt road, preventing it to move further. Had we been able to do a U-turn at that point, I think we would have driven back home. But, as you’ll guess from what I said above, U-turns were not an option.  So we’ll try and be patient (some of us managing better than others) and not bitch against fat couch potatoes with big SUVs (some of us not managing that part at all), and by the time we managed to park, it was 11am, hence the perfect time to start a hike with a small child and a baby, no shade and 30°C.

In the end, it was all worth it.

We saw cows with their bells “singing” (Malo). Cows are very big, literally and figuratively, for Malo, these days.

We passed by disabled people being carried by volunteers on plastic chairs fixed on wooden stretchers, so that they could hike to the top, which made us say we should also try and help next year, because everybody (bar fat coach potatoes with SUVs) should have the right to experience the magic of the mountains.

We saw our house from the top, or rather, Martin and I saw it and Malo, being a good sport, pretended he did because his poor parents clearly thought that was a very big deal indeed. 

Our house is at the right of my belly (and 1100m below) ... but you'll have to take my word for it.

We also saw trail runners. One of them, thin as a stick and wearing plain, grey-ish running gear which had seen better days, was running up effortlessly. Others wore spotless bright trail running shoes (which, given how much rain we had lately can only mean they were brand new) and shinny t-shirts with the latest [fill whatever you want here: as long as it sounds very complicated and does not mean anything, it will do] technology. We could not say how fast these ones could be, since they were walking. One thing we could say though is that we know in which category we see ourselves. Call us running snobs if you wish, it is still better than being a Salomon walking ad. 

Malo was super excited about being here, on the mountain he can watch every day from the house or from the car coming back from day care, and whose name I made sure he knows perfectly already. He walked (not all the way though!) like a real trooper, climbed every rock who happened to be on his way, and a good deal of the others, and fell asleep in the backpack on the way back seconds after having said he was not tired and did not want to take a nap when we would get home.

A big and a little M...

 Meije slept the whole way, waking up on top only to be fed and survived nappy changing in the cold mountain wind. Some people were clearly worried she might get oxygen deprived, but seeing the colour of her cheeks when we got back to the hut, I think there just worried too much - and I mean, we’re respectable parents who took their girl to 1800m-Parmelan, not (yet) to Mount Everest.

Martin stopped complaining (at least for that day) about not doing enough exercise since he seemed to have found carrying 15kgs-Malo in the 2.5kgs back-pack (with additional 2l-hence-2kg of water on the way up) for a bit chunk of our 4 hour hike of our hike rather challenging was on the quads. 

As for me, I got it all: a nice day out, the three loves of my life with me, my first proper hike since Meije’s birth. And a migraine on a way back. That must have been at the thought of the fat coach potato with a SUV.

... and my two little Ms!