So Im kinda bored and though I might share a story. I woke up this morning around 930 ish, France time, to find that my host family is no where to be found. This is not unusual as they are a very active family and I figured they might be out playing tennis or riding bikes. I was not planning on doing anything major running today becuase yesterday I biked 26 ish miles and the day before I swam about 3/4 of a mile in addition to running. So I sat out and read my book for a while and went and took a shower and fooled around on the internet like I usually do and finally my host dad comes home and he has just gotten back from a run and he sits down on the couch and he cracks open bottle of Hoegarden. We begin to talk and it turns out he just got back from a 3 hour run up in the mountain trails around our town. I knew he was a runner but that kinda of amazed me. First that he did that, and second the first thing he did after was drink a beer on the couch. We got more into talking about running which is difficult as my French is bad but he speaks a little english so it works. I have already agreed to compete in a Sprint Triathlon with them in a week and today he asked me if I wanted to run a marathon with him the weekend after. I said I couldnt because I am going to Paris to which he replied that was ok and that I could still do the next week. I again respectfully declined but somehow he got me to agree to a half marathon trail run instead.
Little did I realize that my host dad is actually a ridiculous ultra distance runner. Every year he runs a 50 or so mile race through the mountains around lake annecy and also another race that goes around Mt Blanc that he says is 300 kilometers and took him like mid 40 hours to run I think.
Long story short I was inspired slash felt kind of guilty for not running more and went out for an actual run and now I feel a lot better about myself.
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That's pretty awesome. Not everyone in France agrees with him, though: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124269273787132707.html
ReplyDelete"Of course, some people "jog" purely for fitness purposes and hate it. This might explain why the French were recently in an uproar after photos surfaced of President Nicolas Sarkozy in shorts and a T-shirt breaking a sweat in the Tuileries. Running is an American activity, the French press claimed, a fascistic act designed to manage and control the body. Not an intellectual pursuit at all. "It is about performance and individualism," one writer wrote, right-wing values antithetical to everything cherished by the country that gave us foie gras."
And that's one reason (out of thousands) why the french suck mad D.
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