Buona serra (2)

Ran the Vienna halfmarathon in 2.02.31 yesterday, to the strains of Rossini's 'Barber of Seville'. It's wonderful running music. Raced to the finishing line singing 'Buona Serra'. Will always remember that now!

Music for running to

Apart from flying, running is for me the best way of listening to music, too (though currently I am training myself to listen to music while I am working; that's only possible if I'm doing something that does not require exceptional use of brainpower).

Randomising is nice, so I hear different things; also because it goes on and on, and I generally run for longer than the average CD. If it does not shuffle I'll have to shuffle my feet instead while finding the next desirable track - and that messes up my time. It would be lovely to run with one of those tiny ipod thingies, but at 1 Gb hardly anything fits on it at all, and I'd spend all my time administering and reorganising music from the big 'un to the the littl' un. So instead I hope I won't get robbed.

It needs to be continuously reasonably loud - so the Schnittke viola concerto and Kancheli Styx are out. They may have loud moments, but also extreme quietness, and that's no good. A bit of a beat is nice - does not have to match the pounding of my feet.

• Rossini operas are great for running - they have a nice pace and you can do the actions very nicely...in Tbilisi women running in the streets are a rarity anyway, so it does not matter if you look a bit more crazy.... just have to make sure that although my lips may move that the vocal chords are at rest. For a while the Barber of Seville was my constant running companion - now I know the first hour and a bit very well.....
• Big symphonic music is lovely; today I was listening to Schumann's symphonies 2 and 4 at my desk; they would work well. As do Shostakovich symphonies, probably also Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky (bit shocked to see I have none of his music..Probably not the ballet music, though, especially the dance of the four little swans). I discovered the Nielsen symphonies...
  
• Bach's got the beat, and the relative loudness, but his music can be a bit dry for running, unless it's a Passion or the Mass in B Minor. The Ciaconna would not really lend itself. Also most baroque pieces are relatively short, and that throws the rhythm. Though in those passions those endless boring chorales really are quite a passion killer, especially when he uses the same tune all the time (even if it may be treated differently each time).
  
• Chamber music is probably not ideal, though I remember hearing some piece played by Geringas with Nemtsov which was rather powerful stuff - but can I find it now? ...Have I lost music off my Ipod???
  

My feet hurt!!!

After running about 14 km on Saturday and 12 km on Sunday my feet are hurting! One has been doing it on and off for a bit, but now the other one has come out in sympathy. But it's just my normal running distance.

It seems that you are supposed to replace your running shoes quite often....The pair I've been using in Georgia is the first pair I bought once I started running, about 3 years ago. There's a newer pair at home in Vilnius. I mean, how many pairs does a person need?

Maybe lots? They tell me that running shoes should be replaced every 800 - 1200 km. At 30 km running per week that's about every 6 months, at 150 Euros a pop. I wonder if you can get a quantity discount? Someone I know has 8 pairs - a bit obsessive?

Plus in Vilnius it's not so easy getting a good range of running shoes, so I need to get the ones I like by mail-order....

Running ain't cheap!

Autumn runs

Tbilisi is back to normal, with the usual percentage of policemen about (though up a back street I spotted a bus full of soldiers and riot gear). Buf of course we still have a state of emergency. (In Lithuania we were near it once, due to a drought, but the government could not afford it because it would have had to pay back the pensioners their rouble reserves. Don't ask, I don't understand it either. Anyway, no such worries in Tbilisi). I had worried about going for a run, but actually, it's ok.

In terms of lurking soldiers, at least. There are other challenges, however. It seems that it has rained a lot. This has lead to mudslides. Not big ones, just the mud around the cobbles has been washed all around them. So you are running on muddy cobbles, which are wet, and with the sun relatively low, you can't actually see the ground very well. In Tbilisi you definitely want to see the ground if you don't want to break your legs!

Add to that the fact that I have run on relatively flat ground for the last few weeks and you can see why today's outing was a bit of a struggle - quite amazing, really; I thought I had not done too badly in recent weeks, but there we are...

Not running

On Saturday I went for a long run, after a break of just over a fortnight (though plenty of long walks had been had). It went great! Brilliant, I thought, I can get away with weekend running only.

Ha! On Sunday I went for another run and found myself creaking everywhere; managed about 35 minutes which ain't much.

The problem had been that to go running during the week I used to get up half an hour earlier; and as it is beginning to be a little dark around that time, that had become really hard.

The solution has now come to me .... unfortunately....I get up early at 6.30 every morning (with a 10 am start to work...). Went for another run this morning and still found my legs quite reluctant. I'll have to keep running and running and running....

Of turtles, snakes and a goat kid

Running in the town of Tbilisi has its challenges, not least the stares by people - but I am getting used to those, since going to work in a short skirt with bare legs also causes much interest. I'm waiting for the day I cause an accident because someone did not pay attention to the road! I hope it's just because it's only May, and people think that it is not warm and one should not have bare legs, when in fact at night I am sweltered in my bed because the landlord still has the heating on. I wish it had been like that in the winter!

Anyway, so on Saturday I went for a run, and decided to head up into the hills above my house. Landed amongst others in someone's garden, and later found myself defeated by dense jasmine and lilac thickets. That's quite apart from the thorn bushes you really don't want to grab hold of as you drag yourself up the almost vertical side of the mountain. So then the population had to contend with a foreign woman wearing shorts and covered in blood running round their city - amazing how much blood tiny scratches can produce!

Yesterday then joined the hash on an outing to Rustavi, formerly the second largest and very industrial city of Georgia. It's quite run down, now, with people living in masses of Soviet concrete blocks, but there is not much work there now - though it isn't the poorest city in Georgia by far!

Our running spot was in the mountains above Rustavi; a beautiful landscape, a bit like Scotland, what with them having not a single tree, or indeed thornbush. Extremely green just now. The only other inhabitants of those mountains were some shepherds with herds of cows and flocks of sheep; the bunch of noisy foreigners running about their pastures rather startled them, but not the animals. Here we met the turtle, strolling, rather faster than the average domestic turtle, around between the rocks and small bushes. The snake slithered away too fast for me to see, and the little goat kid popped out from under a bush, not a mum or other goat in sight. I wonder what had caused it to be there on its own? Eventually we united it with a shepherd (of cows)....