One's a Cunning Runt...

i'm sitting in the durban botanical gardens as i write this. ducklings are swimming in the pond and numerous brides and their grooms are wandering the grounds with a throng of best men, bridesmaids and photographers. It's four hours until yizkor services start so i'm lost and found in contemplation.
tomorrow is my first attempt at a marathon and i'm getting nervous. i've loaded onto my cellphone the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and the restaurant at the end of the universe both read by douglas adams himself. any bets which will die first? me or my battery. if my battery dies first it's gonna be a boring run. if i die, know that i died doing what i love: clutching my chest and bleeding from my ears.
but seriously folks, wish me luck. i'll need it. especially now that i know there are other qualifiers for the comrades that are accessible. giving up is now an option... I learned this when i joined the required running club so that i could get a license number and bib number. so i'm now a member of the 'the collegians harriers' running club. the exact opposite of what i set out to do. i hate running for the sake of running. i use marathons and triathlons as litmus tests for my lifestyle. should i eat less pizza? drink less beer? smoke fewer cigars? if i can complete a half iron man still, i'll assume i'm doing ok.
there's a yellow-greenish bird above me in a tree that looks like a flying tennis ball. the tree in the picture shown on this page is full of their bulbous nests.
temple services have been nice so far. joelene found me a reform synagogue in durban. lots of hebrew but lots of the prayers i'm familiar with. the rabbi, rabbi avidan, has a melodic tone to his speech and, maybe because he's relatively new to this congregation, his sermons don't try to be topical or esoteric. i've enjoyed his sermons in much the same way a math nerd such as myself loved that math program (produced by caltech i think) that explained geometry through trig through calculus. looking at the foundations and basic principles that you already are familiar with but this time through a microscope.
after the kol nidrei service i approached the bima to speak to rabbi avidan. he was welcoming three students from america. one of them was from palo alto. the other two were from new york. "JEWS FROM NEW YORK?!" i also asked him for copies of his sermons. on the backs of which i'm writing this. in his office he noticed me looking at some photos on the wall. "that's me with richard gere". in the movie "king david" a young rabbi avidan went from being religious consultant to the film to stand in for a bit part. he also shared a story with me and a friend of his, once their wives had walked ahead a bit, about the time he got a tick on his left testicle. i swear i only sort of directed conversation in that direction.

it's thursday now. after yizkor i broke the fast with the lipschitz family. they were beyond nice and i stuffed myself with every manner of fish. gefilte, lox, and mackerel i think. i stayed late watching the semis of the t20 cricket world cup (taking place a few kilometers away) between champions australia and india. i drove back to pmb, got my running stuff together, drove to joelene's and set my alarm for 03:20. you have four hours, my phone told me, until your alarm time.

moments later it was 3:20. half and hour later, joelene and i were out of bed and hitting the road for durban again. knowing that i probably couldn't keep it, i promised that if joelene drove there, i would drive back. my nerves were acting up. my 1/5 odds of finishing this race were feeling very optimistic. i felt maybe 1/1,000,000 now.
when we arrived at kings park i looked around and felt out of place. i'd bought a water belt and a bunch of gu. nobody i saw around had one. i left it all in the car. i did decide to take the cellphone with douglas adams and i made my way to the start line.

not taking any gu with me turned out to be a MAJOR mistake. every 5km or so there were stations but all they had was water and... COKE!!!

i know that gatorade's slant was "puts back what you lose when you exercise". i guess that when one exercises, they exhale carbon dioxide but i'm not sure i need to drink coke to replenish that. i usually just belched most of it back out a few steps later. beer would have been better.

before i knew i'd made a mistake i'd realized that a group of ten runners, one with a flag strapped to his head, were swapping positions every several minutes. eventually they explained they were running at the exact pace to qualify for comrades (5:00 hours) and i should join them. eventually i fell in, weary that if i should have to take a break, i would fall behind the pace. i wanted to stay a little ahead.

didn't matter. at kilometer 18 or so, my calves started tightening up and by 26 i said farewell to the two remaining runners in the group and walked... nay hobbled, back to the car. joelene hugged and kissed me and told me she was proud of me. she'd finished her 10km in sixty minutes and earned a medal. if i'd signed up for the half marathon instead of the full, i'd have earned a medal too.

c'est la vie.

joke: "what's the difference between a toned goy and an atoned jew running a marathon?" "one's running faster and the other's a fasting runner". i think i made that one up just now. pertinent to any and all marathons that take place during the high holy days.

joelene nursed my frail body until i was good enough to freely move around the house again.
i felt like my lower body had been run over by an 18-wheeler. so i guess i learned a lot about what i should do next time to stand a better chance:
a.) don't fast the day before,
b.) take gu with me,
c.) put phone in 'offline' mode so incoming messages don't crash the audio book,
d.) get plenty of sleep the night before, and
e.) train.
the only things i did right were
a.) listen to douglas adams as a distraction from the monotany and pain, and
b.) stop before i hurt myself.

to conclude, joelene and i hired the film "wonderland" a few weeks ago. it dramatically chronicles the murders in los angeles that allegedly involve porn star king, john holmes. turns out south africa had their own version of john holmes just a century earlier... here's the wikipedia article on "saartje baartman". it's quite sobering as to the exploitative (human) nature of yesteryear's english society so don't read it if you're not ready for something heavy.

lastly, tune in for the next blog entry where i explore my first interaction as well as my first "altercation" with south african law enforcement. it was everything i was told it would be.