Two busy weekends back-to-back here! Over Veterans’ Day
weekend, I spent two days on a sightseeing tour and then ran 15k. Today is the
afterglow from our “Marine Ball;” I’ve just finished baking and icing cookies
for a party tonight as well as a dessert for Tuesday’s Thanksgiving lunch.
The 15k about killed me. I’d met my buddy at 7 a.m. to
transport to the 9 a.m. race, which was darn early considering I’d gotten home
at 10:30 the night before from my two-day road trip. I’d also not really eaten
a decent meal the evening before so the race was really rough. I finished the
14k strong three weeks ago, but it took me 11 minutes longer to run one just
one kilometer longer. That’s really not good, but I’m still trying to psyche
myself up for a half in April.
The run was about the same route as last year’s 10k, except
we jagged left at Eminonou instead of right and then added on another five
kilometers. It was chillier than I expected, but I had brought a very
lightweight jacket so I wore that the first 5k before warming up and taking it
off (which is hard to do while running with a painful shoulder). Then, with
about 3k remaining, we hit the shoreline again and it got really windy, so I
had to re-juggle and put it back on. However, even though I struggled, I forced
myself to run the last few bits so at least I told myself I finished strong.
And I hurt for a couple days alter, too. That’s the first time,
really. My Achilles heel on one side wanted a divorce, and on the other both
the knee and the hip weren’t really happy with me. Still, I feel like I’m cheating
myself if I at least don’t try the half.
The two days before, I signed on to one of those tour
companies and hit up both Troy and Gallipoli. Oh, man, I just love Turkey so
much. There is so much history here, and Troy is exhibit A. There have been
nine layers excavated, dating back to 3000 BC. The area is pretty big, but so
far, only 10 percent has been excavated. It’s pretty impressive.
There’s a replica Trojan horse, even though that’s really just
a story. Maybe it’s true, but probably just something that Homer, et. al., have
popularized. But it’s really cool, and I love to take pictures of archaeological
stuff like that, even if photos don’t do it justice.
Saturday was Veterans’ Day (happy birthday, Dorothy!), but
the rest of the world knows it as Remembrance Day, and when I made my “I wanna
go to Troy and Gallipoli” plans, I totally didn’t put together the importance
of Remembrance Day in Gallipoli.
There were multiple Ozzies and Kiwis on my little tour bus,
and one of the Kiwis had made it a retirement bucket item to see Anzac. He had
retired the Friday prior, and it was that important to him to see the place.
We had a Remembrance Day service and the tour guide gave us
each a rose to put on one of the graves. Most of the headstones had the same
words inscribed but a few had personalized. I found the marker (and these were
people who were “believed to be” buried in the areas) of one 18-year-old
Australian who had “He gave his life for his friend” and it got to me. He got
my rose.
Other than the Mel Gibson movie, I really didn’t know much
about it, including what “Anzac” meant (Australian and New Zealand forces in
WWI), and it really was enlightening. And that’s on both sizes s- the Anzac and
the Turk.
The campaign itself was pretty awful – nine months for Anzac
troops to try to move about 2k straight up a cliff from a beach. The tour took us to the beach and wound
around to see what’s left of the trenches (lots of erosion) and up to the high
point they were trying to take.
On the Turk side, it was what put Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on
the map. He went on to found modern-day Turkey and is highly regarded, to put
it lightly. His image is everywhere, including in practically every one of my
local colleagues’ cubicles. I didn’t know that he was from that region of
Turkey and had, so to speak, gotten his start at Gallipoli.
So busy weekend last weekend and so far this week’s been the
same. Our Marine (It’s A Birthday Celebration, Not A) Ball was last night and I
am just so glad it’s done. Most everyone had a good time, which is good, but as
a person who doesn’t drink, cannot dance and really hates to dress up, it’s
kind of my trifecta of hell. The only thing that made it bearable for me was
that there was an amazing birthday cake involved.
But, since I was basically the person who finagled it to
bring down the ticket cost from $60 to $30 and get an open bar, plus I
organized the transport shuttles coming and going and pointed our Marines to an
incredible baker for that amazing birthday cake, I felt I had to go.
I had two pieces of cake.
I’d wanted to leave at 10 p.m., right after the birthday
cake part and before the dancing but our motor pool guy begged me to stay and
help him get everyone home safely, so instead of being in bed at 10:30, I
arrived home after 1 a.m.
Today, I’ve been trying to knock a few things out before
going to another little get-together. It’s feast of famine for me. We have a
luncheon on Tuesday and not many people have signed up to bring stuff so I’m
trying to make a dessert (cookies) and three side dishes (veggies/rice,
stuffing, okra) but I decided that the side dishes will have to wait until
Monday night because they’ll get nasty.
Tomorrow starts another rough week at work, but it’s rough
in the “there’s a lot to do” vein. I got a cortisone shot in my shoulder this
week and have a follow up tomorrow. It’s helped, which confirm there’s
something wrong with my shoulder, but there’s still other pain so I have to
figure out what to do on that.
My only really downer this weekend has been that I am too
busy to have scheduled a massage. I could really use one.
No comments:
Post a Comment