Running Mad…rid

All of my posts so far have shown me outside of Madrid. For some reason I’ve been putting off writing about actual Madrid. I don’t know why but it’s hard to write about; how do I start? Destinations are easy. I went here; I did this; look, pictures! Everything fits so nicely in one post. I’ve been in Madrid for almost three months now; that’s a lot of words and pictures to fit into one post. So what’s the best way to break things up? Where do I begin? Well, let’s start with running. That is the general theme going on here so I’ll start with me running Madrid. Not running Madrid (although I did see the king’s hand once!) but literally running the mean, hilly streets (and parks!) of Madrid.

When I first arrived to town, we lived in Lavapiés so I pretty much had El Retiro in my back yard and quickly learned to get lost (and then found…wow, I’m so deep) in the labyrinth of tiny pathways, all the while admiring the small fountains, the scattered monuments and the golden colors of autumn.

The following month, Lauren and I found our permanent home in Madrid which happened to be right next to the Parque Deheaven Dehesa. Okay, okay, I’ve made that joke elsewhere but let’s just look past that and let me have my fun with words. But seriously, doesn’t this kind of look Iike heaven?

Those views are worth running for if you ask me, but then again so is beer. And so I find myself at that time again: training season. The time of year where Liz and I decide that it’s a good idea to run 13.1 miles (there was that one time that we thought 26.2 miles would be a good idea) motivated only by visions of beer and a medal. If you’re thinking ‘that’s not enough motivation to train for a half marathon’, well, you would be right. By the end, training almost always ends up being replaced by talking about training while looking at motivating pictures. But it turns out that beer and medals are just enough motivation to run 13.1 miles on a Sunday morning while the rest of the world is still sleeping. Although somewhere along the line, we got old learned that mimosas are actually much better rewards. So, eleven weeks from today, that’s where you will find us: chugging up one of Madrid’s many hills and chanting “medals, mimosas, beers…medals, mimosas, beers.”