The heat's gone to my head

 

As of 6 pm today,

68 days

15 hours

23 minutes until the Berlin marathon.

Life is happening at the same time as training. 

The heat.

The trip to Brighton.

The visiting parents.

The heat is nice, and suffocating.

No long run this past weekend. Panicking... hmm kind of, butot yet, not quite. Fitness is good because of the indoor workouts with the fan blasting on my everything. Tara resuming training nicely after Covid.

This past weekend we went to Brighton for one night, the whole family. Having done a 7ish km before leaving on Saturday, I indulged into a late night beer and chat on the seafront balcony - bliss... Brighton is so buzzing and alive, and somewhat a culture shock for my visiting parents from Romania - they said it looked like a carnival!

Sunday morning I wished I ran along the shore like the tens of other people.. but my hangover was noticeable... a good thing, I suppose, since I have been indulging in alcohol less and less since running regularly.

Then, the family. My parents are here for 2 weeks, and as relaxed as I am with them, I'm still in 'host-mode' - although all I do is ask everyone if they're ok, whilst they're catering for themselves. I've shown my mum some video-logs on youtube of laymen like Tara and I who have run the Berlin marathon for the first time, and she is reassured now that it's extremely highly likely that we'll finish it and might even have a great time doing it. She had assumed (it came out now) that I'd plunge in head-first without too much thinking of what will entail, then be too competitive, but too unprepared, and therefore possibly a danger to myself. Thanks, mother.

But that got me thinking about family, and relationships with, and within family.

Because it grated me the wrong way that she conceived (I'm clutching my pears, saying this) that there'd be traces (I mean, huge chunks) of irresponsibility  and naivety in me, and that I wouldn't quite know what I was doing. Pardon me!? Moi, myself?!? - safe space to bite yer  head off here, mother, figuratively!!

It looks highly likely that she may have contributed to my motivation.

I think with the word/concept/idea of family there is the extremely, extremely loaded expectation of unconditional love, and support, understanding, empathy. However, In real life, families seem to me to be just like any other group of people, where there are compatible personalities, temperaments, values, motives and also, incompatible ones.

And expectations cannot be met all the time, although by the definition of 'family' they are a priori things. So the unconditionality and conditionality of support, love, empathy etc are more obvious, or more defined. And when expectations aren't met, it can hurt; and when they're met, they can be taken for granted ( 'because that's what families do').

It all seems very complicated, it's not, really, really, really. Like navigating in a liquidy stuff that has by default some tieing H2O , but also various other viscosities, and miscellaneous stuff - and always keeping head above the surface on floats of diplomacy, understanding, empathy, love, promises fulfilled, promises broken,  toxicity, and triggers to-..  My poor mum- she's not that bad, she just made me think about things a little. Triggering, she was.

Which brings me to our friends- where expectations are more levelled, more realistic, where responsibility and support is dealt with in a more manageable way - therefore maybe more honest, where you don't feel suffocated or constrained or cheated out, because you started from a different position;  where you celebrate with joy whatever you want/feel like celebrating without anyone peeing in anyone's cornflakes -- I am talking about real friends, not those that we all know someone like that.

So the point is.. yeah, it may have been a crazy thing to do, but we're doing it. Or it may have been a perfectly unavoidable step in whatever journeys Tara and I were on when we decided to do it.

 And we definitely don't think there's anything unrealistic crazy or naive about our raising money for charity.

 

Oh man.

  The heat, the heat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!