Karen write: First run in SPAIN!

My first morning waking up in Spain, somewhere in Barcelona to be as precise as I can. Friday morning I was in Auckland, Friday evening I walked countless miles around the 3 airports in Singapore (4 hours of walking...lots of points for the Feetbeat challenge) and Sunday morning...here I am. Actually waking up is a bit of an exaggeration, after 2 days of travel with next to zero sleep I seem to have lost the habit, I’m waiting for the desire to kick in again, probably will in the middle of a prolonged session at the conference which starts today.  There was also the minor fact that last night was some sort of concert just a street away, I went and had a look and got caught up in these rivers of people walking to the event, I stayed and listened for a while and when they got onto popular American songs, in English, I went home and went to bed.  And listened to the music and roars of the crowd while I read, then read and listened to the revelers walk, stagger, crawl home.

Then as soon as the sun started barely lighting the sky I got up and went for my first acclimatising run.  The first thing I noticed when I stepped out the door was the water on the ground.  It didn’t rain last night, I surely would have noticed?  Hmmm, not rain.  The smell was horrible, the puddles prodigious, indicative of impressive bladder size, and lots of them, but not many broken bottles and cans like you would get at home after a similarly large scaled event.  Not really sure at this point which was worse.  Anyway, I ran down a long road towards the sea, saw no other runners until out of a sidestreet popped... another kiwi.  We ran for a bit, it was light by this stage, people were starting to move around and further from the party venue Barcelona stopped smelling and turned beautiful again and we parted ways after checking a map to see how I could get home.  Are you proud of me Kate, hey I checked a map?  I  have to admit though it wasn’t actually my idea though.

So I ran...to the end of ‘this’ road and turned left, and left, and a few more lefts and rights and over an hour and a half later realised I was dehydrated and lost and quite possibly a long way and getting further from my temporary home.  Oh.  A few conversations with people who couldn’t follow me and I couldn’t follow them and I found a petrol station and a nice man who sold me powerade and when I told him where I wanted to go he got a map out and then asked me if I had a car.  Um, no.  When I told him I ran he became very concerned and carefully noted down the important road names, counted the roads off I would have to run past (15) and made sure I was going down the right road. I had done a really good job this time of getting lost, immediately lost count of the roads, but finally I saw a familiar landmark, and a bakery.

By this time the street cleaners had been, the cobbles were sparkling and the air fresh again. I ran home with another bottle of powerade and a chocolate croissant and sat in my new office (picture below) which made everything worth it. My new friend, the very small and annoying fly, who has been lurking since I got here, wanted to share my croissant with me, I said no.