Doin' Dougga

Mon Dieu! (which is probably my favourite things to exclaim in French - the language learning really isn't going so well...) Dougga is extraordinary.

This is the final post that I'll do to catch up from my Parents' trip here - we took a day trip to Dougga, and I must say, it was without-doubt my favourite day. In fact, I'm gonna put it out there and say that it was my favourite day in Tunisia so far, followed in close second and third by My Birthday and last Saturday (where I did all that running, had a 5-course lunch at El Walima, went to the zoo, and then to a wedding - which I'm gonna tell you about in a hot minute - and then a nightclub and danced until 4am. Sometimes you've just got to dig deep) respectively.

When you ask people about Dougga, they go all glassy eyed and say, "Uhh, it's UrrrMAY-ZING!" and I didn't really believe them, because, other that the great one-word reviews, I had heard little about it.

But it blew me away. Completely

So let me give you some blurb - Dougga is an Roman City, about two hours from Tunis by car. The Roman buildings are largely excavated, although sadly, many of the mosaics and statues, have been removed and placed in the national museum (Or the British Museum... hmm... Sorry Tunisia... but at least study of the stolen plaque from the Punic-Lybian Mausoleum has made it possible to decode the early Berber language - Silver linings?). The attitude to preservation here has been to put things back where they belong and to rebuild and restore. The effect is breath-taking. You can walk down the Roman streets and actually imagine what it was like to live there, to be a Roman, living in North Africa, it all feels so real.

In Dougga, there are nine impressive and gigantic temples, but my I liked the Theatre best. Standing out on the stage, looking out to the tiered seating, you feel like a complete Thesp' and you can just imagine a huge crowd sitting and watching you, in their togas. The design intricacies in the theatre are flawless, there are even prompt boxes either side of the stage and under the stage there are a series of hollow pipes for acoustic dampening of the stage area (oh, did I tell you I have a Master's Degree in Physics and love all this stuff?) 

 

I took a picture that does not do it justice at all, but at least you can see my Dad's hat in there. What a hat. He wore it constantly. With pride. I kid you not.

The temples really were something. These people were sinners, or religious, or something... but they certainly felt that they needed a lot of temples. There are temples to the deities Mercury (god of travellers, traders, messengers and writers), Minerva (goddess of wisdom and arts), Pluto (god of riches), Saturn (god of time) and Juno Caelestis (goddess of protection and council), and others like the Temple of Caracalla's Victory in Germany which is dedicated to the Imperial Cult at Dougga (like a Roman "royal family"), August Piety, Massinissa (a local king) and The Capitol (which I liked because it reminded me of the Hunger Games), and which is pictured here:

Roman mythology is so interesting, I've got to get on that. As well as a deep history of Roman dominance, Tunisia also gets some good features in Roman fiction, for example in Homer's The Odyssey, the island of Lotus-Eaters refers to the Island of Djerba, the largest island off the coast of Tunisia. I clearly have some studying to do.

There's also a really interesting structure called the Trifolium Villa ('Trifolium' means 'Clover' and there's a Clover shaped room - isn't learning fun?). I loved this because it's surrounded in a cloak of mystery. No-one knows what such a large villa (seriously, huge, and it was two-stories) was up to in such a small town, or who it belonged to. Some people say it was a brothel, others a hotel... it's clear there were plenty of bedrooms and it had it own private bathhouse - pretty fancy pants! I love it when historians just don't know the answer. I like our ancestors to be able to keep a few secrets from us, just to keep us wondering. Here's the courtyard of the Trifolium Villa:

The history and the buildings aside, the thing that make Dougga so lovely is the deathly silence. The pure, eerie quiet when you can just hear the birds and the wind. It's everything that Stonehenge should be. It's magical. It's my favourite place in Tunisia.

As this is my last post about the recent good family times, I suppose I'll use this opportunity to thank my Super Brilliant Mummy and Daddy for coming to visit me. We had fun, huh? You are welcome back any old time, You Krazy Katz- However, let's all work on our timekeeping next time, shall we? Because being last on the coach at every single stop, is not my idea of a good time... And taking pictures of me, while I get narked off and shout at you to "hurry up"... not cool...

Otherwise - I love you millions x

Well, it's certainly not a sprint...

Marathon training is long. And I don't even mean long like 26.2 miles. I mean 'long' like British slang for tiresome, tedious, is it really worth it? long. But, of course it is, and I am very glad that I haven't given up up to now... even though I am quite sure that the worst is yet to come.

My long run is getting longer (now we are talking distance... do try to keep up!). This weekend, I tore through 23.5km. I run so slowly, sometimes I think it's a bit of a liberal interpretation to even be saying 'run'. But for now, I suppose I just need to work on building up the distance.

Here's my watch, isn't she lovely? I got her for my birthday and she does all sorts of things that you couldn't imagine and I am yet to discover.

I'm still running without music, and lately I've been running without company too as my running buddies have been injured or on missions (yup, they actually call it that in my job, it never gets old). It's not too boring though, Tunisia keeps me busy, early in the morning there are stray dogs to avoid, then as people start to wake up there's lots of honking and, what shall we call it?, verbal encouragement. The cars that take their time to loop the next roundabout and drive past you again to make sure you heard their helpful jeers - they are the ones that really spur you on. But sometimes (rarely) I'm impressed. Yesterday, a big car of girls drove past me and one shouted out:

Prends un taxi, Madame!!

Thanks Tunisia, I like. She got a little smile.

Also keeping me busy is the ill-maintained pavement and the narrow pedestrian walkways. I took a little tumble this week, not too bad, but it really taught me the importance of running with a phone and money, just in case. I cut all the palms of my hands, which has been very troublesome, as it's been a week of professional success, and I keep eagerly high-fiving people before remembering the hard way about the damage to my hands. This is also hindering my handstand practice.

I also cut my elbow and arm quite badly, and it's amusingly disgusting. The other day the blood/puss combo saturated the plaster on my arm and even seeped through my coat lining making a visible blood stain on the outside of my beige coat. Incredible. The silver lining to this cloud, of course, is that in a weeks time I'll have some fantastic scab-picking to get on with. The anticipation killing me, but I think we all know that if you go at a scab too early, you only regret it.

And that, boys and girls, is me done for the night. xx

La Guerre des étoiles en Tunisie

Legend has it that on driving through the salt desert of Matmata in Central Tunisia, on a tourist trip to visit the Berbers, George Lucas felt so inspired by the landscape that he decided to use it as the backdrop for his glorious Star Wars series.

Here's a little sidenote: the French title for the saga is: La Guerre des étoiles, the war of the stars... one war, many stars. Whereas in English: one star, many wars. Read into that what you will...

So there are several sites you can visit, but we went to two, Lar's Homestead in Matmata and Ong Jemel in the desert, close to Tozeur.

Lar's Homestead

Lar's Homestead is in Matmata which is prime Berber country. The Berbers are a semi-nomadic ethnic group indigenous to Tunisia and Algeria. Their rich culture has grown and developed with the spread of Islam and with the global technological developments, for example, although many chose to live in cave dwellings, they commonly have a plumbed toilet, electricity and television satellite.

Lar's Homestead was filmed in one of these such structures, and although much of the set remains, it is in an 'interesting' state of repair, many of the parts having been repainted (in different colours?) since my visit last year. Still, it's pretty exciting and fun, and most tours that are passing through here stop at the set (which has now been made into a hotel) for a traditional Tunisian lunch (which my fussy-eater Dad did manage to eat, after confirming that nothing on his plate had figs in it).

Ong Jemel

Ong Jemel literally means 'Camel Neck' (or 'dromedary neck'?) and refers to a large sandy camel-necked shaped hill nearby. It's accessed via a 4x4 joy-ride over the desert from Tozeur and is literally in the middle of a sand filled abyss. I had done the 4x4 joy-ride thing before, so if you are organising this, you need to make sure that your tour goes through Ong Jemel as some cover other parts of the desert.

The Tunisian tourist board has wildly underestimated how exciting this location is. You will be surprised not to find a gift shop, tour guides, or even a person dressed up as Chewbacca for the photo ops. But then, there is no French word for entrepreneur...

 

You should also note that I rocked an incredible headstyle for this touristic exercise - facilitated by Easter gifts from my sister, Kat. When you also understand that we had to be on the tour bus at 5am that morning (oh yes, "5 o'clock in the morning... conversation got boring", when Lily Allen is just creeping up to your bedroom, I was climbing those coach steps) and we got our wake up call at 3:40am in order to have breakfast first. Who wants to have breakfast at that time? (who am I kidding? I ate two doughnuts!). Anyway, when you consider that, then my hairstyle is nothing short of spectacular.

... And she knows it...

Holy Zeus! In Sousse!

I've been so busy! First my parents visited and then I had a two week training course, which sounds like fun, except that you have to attend lectures all day, complete assignments and coursework and also continue to keep up to date with your day job... lest your return workload will rise up and crush you... This is what awaits me as I return to the office tomorrow - pray for me.

In addition, the new beautiful and amazing GPS watch which I received for my birthday has encouraged a competitive demon within me, and him aside, I have been really enjoying racking up the mileage of my runs and did a total of 40.9 miles last week (and yes, I'm taking that .9 thank you very much, because I deserve credit for every footstep). More on running later.

Anyway, sorry for taking 150 years to get back to you with this one - and please all stop your moaning, especially you, Dad, because, let's be honest, you already know what happened on our great trip to central Tunisia, and all of your comments about my blog not being updated are born out of a desire for stardom. He's your moment to shine. Granting me some liberal artistic license. Naturally.

When you live overseas and you spend a great deal of time on skype calls coaxing your family back home to send you biscuits and Anglophone magazines, it's difficult to know how to play it when they visit. On the one hand you need to show them that you are safe, comfortable and happy, but you really don't want to let life look too luxurious so that they stop sending the care packages... or even stop caring. It took me a few iterations to get this right. My first visitors to Uganda, my darling, Western sisters, were left weeping in terror as we arrived at most of the accommodation that I had booked for our safari. So when my parents came, it all went a bit far the other way, and the spectacular resorts that I had booked left my parents declaring that they had eaten some of the best food of their lives in Uganda and could they come back on holiday again next year?. As luck would have it, I actually left Uganda soon after that, and so didn't get to do the sun-creamed, insect repellant-ed, AC to AC tango again... but it's something I look forward to in my next sub-Sahara posting.

Messing aside, it really is great to have family to visit (even if they bring over bags of dry-roasted peanuts that they scoff while you are sleeping) as it also gives you the opportunity to be a tourist in your host country, learn formally about the rich culture and history, and see her as she wishes to be shown off. With my guests wanting good access to Star Wars sites, we decided to travel down to Sousse, and pick up a desert tour from there - I'm going to do another post about visiting the Star Wars filming sites, because when I was researching online, it was hard to get much information, so I think it would be helpful to do a full informative post about how to do it.

Juicy Sousse-y

Sousse is a destination in its own right, to the extent that many flights come in from Europe straight to Enfidha airport, full of pasty, package-holiday patrons. While many of then will stay in their resorts, Sousse does have a massive Fort, Ribat and Mosque, if you're feeling adventurous. Luckily, I was born adventurous, to adventurous parents, so we hit the city at the earliest opportunity.

In Sousse, I experienced some moments of extreme discomfort as a result of touristic cultural pollution (which may or may not be a real term, but just exploded out of my brain). Walking through the Medina, you're subjected to lots of invitations to look into souks, of varying levels of aggression, from gentle coaxing, right up to rudeness, cat-calling and crude gestures and language, that make you stop and wonder - what is this person really trying to achieve? Some of the things that are called out in this market place really aren't designed to get you to browse the souks, but rather to get your attention, and to maybe get a rise from you. Let's face it, it's a boring job, and one up-sale to a unseasoned tourist will probably cover the day's wage... the rest of the time can be used for the shop keepers own amusement.

So none of this actually bothers me, I bartered for every single tomato at Nakawa market in Kampala during my two years there, I'm used to the trading spirit. I'm also used to bear-faced aggression in the face of desperation, I was in Zimbabwe in 2006. But the disturbing thing about the traders in Sousse, was much more unsettling:

Some of the traders, on discovering that we were British, would shout out, plays on famous British advertising: "Cheaper than Tescos", "We have Asda price", or up the ante with some British slang "c'mon 'av a shufty", "c'mon 'av a butcher's" (both of which mean "come and have a look" in British Arabic slang and Cockney rhyming slang respectively). This got a smile from us, as the vendors would adopt a funny, playful British Accent.

Then they called out "cheaper than a ... shop" and used the racist word that is wildly un-PC and often used to define a cornershop. You know the one, guys, I'm not going to type it out. 

To hear that word shouted in the street naturally grates on me and burns my face and throat with anger, but the uncomfortable realisation that the regional specificness of that word and all the other phrases, means that they have been taught all of this by British tourists, passing through, spreading the dregs and the filth of our embarrassing sub-culture... well that's pretty hard to bear.

Onwards and upwards - people, go to Sousse, you can see Tunisia at its best (good restaurant service, nice museums and clean beaches) and my culture at its worst.

A Jem in the Desert

Just three hours from Sousse (ish, I wasn't really counting) is the Roman Amphitheatre at El Jem. I had been once before for the International Symphonic Music Festival, where you go at night and the whole Amphitheatre is lit up, and you can take a picnic, and cushions. We forgot the cushions. Never again.

Anyway, it was super to finally visit in the daylight. The El Jem amphitheatre is huge and beautiful, the biggest in Africa, and was digitally remastered for the Gladiator film. Like all Tunisian monuments, it was gloriously quiet and hardly anyone was visiting. We ran around pretending to be lions, Christians and Russell Crowes.

We also hit the desert hard and took a cheeky camel ride down at Tozeur. You hear "Camel, camel" everywhere in Tunisia, but let's be honest - they're dromedaries. They have just one hump and long, long legs. Even the traffic signs know it, the word is right in French, but mis-translated to 'camels' in English. 

Maybe a dromedary is a type of camel. I'm no expert. Neither is my mother, who, while aboard, asked me if camels eat meat. This woman is the "Head of Science" at her primary school. 

Britain has no chance.

Easter Weekend Round-up

Hello again! So much has been happening and I want to get you all caught up and current with all the stories and happenings before my MUMMY and DADDY arrive on Thursday and the fun really begins.

Easter Weekend started quietly - I was still aware of my physical limitations, given all the excitement and medical complications of the week before, I just went to church on Good Friday evening and took it pretty easy. On Saturday morning I did my first run since the half Marathon. Just a little 7km, and for the first couple, my legs were a bit shakey. But towards the end I was really feeling it, comfortable and happy and keen to get training again.

On Saturday lunchtime, Jasmin, the hood-rat that she is, text me about an event that I had promised to go with her to. Feining my illness and near-death experience, I tried to back out... but she called me a flake. For all of my nearest and dearest, you will know if there's one way to get me to do something it's to imply that I am being a bit flakey. Because, I may be a lot of things, but 'flake' I am not. If I say I'm gonna call you, I will call you. If I say I'm going, I will be there. And if I say I'm going to run a half-marathon (okay, promise this is the last reference for today)... then food-poisoning or no food-poisoning, you will find me at the finish line. Which is how I ended up at the:

Tunisian B-Boy Championships
Oh yes.
So Tunisia has a lot of dis-used churches. From what I have been led to understand, indiginous and coptic strains of Christianity in Tunisia were persecuted, assimilated and wiped out by the Catholic church, so that at the time of independence, the Catholic faith was all that remained. At this time, French settlers intending to stay in Tunisia were counted and a proportionate number of churches were kept for them to worship in. All of the others were demolished.
The Saint Louis Cathedral on Byrsa Hill in Carthage is one of the defunct survivors, but it is now used to host the odd concert, theatrical event, or street dance competition.

A heady smell of tobacco, testosterone and pure swagger greeted us as we entered. Dance groups from all over the country were battling with precise rhythm, intense attitude and the kind of stomach muscles that dreams are made from. I left with real inspiration to do some core stability exercises, and some headspins.

After this and on to:

Ladies' Moroccan Night

The sweetheart Moroccan intern at my office was hosting a special culinery journey through Morocco (if you will) with a night of tajines, cous cous and mad gossip. I was really alarmed when she told me that she had invited sixteen people, and I wondered how she would handle all that cooking, but from further questioning, I established that her femme de ménage was doing it all and I really have no clue about how people actually live here at all.

The food was completely spectacular. I am a complete sucker for sweet things and so I was delighted with the Lamb and Prune Tajine. Absolutely gorgeous. My friend has promised to do a cooking night so that I can come over and learn to make it. It's the contrast of the sweet, sticky prunes and the super tender, buttery lamb. Oh my. Sorry the picture is a bit naff, justice has not been done.

There were also lots of beautiful Moroccan pastries, fresh off the plane. These ones were in the shape of fruits, no bigger than a fingernail and tasted of almonds.

We had the loveliest of evenings, the time flew by and we were still eating at 1am - this is how the North Africans do it. Massive sugar high all night and I had no chance of sleeping.

Easter Sunday
Easter Sunday was a gem, church and the gym, followed by a massive lamb roast at my friend, Penny's, house. Yes, more lamb. I can't get over that fact that lamb is the "standard" meat here, like chicken is in the UK. At home, lamb is such a treat, and usually the most expensive thing on the menu. But here, especially after Eid al-Adha, you'll be lucky not to eat lamb everyday (or unlucky, if you're like me, and adore lamb)

I used Easter as a further opportunity to develop my fruitcake making skills. I made a Simnel cake, which is a traditional British Easter cake covered in Marzipan with an extra sneaky layer of marzipan in the middle. It was extra Eastery as I used loads of dried figs in the mix (in Mark's gospel Jesus gets a hankering for some figs on the way into Jerusalem, and is narked off when he realises it's not fig season yet - Mark 11). You have to decorate it with 11 marzipan balls to represent the 11 faithful apostles (Sorry Judas, that's how it goes sometimes).

Fruitcakes are my strength.  Fruitcakes are where I am at. Yeah, not everyone may like them, but it's what I'm good at. Like the London 2012 Olympics Logo, they don't ask to be liked. Cupcakes may be more cute and twee and girlie and fashionable and Cath Kidston apron on a rainy day, but they are not me. I'm about the big, rich, brandy-laced Grandma Fruitcake. And it's a pretty nice place to be.

Happy Easter x

Episode III: Revenge of the Poison

Waking up a victorious half-marathoner on Monday Morning, the fever was back, my body felt terrible and my tummy was so bad. I danced into the office wearing my medal and lapped up all the praise, delicately running to the loo every 15 minutes for ghastly episodes. My manager, who is Tunisian and knows all about the dangers of seafood poisoning, spends the morning nagging me to  "take this food poisoning seriously", but although I felt horrible, it felt worse to slink off on another sickie after you spent your weekend running half marathons.

By 3pm I'm half collapsed all over my desk, so my manager insists that I go straight to the onsite medical centre for some treatment. I find in Tunisian (heavily influenced by French) medicine there is a real tendency to over-prescribe. If I went to a doctors in the UK and said I had diarrhea but I just ran a half-marathon, my doctor would tell me that that was a bit stupid, now rest, eat white bread and drink a load of fluids. So I see a nice French doctor, who prescribes three different drugs: some clay drink-thing to line the intestines, something to correct the pH of the stomach, and something to stop the stomach cramps. I went and got them all from the pharmacy. Came home, took them and went to bed.
I woke up suddenly about 7pm, scratching my head like a crazy person. I was dreaming and my head was just so itchy. I stopped myself, but as I did I began to realise that the back of my neck was also swollen, and covered in lumps. My ears were swollen too, like Shrek ears and I couldn't hear. I panicked. My face didn't feel right. I switched on the light and saw a terrible sight. I have a picture. I can't put it here, it's not my vanity, but I just wouldn't want to make you cry. My poor face. On eye was swollen completely shut and I looked like I had had a stroke. And it was covered in red itchy lumps. I was panicking by now.

 Here's some rash from my tummy for you to enjoy

I called my friend Lucy, who is good at medical French and she calmed me and reassured me that my face would go back to normal. That fact that she was even considering that it wouldn't was freaking me out a little. We went to the La Marsa Clinic, a private hospital near to my house. I managed to quickly warn Lucy about my low blood pressure and tendency to faint before they hooked me up to a drip and as predicted, I fainted. Lucy, who had never seen anyone faint before was quite delighted. The doctor genuinely didn't know what was happening.
 
The swelling in my head and neck started to go down a bit and the itchy rash started to subside. The doctor there gave me another prescription - three more drugs... seriously?

Then I went home and slept for two days.

I'm fine now.

If you had asked me three years ago what my biggest fears in the world were, I would almost have definitely said:

1. Having a blood test
2. Having a drip

I have now done both. In Africa. Sometimes I amaze even myself.

xxx

Episode II: Attack of the Half Marathon

Oh Wow. Oh wow it is done. Part of me is still in disbelief, at 10km, wondering if I will ever make it. What a headgame. Blimey. Okay - let me get a bit more coherent, and start at the beginning. Are you sitting comfortably?

The Day Before...
The suspense and exciting began when we went to pick up our race numbers. Everyone else was late, and I was early, as usual, so I spent some time examining the race route and strategising. The event was being organised by the Youth Sports Centre in La Marsa, and as a waited, a big group of boys came out from registering and we talked a bit about target times, and laughed when we realised that my amazement at their predicted times was because they were actually doing the 5km Fun Run and not the half-marathon.
A nice French man, who was collecting a running number for his daughter also came over. When I told him that I was hoping to finish in 2:30, he laughed and said I would be under two hours. It was then that I put a bit more effort into translating the poster and came to realise that the half marathon was targetted at more "professional runners"... crikey...

My race number was 283, and instead of being given a big pre-race goodie bag full of promotional treats, energy gels, dried pasta, magazines, energy bars, we got 4 safety-pins and a map - nice. Infact this was one of the most charming things about the day - the total no-frills approach to running. And the theme would continue, as you shall see.

So that afternoon I spent some time painting my nails with go-fast tiger stripes, before heading to Penny's for the Pasta Party extravaganza. I ate meatball and pasta until it hurt, and then, feeling confident and sipping water constantly to maintain extreme hydration, I headed home to bed.

Superfast Tiger stripes - who knew I could be so girlie?

All of that hydration and the nerves had me up in the night with frequent bathroom stops, but as a measure of my extreme determination, warrior-like prowess and ninja-style readiness, I can report that on one trip in those early morning hours, I encountered a big-fat cockroach and rather than scream and panic, I stamped on him - crushing his golden brown shell, and went about my business. I run long distance buddy, you really wanna cross me?

Yes, Mum, I was wearing slippers.

Race Morning
I woke up excitedly - adrenaline was kicking in already. I'd made some oats overnight in the fridge, whoffed them down, got my running gear on and went to meet the other girlies. The race organisers had recommended that we arrive 2 hours before the race, we rolled up half an hour before, but that was still plenty of time to get a slight headache from the marching band and catch the end of the hour-long Zumba class that was going on for competitors and their families up on the La Marsa Corniche (serious Tunisia, you out-do yourself daily!).

Pre-race nerves and excitement...

9am loomed, suddenly we were counting down (in Arabic) and I could not believe it when we set off on time! It was a bit weird to be alongside so many other people. I had decided with my homegirls to stick together until 10km, then we would all see how we were doing.

The first 5km were a bit tough, I was so nervous, usually I'm a total chatterbox, but the nerves had my mind all over the place. I kept doing little body checks: 

How are my legs? - yep, my legs are okay
How is my tummy? - tummy fine down here, keep going.
Toes? toes? how are you guys? - yep, we're alright, feeling good. 
Okay, let's just keep going then.

The first 5k came in a bit slow, none of us have fancy running watches (yet) so we were just relying on watches and timers on iPods and alike, but it was a bit dis-heartening.

From 5-10km the route was easy, we had praticed it many times before, the problem was it was just dull. It was alongside a highway, which was nice because the millions of marshals had stopped all the traffic and lots of families came out and waved to us. At 10km we had a pit-stop. The pit-stops were brilliant, none of the Western energy drinks or sports gels, here we had segments of blood oranges, sugar cubes and raisins.

From 10km we decided to break off a bit, to run at our own paces. I'm running without music. This is because the full Marathon that I want to do in September bans the use of headphones and so I need to practice without them. I don't really mind, but it takes the distraction away a bit and means that you are pretty much in-it the whole way through. 10-15km felt good. I had lots of little mantras that I had been working on. Tunisia has a very special cheesecake shop called Barista which is unlike anything you would ever find in my United Kingdom, and is more on a par with the mighty US with shelves and shelves of different flavoured cheesecakes to help Tunisia along in her majestic quest for a type II diabetes epidemic. We had already been to the cheesecake shop and stocked up - slices and slices of banana & walnut, raspberry, malteasers and salted caramel flavoured cheesecake lay waiting in my friend Lucy's fridge for our triumphant return. So for the hills, my mantra of choice was:

"I am fit and I am strong,
Eating cheesecake later on"

It worked extremely well.

15km was my "happy place". It was marked by a refreshment stand and Le Cap restaurant where I had had my birthday eve dinner, I knew then that there were just 6km to go and that was about 35mins more running and so I told myself, "I can do anything for 35 minutes... 35 minutes is nothing". The 15th km began with a gigantic hill, that as a highway engineer, I do believe must have required a number of departures. Every time I stand at the bottom of it expletives explode for my chest in sheer terror. I don't know where they even come from. I'm sure I don't usually use words like that...

Hill done, I had intended to think of my family and especially my Mum from kilometers 15-20. They were hard, but drawing on my biggest inspirations made it all so much easier. Long distance running is such a headgame your body is screaming at you: 

"what are you doing?!! err.. can we stop please?" 
And my head would say, "what is it? what do you want? you want water?" 
"Nah, I don't need water, feeling pretty hydrated"
"well what then? you need fuel? I can give you a jelly baby?" 
"Nah, I'm okay, my tummy kinda hurts, I just wanna stop really" 
"sorry team, we can't stop, we're almost there... keep going, I will give you anything" 
"I want a gold Berber chain necklace" 
"and you shall have one." 
"...and matching earrings"
"don't push it now."

At 18km with just 3 to go, I grabbed a cup of water at one of the stops (it was so hot by now) and was delighted to find a big hung of orange inside the cup, lovingly placed by the race marshal. Grateful for the extra sugars, I shoved it in my mouth before checking for pips and choked my way to the 20km mark. 

The last km was all through the suburb in which I live. Running past the pharmacy, the external clock was displaying 11:03am and I panicked that my typically British humility at telling everyone "don't even bother showing up until 11:30 - you'll be waiting round for ages", might mean that there was no-one there to cheer us in. Of course my friends knew that I had completely underestimated myself and were there screaming, cheering and complaining about the sun as I rounded the corner to the Corniche and the finish line.

Time was checked in, and I was bundled from person to person, someone put a medal on my neck, I got a t-shirt and a bag of dates, and some water. And it was over, 2:13 minutes by my stopwatch. Wow.

The experience taught me so much. Here are my key outcomes:

1. Running is hard. That was hard. The full marathon is going to be hard. But I am harder.
2. Don't carry so much stuff - there is loads of support at the stations so you don't need so much fuel.
3. Have post-run refreshments ready. We really messed up here - our post run nutrition was all over the place in all the excitement.
4. Support is amazing - I saw lots of families out cheering for their runners and it made me so so excited for my full marathon in September when I'm hoping some friends and family will come along. What a boost!
5. Pride is intoxicating.

So afterwards we had some gorgeous massages and then had an extremely rich supper of Cumberland sausages and mash, and the gorgeous and well deserved cheesecake, and everyone felt proud and happy and wonderful.