Thursday 20 February 2014

Sydney International Airport

It has been a very busy couple of days before getting away today.  Tuesday morning, after Charlie had gone to work (at 6am!), just as I was ready to clean my teeth and get to work as well, an email arrived at 7:06am from Marathon Caracas.  Violent political protests in the last few days have led to the organisers deciding to postpone the marathon.  Which in my case means it is cancelled.  All of a sudden - what do we do?  We were due to be leaving only 48 hours later.  A call to the insurance company (they don't open until 9 am), an email to Charlie, an email to Ben from Angel Eco tours, with whom I had organised our trip to Angel Falls just after the marathon, to check the safety of the country (outside of the capital) and to request suggestions to a change in schedule.  Off to work, and more checking of the internet - other places in South America, short trips?  Other marathons?  Do I contact the airline to change flights, to delay the trip?  What do we do?

On Tuesday, I just felt flat and very anti climatic.  I appreciate that the organisers have no choice but to cancel the event given the riots and deaths on the street in Caracas - there is no way you could have 10 000 people running through the streets safely.  But I was really looking forward to finishing this project.  Finishing my 7 marathons on 7 continents. A project over 2 years in the execution and 3 years in the planning.  I was really looking forward to finishing.  There were a couple of options for other South American events that I found, but none that I could still enter, and all involved coming home later than planned.  Between work, locum replacement at work, arrangements with the kids for each of us - it was just too hard.

Of course, I am still running in Antarctica in a couple of weeks.  That is still a very awesome thing to be doing, but I am not excited about that yet.  We have organised a pretty cool looking trip to Venezuela now - a combination of jungle and safari, so we should see some waterfalls, wild life and some local people.  We are not likely to ever get back to Venezuela, so we are going to make the most of it.  I don't know yet when I will actually run my 7th marathon.  This trip was relatively convenient in terms of time and money with the two marathons so close together, and it will take a while before I can afford both the time and money to get over this side of the Pacific again.  

And rehab my feet enough to manage a full marathon training cycle again.  Perhaps that is the most daunting bit.