Challenge! Why?
Not the way how I would treat a dog in 40 degrees sun!
We’ve been taking it very easy the last 2 days. Lot of sun bathing and reading. Just finished 3 books, around 1000 pages already and still got 1 book to go.
Yesterday was an interesting day. After the bike ride up the hill I’ve set my mind to climbing the big mountain behind our hotel. Helle was not so interested! So I put on my running gear and took a bottle of water, camera and watch and told Helle that if I would not be back at 20:00 to call the National Guard!
At 17:55 I left the hotel for the big run. But after 10 meters I decided to spare the energy and walk up and run down. The sun was still shining very hard, so I had to take it easy with only half a liter of water. After 40 minutes of steep walking up the only person I encountered was an old lady of around 140 years old, who apparently never sees anyone at that point of the mountain. When the dogs started barking she looked at me and immediately locked her house. I’ve got to work on my people skills.
It’s very strange how the top of a mountain can seem so nearby and be so far away in reality! So I told to myself to walk until 19:00 hours so I had another hour to go back down! And of course at 19:00 hours I thought I was almost there and walked a little bit further. After 5 minutes of walking I came at a stop. I reached a sign that said very clearly not to go further and not to take pictures. Before getting some angry Greek Soldier pointing stuff at me I decided it was best to stop at this point.
View from the top! See the small boats in the harbor.
After 1 hour and 10 minutes of walking upwards I was pretty tired. So I took a small 5 minute break at the top, drank some water, took my Shoes off, and looked at my watch. It was already 19:10 and had only 50 minutes to get back. Of course the way down would be a lot easier! So I ran down, but noticed pretty soon that with 110 kilo’s on your body that going down goes very easy! So easy in fact I had to turn on the brakes all the time. So constant pressure on my quadriceps, calves, my whole body.
After 10 minutes I was so exhausted, I thought of walking again. But I’ve learned from myself that when I stop running, it is very hard to start again. So I decided to hold on and continue. I ran down without any stops in 35 minutes, which was half the time to get up, and it was one of the most heaviest things I have ever done! I dropped in the hotel room pretty exhausted and drank a few liters of water and took a very cold shower.
Afterwards it was already dinner time. And after dinner we went to the city, but I was so tired it didn’t take long before I was in bed again. The next morning I had muscle pain everywhere! I almost couldn’t walk down the stairs to the restaurant and tripped a few times. So today was a very very easy day, with some light swimming to get my legs going again. Why am I doing things like this again?
