Week four

M - 10.5 miles
T - 10
W - 7 miles (workout)
R - 6.5
F - 0 + country line dancing (haha, Dad!)
S - 5
S - 8 (6k xc race in 24:56)

Total: 47 miles
Year to date: 225 miles

Championnats d'Auvergne

Today's cross country adventure took place in Thiers, an Auvergne town famous for its cutlery. Despite the hilliness of the region, the race venue was very flat and probably would have been a very fast course had it not been blanketed in snow which turned to thick mud in parts.

My race was the 'elite' women's long course, a 6010m race consisting of three different loops, torn up by the spikes of half a dozen previous races. Only the 'eilte'men raced after us. Meredith had run the men's short course (4.1k) in 15:24.

Fortunately, Cecile loaned me a pair of her old spikes, so I felt more, um, steady than I did last time.

The race opened with the petite boucle (short loop) where we ran up a hill and turned back toward the spectators. At this point I was probably mid-pack heading into the moyenne boucle, which was pretty sloppy. Sometime in here, I reqlized that my borrowed spikes were just slightly too small, as they were rubbing hard against my big toe. This loop curved us back toward the spectators, and there was a huge group of Montlucon runners cheering for us.

Just after beginning the grande boucle I had passed several women, most of them decisively, but one woman was hanging right behind me. This was a really lonely part of the course as it took us out past the lake and away from the spectators. All I could really think about was her footsteps behind me and the obviously consistent distance she was keeping. I tried to make a move to accelerate steadily to lose her, but she held on. With about 500m to go, coming back near the staging area she surged by and I was left chasing her around the last curves.

I finished in 10th place in my race, which made me the 3rd senior female. My time over 6010m was 24:56, only 20 seconds behind my best 6k run in significantly better conditions. I also qualified for the interregional championship February 12, which is the last step before the Franch National XC Championship.

Stephanie won the race after pulling away easily from two other women. Cecile placed 6th (2nd espoir), and Martine 8th (3rd veterane).

Sunday's race info

Information about Sunday's Championnat's d'Auvergne can be found here.

My race is the élites féminines (also known as the women's long course race - 'elite' is probably a misnomer for the majority of us in the race) at 2:50 p.m. It's 6010m, so just about 3.75 miles.

Driving to Lyon last weekend, we passed just outside Thiers, and I'm afraid it's hilly. There's also a significant layer of snow on the ground here in Montlucon, so I imagine at the higher altitude in Thiers, it will be even snowier.

Enough whining: Time goals are irrelevant, and I just want to qualify for the inter-regional championship in another two weeks.

Fajita night

I think my coach either has me confused with someone faster, or he knows exactly who I am and he's simply trying to kill me. Here's the evidence: Last night's workout consisted of 10 x 400m repeats in 1:24 with 75 seconds gasp-walk-jog rest between each. I managed to do it all successfully, but not without nearly vomiting.

The second piece of evidence is that he thinks I can run the Lyon Marathon between 3:00-3:05. This is clearly unrealistic considering I've never run under 19:00 for 5k, and my half-marathon best is 1:32:36. I should mention also that the training he has mapped out for the next few months is based on this fantasy objective. I am going to get my butt kicked.

As far as teaching goes, today I ran into trouble trying to explain the concept of "it" to children who are used to every object having a gender.

On Tuesday, one of my little eight-year-olds asked me if I'd be at her school next Thursday. "Yes, but I don't teach your class; I teach the others." Well, she told me, "I know it's your birthday, and there might be a surprise."

Another little boy gave me a sheet of paper with two bizarre paragraphs written on it. It's from a computer game, he explained, and could I please translate it into French so he could understand?

Death worm = The most vicious and effective weapon the clagnor have ever made, intelligent, fast and deadly, very few have survived to describe the beast.

Tonight Meredith and I are making fajitas, so I should be off to start making guacamole!

Spontaneous trip to Lyon

This story really begins last Tuesday, when I came home from teaching in the afternoon and was surprised to find that Meredith wasn't at home when I arrived. A couple hours later he showed up - having spent the afternoon negotiating a deal on a 1989 Citroen AX.

The weekend plan that developed was a ski trip in the Alps for Meredith, and he could drop me off in Lyon on the way. Unfortunately, the most logical (or cheapest) way of carrying this out was to leave Saturday morning at 3 am. After a 5 hour nap we were on the road. Meredith dropped me off at the airport around 6 am where I slept on a bench for a couple hours before taking a bus into the city.

It had been drizzling lightly as we'd driven through the night and I was annoyed at myself for forgetting my umbrella, but fortunately at this time the clouds had gone away and the sun was shining brightly. After hiking up the hill (which did not give me good feelings about April's marathon...) I found a hostel and left my bag before heading out into the city.

I spent some time shopping (something that doesn't really exist in Montlucon) and saw some of the general city sights - the Saone and Loire Rivers, the Opera House, the Hotel de Ville, etc. After lunch I walked back up the hill to the Roman ruins and wandered around. As I was taking pictures, some guy asked me if I were a journalist. I laughed and said, "Non, pas du tout (not at all)." "Vous n'etes pas francaise (you're not French)!" he said. I confirmed this and explained that I did, however, live in France, after which he complimented me on my good French! Then, when I went inside to buy a ticket to visit the museum, I was again complimented on my French.

I was really flattered, but you have to remember that speaking 'travel French' ('I would like a room for two nights,' 'One student-rate ticket please,' 'Where is the train station?') is a lot simpler than speaking real conversational French. So, although I can easily talk my way around while traveling through France, I can't really have a meaningful conversation. In addition, people in Lyon are probably very accustomed to tourists who might even speak less French than I do, so by comparison I sound good.

Back to my Lyon adventure: After the Roman ruins and museum I walked even farther up the hill to the Basilique Notre-Dame, which is pretty from the outside but has a terribly overdecorated interior. The view of the city from its vantage point was great though.

By this time it was late afternoon and I had been up since 2:30 that morning. I walked back to my hostel, changed into my running clothes and ran along the Saone River for about eight miles.

Back at the hostel I showered and started reading Cold Mountain in the common room. There I met a couple people from UNC who invited me out to get pizza with them where the proprietor complimented me on my French and and then gave me a free cup of hot sweet tea. The three of us stopped by a Spanish bar before meeting their friends at another place for a drink before going back to the hostel.

I didn't get nearly enough sleep Saturday night, as I had to wake up early enough Sunday morning to take advantage of the free breakfast and check out before 10 am. I spent Sunday visiting the Cathedrale Saint-Jean, strolling through a street market, learning that the Musee d'Art Contemporain was 'exceptionally' closed, and wandering slowly through the Musee des Beaux-Arts which had a disappointingly small collection of contemporary art.

I met Meredith back at the airport to make the three-hour drive back to Montlucon. We entertained ourselves by singing along with the radio, singing along with radio static, and laughing at some road signs we found exceptionally silly in our sleep-deprived state. For example, the slogan of the town of Thiers is "300 years of cutlery." Later, there was a series of two signs, the first stating, "One dash: Dangereux!" and the second, "Two dashes: Securite!" referring to following distance. Another favorite of mine was a truck with an overside load, labeled an "exceptional" vehicle. I am advocating that the Citroen should get an "exceptional" label to complement the "I (heart) Denmark" sticker.

Week three

M - 11 miles
T - 8 (morning) 4 (evening)
W - 4.5 (morning) 7.5 (workout)
R - 8
F - 4 (morning) 6 (evening)
S - 8
S - 0

Total: 61 miles
Year to date: 178 miles

I found myself in Lyon this weekend, and I'm exhausted from the trip right now, so I'll write about the weekend tomorrow.

Heard in class...

Today
Me: Where are you from? Where do you come from?
Student: My comefrom is...

Yesterday
Me: Please say the days of the week.
Student: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Fursday (ok, close enough), Friday, What's-today, Sunday.

I'm American

For some reason I have felt very American the past couple days.

Last night a few of the other assistants and Marie came over to watch Team America: World Police a highly entertaining and brilliant satire (if potentially offensive).

This afternoon I met Joe, Dan, and Jen for lunch at Buffalo Grill, a chain of American-style restaurants. Before arriving I had been skeptical of the French take on an American restaurant, but as soon as I walked in the door, I wanted to laugh. I'm not sure exactly what it was about the place but it felt like I was back in the U.S., minus the French on the menu. They even gave us a basket of rolls that could be refilled!

After having eaten so much I wound up with a cramp on the five minute walk to Spanish class. Once there, (and after I'd knocked on the bathroom door instead of the classroom door - with several witnesses) we went over the future tense and some other grammar points that came up before doing a translation from French to Spanish. That was hard. At one point someone asked me when and how long I had been in Spain. Of course I began my answer with "ummm" and the teacher thought that was just hilarious - "That's very American!"

I've decided that I can speak okay French and a little better Spanish, but when I try to make transitions between the two, it's a complete mess. And when the others in my class speak, I have to think really hard to decide exactly which language they're speaking, especially difficult when they switch back and forth in the middle of a sentence! Then at times, Marie-Claire (our teacher) or another woman will toss in an English phrase just for kicks. All in all, it's mentally exhausting and thorouhly entertaining.

At the end of the class, we were discussing what we'd do next week. Marie-Claire decided that two women who had been to Spain recently would bring in their photos and tell about their vacations. I, however, am to bring photos of America and talk about Ohio.

Finally, my friend Joe is just fascinated by the U.S., especially country music and cowboy stuff. He and a friend are planning to spend about three weeks this summer traveling around California and to Las Vegas, but after he graduates in another year he wants to take three months to travel around. His plans include Texas and Memphis (because there are a lot of songs about it) and Kentucky for some fried chicken. I've suggested Nashville, Niagara Falls, and Toledo.

Here's your chance to participate: If you were to advise a young English guy where to go on a three-month trip to the U.S., what would you suggest?

I love my bike

I bought a bike a couple months ago, but until this week I had yet to use it for anything other than riding to and from running practice.

Saturday, however, day broke so brightly it felt like the sun had moved in next door. Meredith and I had gone to bed at the same time Friday night, so the door between our bedrooms was open for once and we were both awake early.

We rode over to Neris-les-Bains, the next town over from Montlucon, about 6-8k away from my apartment. The trail to Neris is the same one where I usually run and although I had noticed before that it's slightly uphill on the way out I didn't realize just how unrelenting the hill is until I had to climb it on a bike. I had stripped off several layers of clothing and sweated through the rest by the time I arrived in Neris - and not much faster than I've done it on foot! After turning around to ride back to Montlucon, however, I didn't pedal for a good 15 minutes and had to stop to redress myself. The trail was also pretty muddy, so I had splatters all over my legs, back, and even in my hair. All in all, it was a beautiful ride, but I think I am going to have to find someplace flatter to ride, or at least a trail with more evenly placed hills.

The school where I teach on Mondays is 2.5-3 miles away and I usually get a ride with another teacher. Yesterday, however, he couldn't, so I packed my supplies in my backpack and took my bike there. Again, because Montlucon is in a valley the way to the school was all uphill and I was left sweating in my teacher clothes. The way back was especially fun not only because I barely had to pedal, but because I think I got home faster than I would have in a car!

Nearly all my students saw me arrive/depart on bicycle so I like to think I was setting a good example, especially with my helmet. Dad, does this make up for Friday night's scandalous line dancing?

Week two

M - 8 miles
T - 8 (morning) 4 (evening)
W - 7 (workout)
R - 9
F - 0
S - 5 + strides, 11 miles biking
S - 6 (4.1k xc race in 17:05)

Total: 47 miles
Year to date: 117 miles

Championnats d'Allier

Today I ran in the Allier XC Championship race in Commentry, about a 20 minute drive from Montlucon. Cecile and Pascale picked up Meredith and me, so we arrived just in time to pick up our race bibs, talk to Christian, and walk around a bit before warming up. The weather was beautiful here today - about 50 degrees, blue skies and sunshine. I even wore sunglasses.

The Commentry course for the senior women was 4.1k, so two hilly, muddy loops around the woods. It was muddy enough that the starting line had nearly been erased by the time the younger runners had raced.

After a short delay while the race officials looked for their stopwatch, we were off -- except me. As soon as the gun sounded, I slipped and found myself hands and knees in the mud. With one knee aching a little bit, I picked myself up and chased the pack. There were lots of spectators at the race and I could hear several people cheering for Montlucon and for me through the first loop.

None of the hills on the course were very long, but there were a couple steep slopes, including one with logs set into it like stairs. That in addition to several sharp turns and some mud made this a fairly difficult course. The downhills were very gentle for the most part, however, so I used that to my advantage to gain back some speed each time we descended.

At the beginning of the second loop I could see several other women strung out in front of me, including Cecile three places ahead and Martine a slot behind her. I knew Stephanie had a shot at winning, but she was too far ahead to see at that point. Halfway through the second tour, I passed another woman and a spectator shouted out our places - 7th and 8th. On the following downhill, I opened up my stride and lost her. After a couple more hills and two sharp turns I crossed the finish line in 7th place.

Stephanie had finished 2nd, Cecile 4th, and Martine 5th. Another woman (who I'd never met before) had also competed in the Montlucon singlet, but I'm not exactly sure where she finished. European cross country scores the first four team finishers, so if the race had been scored by teams, we would have easily won.

My hands had been covered in mud when I fell and my knee was becoming a crusty mess of drying mud and blood. There were actually blood spots on my shoe! Christian made me go to the ambulance and have the paramedics clean me up, but it was really just a superficial scrape now turning into a bruise as well.

After cleaning myself up, Celine and I ran a short cooldown and watched the men's race, where Manuel finished 4th and Pascal 11th, and several others placed highly as well.

My next race is the Championnats d'Auvergne (the regional championship) in two weeks!

Edited to add: Results are available at this site. I'm listed as 6th place because there was a junior woman who finished in front of me, so she's scored in a different category.

Where am I?

Tonight I went country line dancing and then to a cabaret show.

Yesterday and today

I am still not sure what to do with my day off every Wednesday, and yesterday I wound up doing nearly nothing.

Like I mentioned yesterday, I did go to my first Spanish lesson here, which was a lot of fun. The first hour was technically for the debutants but Meredith was going and, honestly, I was curious to see how the teacher worked with beginning students with different levels of proficiency. The second hour was the conversation class, which was a lot more interesting than basic grammar. I have to confess I am taking advantage of all the French I can learn in these lessons, as well!

After Spanish class, it was time for running practice. I arrived late and Cecile had arrived early so I did the workout myself: Three sets of 500m (1:50), 400m (1:28), 300m (1:02), and 200m (:40) with equal time jog rest after each interval and four minutes jog rest between each set. I hit every split but the first one (which I ran without a watch and without knowing the goal pace in 1:51) and got a touch faster with each set. Normally I dislike track workouts, but I felt really satisfied with this one and more confident for Sunday's race.

This morning I did my first-ever seasons and weather lesson, which went over decently. I'm planning to repeat weather at the beginning of every lesson from now on so hopefully they practice the usage of a variety of weather conditions. The best part of class was blowing over one kid's nametag while trying to demonstrate Th-th-thhhhhhursday, and then later blowing over two other nametags to illustrate "windy."

On Thursday afternoons I have three classes. Two of these classes are normally one full class with one teacher that she splits along ability levels for English (with me) and reading (with her). The smarter half of the class is a lot better behaved, but I have ben really frustrated teaching them recently because they hardly talk at all. Even though I have some discipline problems in the other half, they are much more enthusiastic participants and a couple of them have a great sense of humor. Last week I asked them to bring in a self-portrait to use in class today and one kid unfolded this huge sketch which had required extra sheets of paper to be taped to the original to illustrate his arms and legs. Last time they insisted on learning how to say "coconut."

In my last class I got the following note in English from a little boy's mother:

You run very well. My parents and me have seen you on "the quai de la Liberation" with your walkman Sunday.

Other students said that they too had seen me out runnning. I have yet to go to the grocery store without seeing a student. If I haven't mentioned it before, this is definitely a small town!

The impossible English language

Because just about a year ago I started my first French class...

and because today I went to my first Spanish conversation class in France...

take a moment to pronounce these English words aloud:

through
though
tough
thought

I am thankful that I am a native English speaker!

It's funny because it's true

Quick story illustrating my roommate's opinion about me:

Meredith's friend Vanessa is flying to France to run the Lyon Marathon and to spend a week traveling with us. "I think you'll like her. You're both runners and speak Spanish. Plus you sort of eat the same," he told me.

"Oh really? She eats a lot of chocolate and cheese?" I responded.

"No, I mean messily."

Three stories in reverse chronological order

Last night I went over to Jen, Flor, and Daniela's house for a poker night with the other assistants. We had beer, chips, and red absinthe. I abstained from the absinthe (is it really a good idea to consume something with a label that begins "Danger! Do not drink neat..."?) but according to Dan, it just made him sleepy. "Maybe I should drink this stuff every night," he considered.

Flor had never played poker before so we had to teach her the rules to Texas Hold 'Em. She's from El Salvador (and Daniela from Germany) so the common language here is French, which isn't a problem when explaining which cards and combinations of cards are more powerful, but saying, "Je fold" to back out of a round didn't sound quite right. Jen looked up "fold" in her dictionary, but the first definition was "plier," as in to fold a piece of paper. She looked again and found another translation, this one referring to a business. We spent the rest of the evening taking turns announcing, "Je ferme ma boutique (I'm closing my shop)."

These next two stories will be told in dramatic form.

Scene: My apartment. Joe has stopped by to check is bank account balance online. To picture this scene most vividly, you must imagine Joe with his very proper British accent and me stuffing pizza into my mouth.
Joe: Damn, I can't check my account. It says my password is grillé.
Me: Doesn't that mean "grilled"?
Joe: Yeah, that's what I thought.
Me: (Checking the dictionary.) No, we're wrong. The first definition is "to toast."
Joe: %&$#, my account's been toasted.

Final scene: The grocery store. I'm shopping in the produce section just like anyone else when I run into one of my students, an especially enthusiastic eight-year-old.
Me: Hello!
Student: (Excitedly) Hello!
Me: How are you?
Student: I am from France!

Week one done

I'm racing the Championnat d'Allier (my departmental championship) a week from today, so the first week of Marathon de Lyon training had to be moderate so I'll be in decent racing shape Sunday.

M - 8 miles
T - 7 (morning) 4 (evening)
W - 7.5 (hill workout)
R - 8
F - 7.5 (workout)
S - 8
S - 10

Total: 60 miles

My new secret weapon

Thanks to my parents I now have a collection of great illustrations for nearly all of the vocabulary that I plan to teach for the rest of the year! This has already cut down drastically on planning time. On Thursday I introduced emotions to one of my CM2 (fifth grade) classes and it was a huge hit. They each had a handout with twelve illustrations (excited, happy, hot, hungry, mad, sad, sleepy, afraid, bored, cold, curious, dizzy) and we repeated each item expressively. In fact, when I taught the second half of the class, the teacher informed me later that she could hear us next door - I think that means I did well in getting the kids excited about learning. :)

After several times practicing the pronounciation of each word, I taught them how to use them in context: "How do you feel?" "I feel ___." "How are you?" "I am ___." Of course, they were required to do this expressively, also. The boys especially loved saying, "I feel MAAAAAAAAD!"

Finally, we came to the best part of the class: charades! I divided them into two teams and a representative of each came to the front of the room where I assigned an emotion to pantomime. The kids were really excited about the game and kept shouting the answers, as if I would give a point to the loudest team. I was especially happy that by the end of the 45 minute session they were rarely looking at their illustrations to find the answers.

I am going to use this model for all my lessons from now on. It involves visual, oral/aural, and kinesthetic learning, which is important to me, and more importantly, the kids had a great time!

Up and down

Tonight I had a terrible running workout. After a warmup we ran two sets of eight 45 second repeats up a steep hill near the Hippodrome. Obviously, it's not one of those workouts that's intended to be fun, and I'm sure my terrible attitude didn't help at all! It's about time to get serious about training for the Lyon Marathon, so I suppose a hill workout was good for me.

In more exciting news, I joined the Montlucon Spanish association, so now I am going to take Spanish lessons. I feel like a good portion of these classes are going to be French lessons for me, but I can't complain about that!

Same old routine

No more vacation, I'm back to school.

Meredith got back to Montlucon yesterday. We exchanged holiday stories, unpacked, and he gave me the two pairs of running shoes I had shipped to his house in the US. For the record, I now have five pairs of running shoes in France. I made guacamole earlier in the day so we settled in to try to watch Good Will Hunting over the sounds of crunching tortilla chips.

If you've ever tried to learn another language, you'll understand that some sounds are just impossible for non-native speakers to produce, and there are some sounds that seem identical to a non-native speaker. That said, the trouble for French kids learning English comes with "th" and the English "r" (which is nearly a vowel, as opposed to a growly French or Spanish rolled "r"). That said, today I taught one of my classes of eight year olds the days of the week and this is the result:

"Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday."

Ah, well, we'll work on it again next, uh, Tuesday.

My dad's running stat

Background:

My dad always runs at the park behind our house, which is very popular with area runners. During every run he counts how many runners he passes as well as the number who pass him. This becomes a cumulative yearly total.

I won't go into all of his strategies for keeping this number favorable, but I will say that they are numerous and top secret.

I received this email from him yesterday.

Passes 164
Passed by 16
91.111111% passing rate.

This includes the disasterous day when 5 people (and a dog) passed me all at once.

I have not counted the dog in my final 2005 statistics.

Dad