Planning some spontaneity

I just bought train tickets to Kaiserslautern, Germany, for Saturday night's World Cup match between the U.S. and Italy. We've got no match tickets and no hotel, so this should be quite a fun night!

To fill in some details of the past few weeks...
After flying back to Paris from Istanbul, I arrived in Dublin to meet my sister. Unfortunately, she has yet to send me the photos electronically so I can't provide any interesting details. (Pictures are so much better than babbling!)

Molly and I spent a few days in Dublin before flying back to Paris where we spent a night in the worst hostel in Paris (Don't stay at the BVG near the Louvre!) before arriving back in Montlucon barely in time to teach Thursday. We went back to Paris Saturday and sped through the sights before she flew back home to start her last semester of college.

After Molly left, Meredith's parents arrived and we spent some time showing them around Montlucon and taking various day trips around Auvergne. I'd been to Vichy a couple times for races, but never to really see the city and I found I really liked it. Technically it's similar to Montlucon (just a little smaller, but in the same department, and located right on a river) but it is so much prettier and livelier. It is a popular vacation spot for French tourists and it has an excellent sports and recreation park, not to mention free tastes of the hot springs! (As Molly would say..."Smells like farts.")

In addition to the track 5k a couple weeks ago, I also raced a 1500m Sunday evening in Clermont. I'd never run the 1500 before -- just 1600m five years ago in high school -- so it felt really foreign to me. In fact, my only strategy was just to sprint from the start! What really happened is that I was knocked around a bit at the start and wound up in last place for the first 300m. I managed to move up in the second lap (more accurately, a couple women went out to fast and got passed) and then made a move with 700m left to drop the pack I'd been following. I finished in 5:20 (5:44 or so for a full mile -- I ran 5:52 1600m in high school) so I was really happy with my race. This Friday I'll race 3000m in Moulins. I really like these short quick races after spending so much time running long!