I should know better than to be early. It only makes me upset when appointed times WHOOSH past like a bullet train without stopping at the station.
My anal retentive need for punctuality and timeliness, a curse from childhood that will plague me to story’s end, isn’t conducive to group travel. Compounding the general disconnect between my definition of concrete meet up times and others’ view of time as more of a fluid suggestion, we are operating on Greek Time. It’s in the same time zone as Island Time, befitting since this nation the size of Alabama has over 2000 islands of 2 km are larger… and another 8000 “rocks” floating off the mainland.
So it was that my hope for a moment to turn my mood around was dashed quite quickly this morning.
Saturday morning’s traffic at least was better than anything we tried to do on Friday. Winding along the coastal highway in our large touring coach, it was hard to take photos as shots from a moving vua always look kinda crappy. But I tried. More on that in a moment. Eva our tour guide was telling us a lot of fascinating history and pointing out sights but unfortunately the greenhouse effect was strong on our surprisingly poorly ventilated luxury coach.
Nonetheless, our trip to Sounio and the dilapidated Temple of Poseidon was worth enduring the energy suck of the stuffy coach ride.
As with yesterday, I am having all kinds of issues uploading images so I will only put a few up here; my plan is to backfill some stories and sights once I have a more robust WiFi connection.
1- A quick stop for photos (which turned into a LONG stop for photos… but whatever). That’s the Temple of Poseidon in the distance, overlooking the Aegean Sea.
2 and 3 – Hmmm… I thought it’d be bigger.
4 – It IS bigger.
5 and 6 — You see that column? It’s because of those yahoos who carved their initials into the stone that we’re not allowed to go all the way up to the temple. Amongst those yahoos? Lord Byron.
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And so even though we were supposed to leave at 11:30, we had a couple of delays corraling folks. Not anybody’s fault per se but I found myself jonesing to get going. Maybe I’m just nervous about running tomorrow… no matter how many races I do, there’s always a bit of butterflies the day before, worries about waking up in time (even if I’m not sleeping), logistics of getting to the start, how my leg/foot/ankle/soul will hold up to the 26.2 miles.
Little did I realize I should have been worried about the lunch debacle that would be Post-Poseidon. The Aegean Sea frontage retaurant had its kitchen and auxuliary services across the road… which meant the staff had to engage in repeated stages of real-life Frogger.
I wasn’t all that hungry and regret having lunch at all, but wanted to be social. I had a Greek Salad (which is still called a Greek Salad and NOT just ‘Salad’ as the ol’ Cruise ship comic might have Gallagher’d the joke). And I had a Coke Light that cost more than a glass of ouzo. And it REALLY cost more because as I must be a glutton for punishment. The menu priced out the salad at 6.50 abd the soda at 2.30. My bill came to ten euros. Much like my obsession with time, I feel like math should be fairly consistent. I don’t know how eight euros, thirty cents can equal 10.
Complicating matters, we needed to leave the restaurant by 1:30 to get people back in time to run the Athens 10K. My salad came quickly and I left some money on the table as no one else been served by the time I finished. The rest of our table didn’t get served food until 1:25 pm. By the time the 60 of us in the tour group individually paid our bills (!!), it was 2:24 pm. I was anxious and I wasn’t even racing that afternoon. I was mostly worried about my fellow runenrs. I tried to offer my cheers and reassurances in case they were nervous about the ticking clock to get them to the start in time; to their great credit, they seemed calm, cool and collected. Humbling to say the least.
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Kevin’s Note: I wrote the above while waiting for the mandatory race orientation and not-mandatory-but-carbo-licious pasta dinner.
Hearing folks who were excited to run their first marathon ever the next morning is exactly what I needed. It’s a reminder of why running can be “my happy place.” There’s few things as inspiring or supportive as a group of strangers cheering each other on to achieve one’s individual goals.
In chatting with folks at the pasta dinner, I let slip my lifetime marathon number. I always try and downplay it as it’s not a competition to see who has run the most — hell, I know folks who have run 1000+ races, hold world records for most countries run. I’m special only in that I’m me; other people are special because they are them. The true spirit of the marathon is not in beating other people; it’s in achieving something for yourself.
A moment can change everything. For ill or for good.
Here’s hoping tomorrow’s moment means the rain holds off. And that all runners find their own finish line… and achieve their own personal goals. May Pheidippides’s single word at the original 42K-ish journey’s end be ever true — Nenikikamen. Translated it means, “We have won.”
As for me, well, we will see what the dawn brings.