a good night's sleep

I believe that I may have discovered the secret to a good night's sleep.

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A couple of weekends ago a trail run was moved from a National Park to a less valued area, due to fire risk in the NP. The NP run was rescheduled to this weekend. It's a tough course, I'm not looking forward to it.

The run is on Sunday. My preparation includes a "short" run at Saturday's orienteering. Three km at an easy pace. I'm rested and ready for a tough Sunday run.

Saturday evening -- the Sunday run is cancelled. Another hot weekend, more high fire danger, the Park is, again, closed. I'm ready for a run but with nowhere to run.

Except... the Marathon Club have a club run on Sunday. Enter on the day is allowed. It's in another NP which, hopefully, is not closed.

At 4:30am I wake up, get up, get ready to go. Dress, breakfast, drive. Even if this run is also cancelled -- it's a very nice drive. Sunrise, cool, towards the bush. I arrive in plenty of time and --  the run will happen! I register.

I still have almost an hour to wait, so I help direct traffic. The run organiser is worried, with the cancelled run, this one could be crowded. Yes, there's a lot of traffic but it's not too bad. Some people do join because their original run is cancelled but others simply choose to relax. Or may not know about the Marathon Club run. Or, perhaps, are put off by "Marathon" in the name of the organising club :-)

It's a beautiful day for a run, warm not hot, and dry. Temperature starts in the low twenties and is a bit over 30 (C) when I finish. The course is through bush, mostly in shade. There's a gradual climb, up... and up... and up...

I start near the end of the pack and move gradually back.  Plenty of time to chat with the sweeper, the runner whose task is to follow the last competitor, make sure that they don't get lost or forgotten. Interestingly, he also has brain cancer. His is "benign" but has caused him to vomit & faint. Now it's under control with drugs.

We finally catch up with the only other runners we can see ahead of us. (By "we" I mean, I catch up, the sweeper stays with me.) I get ahead of the two women... for a km... then they pass me again. I finish last. To the usual trail-run round of friendly applause.

I suspect that the Marathon Club attracts better runners, less just-give-it-a-go runners, than my usual trail runs. That's my excuse :-)

There are slices of watermelon at the finish. I get to take home an entire watermelon. A prize? my son later asks. Not exactly, I say. More that everyone else has finished, no-one wants any more melon, there are some left over. If it's a prize -- it's the wooden spoon. But much appreciated :-)

I spend the rest of the day drinking and relaxing. Fall asleep early (for me), still a bit dehydrated. Sleep soundly for most of the night...

The secret to a good night's sleep: exhaustion so I sleep, dehydration so I don't wake up to go to the toilet.

That's a tough secret... It's a lot easier to accept that I will wake up several times each night.

Though even a last place on a 13km trail run is, I admit, very satisfying.

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This morning I'm at the shops, looking for a new pair of trail shoes. That's the trouble with running, it's a way to realise that the current shoes are not comfortable past the first couple of kilometres... The shoe search is a failure, the running shoe shop is closed.

I do meet and chat with a person that I know from a stint as lecturer.  He's much older than me but looking very well. We get onto the subject of clearing out the house. First, what to keep... His wife wants to keep everything, he wants to throw things out. At our place I'm the hoarder, Deb wants to declutter. Both he and I need to examine everything before it is kept or thrown out.

There are some things, we agree, which have no purpose. Yet -- at some indeterminate time in the future -- they may be of interest to our children or grandchildren or historians. Diaries, travel journals, photos, birth death & marriaage certificates, that sort of thing.

Some things can be scanned so that the bulky originals can be thrown out, he suggests. I go the other way: Deb doesn't look at the PC so I print a hardcopy of photos and travel journals.

Both of us are old enough to know that our children don't want to have to go through a lot of possibly worthless junk. We'd like to leave just the "essential" items for history and inheritance. It's a very difficult task.

====    Dr Nick Lethbridge  /  Consulting Dexitroboper
Agamedes Consulting / Problems? Solved.
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"I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain just to become a vegan." … Ginger Meggs
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dying for you to read my blog: notdotdeaddotyet.blogspot.com.au :-)
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