Why Did the Runner Cross the Road?

Posted on July 5, 2014 by cruisingrunner

Why did the runner cross the road?

To get to the shady side, duh.

Today’s run was mostly in the shade, but, oh my god, was it ever hot on the stretches that it wasn’t. I criss crossed the street several times trying to take advantage of shade from peoples’ fruit trees.

We are in Maupiti now, which is about 25 miles west of Bora Bora, still part of French Polynesia. It is much more remote and quiet with a small town and just a couple other cruising boats here. Alex and I watched one of the local boats get to the shore through the coral, and we followed their path, so he could drop me off for a morning run. I headed south hoping I could quickly get around the southern point, which is a steep to cliff, so that I could be in the shade, and that strategy mostly worked out for me, but like I mentioned above, there were a few blazing sunny stretches.

I came across a fork in the road which said beach to the left and view point to the right, and not wanting to head up any steep hills, I opted to go left. This took me down a dirt road that eventually did lead up hill. I thought it maybe went uphill to go over a ridge then down to the beach, but no, it took me to a dead end at someone’s house. Nothing to do but turn around, and I did see a little step down to what could be called a beach, and I walked down it a ways to see if it turned into, well, a nice beach. It didn’t. (But later I learned I just didn’t go far enough and had I gone the other way to the view point it would have come down to the beach as well.)

After the run we went on a family hike straight up the mountain. Seriously, my legs were dead when we started, so they were jello when we got back down. The view was indescribable, and the beers at the bottom were magical.

-D.