Distracted Runner

Posted on July 16, 2014 by cruisingrunner

After a couple days of wind and rain, we’ve got blue skies again, so I hit the motu for another trail “run.” Every now and then I’ll have to put “run” in quotes, because given the nature of where I find myself running these days, I will have the tendency to get a bit distracted from time to time. Today’s distractions were plentiful.

To start with I headed to the north end of the motu to say good morning to the family that lives there. Greetings included the French custom of cheek-to-cheek contact while making kissing sounds. I just can’t get used to that! They speak a fair amount of English, so small talk included more than my pre-canned French phrases of “I live on a boat with my family” and “Mopelia is very pretty”. After that I headed back south and took my first offroad opportunity heading east. And then I became distracted by the Pacific Ocean and the immense coral graveyard stretching far along the beach. I decided to run on that coral graveyard to stay close to the ocean and hear it roar at me. It felt a little like running along the beach at home, but I amused myself with the thought that the ocean was simply on the wrong side. Running along the coral was a challenge, and although I did complete my desired 3 miles, it was very slow going. I will not be sharing my time.

I even broke up the run a bit and sat down by the ocean amongst the coral. OK, I really sat down because the sock on my right foot was pulling too tight on my toes, so I needed to adjust it. But then, I was distracted by the coral and sat for longer than I intended. It’s possible I was sitting in a place that no one has ever sat. People are sparse on this motu, and the coral beach is vast, and I was distracted by this thought.

The final distraction was the kitty. A little white kitten with blue eyes crossed my path as I was making my final approach back to Harry’s house. I made the obligatory “meow” sound at it, and it clearly needed some attention because it was tremendously interested in me. I stopped and let it approach me, and it did what cats do, that is, it rubbed itself on my legs. Imagine his surprise and disgust when he realized he was absolutely soaked from my leg sweat, since I was pretty much drenched after my run. He was not a happy kitty. He kept shaking his leg, trying to get the wet off of him, and he would not come near me after that.

All in all I was probably gone from the boat for about an hour and a half (including the paddle from the boat and back). All that for a 3 mile run. But these distractions define the phase in my life, the phase away from civilization, away from running with my iPod.

-D.