a little appreciation

sting ray in Cuba

Parrot fish have blue lips!

Cayo Largo, Cuba

BVI Sunset

I’ve been thinking a lot about appreciating what I have. In a Superyacht event sailors get flown into whatever island the event is at, put up in a villa, fed and entertained all while getting paid to sail the boats. Some of the sailors on another boat were overheard complaining that the guests on the boat get the nicer sunscreen and the race crew only get the cheap stuff. My eyes rolled pretty hard at this and made me think hard about the silly things I’ve been complaining about. Since the grass is always greener, or the water is always bluer, I often complain about traveling so much. This winter I thought long and hard about moving to New England full time and giving up life on the water. I thought ‘I’ve done this and I’m ready to give it up.’ The truth is that I really enjoy all the bits and pieces my life ends up involving. I get to live in places when the good stuff is happening, the Caribbean in the winter during race season and Newport and New England in the summer. And I get to do some pretty random and interesting things. Spending 20 hours in Istanbul or sailing to Cuba for the second time. This week I stayed in a villa in St. Barth’s for the third time!

A friend of mine, who is a pretty inspiring runner, busted his ankle recently and it made me think a lot about appreciating what I have as a runner. I don’t have a marathoner’s physique to help with striding out over 26 miles but I have strong legs that can go forever if I work up to it. Thanks to the volcanic islands I live and work on, I’m becoming a much stronger hill runner. I’m trying to focus on the positive point in my life and in running because my motivation has been lacking in the past month. I just looked back

at my Facebook posts and realized it has been more than 20 days since I ran 18.5. That doesn’t seem right to me but I’m pretty sure Facebook doesn’t lie. That also means there are less than 40 days and four 20+mile runs until I run 30 miles. My mileage drop is my own fault, because the thing about running is everything is your own fault, the good and the bad. I can blame it on work, small islands with impossible hills and travel schedules, but let’s face it, my motivation has lacked this month. Here’s a recap of what I’ve been up to, the miles I’ve run and the places I’ve sailed.

A couple of weeks ago I delivered a boat to Cuba from Virgin Gorda. It was a 5 day trip of motorsailing dead down wind for 1000 nm. We had a pretty good sail for the 12 hours that we were between the Dominican Republic and Cuba, where the wind funnels through the two islands. We arrived in Cuba at an island cay off the south shore called Cayo Largo. Sailing to Cay Largo you can guess which song was stuck in my head for days! Cuba is a fascinating and beautiful place. You can see my photos from my trips there last year here. I didn’t get any time to explore this year since traveling back to Cuba is neither fascinating nor beautiful, just a planes, trains and automobile puzzle that takes some time. Though planes fly from Havana to Cayo Largo multiple times a day there are no planes that fly from Cayo Largo to Havana. A travel agent had booked myself and the other crew flights from Havana for the next morning and we had to get to the main land, 30 miles away, across the island that is 50 miles wide and to the big city by 5 am the next morning. We managed to find a flight to Varadero and convinced a taxi driver when we landed that he wanted to drive us the 2 1/2 hours to Havana. After a quick sleep in a nameless hotel we hailed a noisy 1950’s cab to the airport at 5 the next morning. From Cuba we flew to Panama City (sometimes you have to go left to go right, right?) back to San Juan and finally to Tortola. All in all I was pretty impressed that the agent was able to piece a trip together that only took 1 day. I even made it back to Tortola for Friday night pizza at the Watering Hole with Meredith and Ashley! 

I had a weekend on Tortola before heading back up to the North Sound for the YCCS Superyacht Regatta. On Sunday morning I managed to find the public track in Road Town. I know that Road Town is not very big and finding a quarter mile track and sports complex should not be very hard but the track is completely enclosed and it took a few laps of the area to find where it actually was. Next step was finding a way in. It’s pretty typical in the Caribbean to build a shiny new facility and then lock it up so that no one can use it. I finally found a torn down fence and an unlocked gate and let myself in. It was hot and sunny but with a bit of breeze that made the middle 200m of the 400m repeats I was doing more enjoyable. I decided to do two of the speed workouts that I’ve missed and started with two sets of 6X400 with a 90 sec rest interval. I took a solid break and continued with and decreasing intervals of 1200, 1000, 800, 600, 400 with 200m rest intervals between. It was really nice to have a proper track to run on. Repeats on a track make it easier to track how I’m doing, when I’m slowing down, ect. I ran 7X800 this morning and am really starting to enjoy speed work.

During the YCCS event I ran the hills in Virgin Gorda and the Oil Nut Bay run a few times. We sailed to St. Barth’s for the Bucket Regatta and I found a cool trail to run on, though it wasn’t very long. The run home from the harbor every day included, you guessed it, more hills. I’m looking forward to getting back to Tortola and putting in a 20 miler on flatter ground as well as a speed work out on the track.

I think I have decided on which race to do for my 30 miler day. The Sugarloaf marathon is on May 18, the day after my birthday. It looks like a beautiful course and is said to be slightly downhill the whole way. I figure if I’m going to throw in a couple extra miles, a downhill race wouldn’t be so bad.

Here’s to a more motivated April, which is, scarily, the month before May!