This Feels Like Home

As many of my readers know, this month marks the fewest number of postings from me since I began my blog last July. There are several reasons for this, but I think the main one is that my adventure has finally become my home. I have settled into my life here, a life that my family and friends in the US would find remarkably similar to the one I lived in Arlington, Virginia. And this month was a good indicator of that change.

Last weekend was a typical "Ari" weekend, representing the things I like to do best. On Saturday, I had a concert with my chorus, the Choeur Gospel from the Eglise Reformee I attend here in Nice. On Sunday, I ran a 10 kilometer race in nearby Monaco. Both events were enough to get me out of my "homesickness" that I'd been experiencing the previous week - and a reminder that I have a home here too in Nice.

Concert - Choeur Gospel

Here's the invitation I sent to my French friends, letting them know about my Saturday concert:

* * *

J’aimerais t’inviter pour le Concert Choral le samedi prochain, le 21 mars, à 15h00, à Sanctuaire du Sacré Coeur, 22 rue de France, Nice (centre ville). Il y sera quatre choeurs qui chanteront dans le concert; je chanterai avec le Choeur Gospel de L’Église Réformée. C’est un petit choeur, pas trés fort, mais trés amiable!

Ce concert est au profit de la recherche médicale en ophtalmologie soutenue par l’association Retina France. Prix de l’entrée: 8€.

J’espère que tu viens voir cette soirée musicale!

* * *

The concert was taken a little blithely by my chorus, as this fundraiser for Retina France was not exactly our idea. It was interesting to watch my group (about which I have blogged a few times) prepare for this public performance. At our rehearsal two weeks before the concert, there was a fairly small group of us, as several members were out of town or on vacation. It was at that rehearsal that two women organizing the concert appeared, apparently to make sure we were going to be OK (at least that was my assessment). I was a little apprehensive about that myself; there were 12 of us at that rehearsal, and the conductor ended up having to sing tenor, because there were no tenors at that rehearsal. We were acceptable, but were not going to win any ovations with our performance, I thought.

One week later, I was amazed as four singers appeared at rehearsal that I had thought were not going to be joining us - three of them men, two of them tenors! The guys had all been singing with us throughout the year, but I had thought would not be around for the concert. Another young woman showed up who hadn't attended rehearsals since December; she lip-synced through the rehearsal and then didn't show up at the concert, no surprise. But this change of events was heartening to me, and I felt better about the upcoming performance. We rehearsed well that night, and planned to reconvene at 2 p.m. before the 3 p.m. concert on Saturday.

I had been alerted by my fellow soprano, Micheline, that the concert had received almost no publicity, although posters for the event had been distributed to us. So it was not too big a surprise on Saturday afternoon to find that the audience in this lovely Catholic church was tiny. The other two choirs were quite large, about 40 singers each (the four choir, a children's choir, had pulled out of the concert at the last minute); one was from a Catholic church in Antibes, the other was from this parish, it seemed. Our group of 14 singers seemed tiny in comparison. But our three choirs easily were double the size of the audience.

But we performed with enthusiasm! Gottfried, our choir's conductor, was in fine form, and my friend in the audience said he was the best of the three. Our concert program (annotated):

Jacob's Ladder (the familiar spiritual)
All Over The World (an unfamiliar spiritual)
Lord, The Light of Your Love (a modern Christian tune)
Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen (soloists, Josh, Gilles and me)
Heaven Is A Wonderful Place (an unfamiliar spiritual)
Little Lamb (an unfamiliar spiritual)
The Blessing of Aaron (a familiar sounding benediction with a seven-fold amen)

It was fun and hopefully my friends who didn't make it will have another opportunity to hear me and the group again!

Monaco International Marathon & 10 KM Race

Sunday morning was the Monaco International Marathon and 10Km race. I had gone to Monaco on Friday afternoon to pick up my race number, and walk through the Racer's Expo in the Stade Louis II - the soccer stadium for Monaco's soccer (aka football) team. I attempted to walk a bit of the course too, but that was not productive, as we were to run on roads through Monaco, and they were all full of traffic that Friday afternoon!

On Sunday morning I walked to the bus station and took a bus to Monaco at 7:30 .am., to get there in plenty of time for the 9:45 a.m. start. There were other racers on the bus with me, but I assumed many of them would be running the marathon, which began at 9 a.m. The marathon course went from Monaco to Italy and back through to France before ending in the Stadium. I had plenty of time when I got off the bus around 8:15, so I walked through the Stadium again, and saw all the preparations on going for the end of the race. The race start was at the harbor, about 1.5 km away - the same location where the Monaco Grand Prix will start at the end of May. It was a somewhat chilly morning, but I could tell that the sun would soon wear off the chill, and I was right. The marathon runners took off at 9 in the full sun; we 10k runners would have the same forty-five minutes later.

I watched the start of the marathon; there were several "elite" racers brought in for the race, as is most often the case with high-profile marathons these days. The Kenyans are the popular recruits, as they are very fast and often set course records; among the women elite racers for this race I saw an Eastern European or two, they also have reputations for running fast.

When the 10Km race set off at 9:45, I was already parched. I had gotten up early and had plenty of water, and also eaten a banana and a granola bar, but I had also made some coffee for myself, and in retrospect, I will not do that again. The caffeine effects were countered by the diuretic effects, unfortunately. My habit of not eating before I exercise had backfired in several races in the past, so in my recent races I have made it a point to eat something - even if only half a granola bar, before the race. It's no fun to race on fumes, which I have done.

The first 1 km of the race wound around the harbor, but then we turned up into the town, and up the hills toward Monte Carlo and its famous casino. We didn't actually run by the Casino, but you could see it from the road we ran on above the famous square. The race course took us by Princess Grace's Japanese Gardens and also by the Monte Carlo Country Club. The race was a little surreal; it was just us runners on the streets - there were very few folks on the streets watching us - and because we were running on the main streets of Monaco, there was virtually no noise around us - no cars could be heard. We ran under tunnels (nice, for their shade), and in the full sun back by the harbor on our way to the finish in the Stadium. About 3 km from the end, we raced past a water station, and I motioned indicating I'd like some water, but apparently the station was for the marathoners coming later - the volunteers at the table just cheered me on, ignoring my water shout and hand motions.

I was feeling pretty good throughout the race though; I enjoy climbing hills, and this course gave me that opportunity. I'm also a pretty good runner down hills, and saw myself making up time over my competitors on some of our downhills. In the last 3 km I was actually running by some guys on the course, which surprised me a little, but it was getting hot, and it is always easy to run too hard at the start of a race and peter out at the end. I had tried to keep at about 80% of my capacity through the race, which means for me, running with a labored breath, but not so labored that it hurts. That's not a good way to run a 10 km race anyway. But my training with weights and speed apparently were good enough to propel me up the ramp into the stadium and around the rubber track to sprint to the finish line in 42:24.

My finish pleased me greatly - especially since I had had no idea of my time throughout the race (note to race organizers, it's nice to see your time at some point during the race!). I got my medal and my lunch bag with its water bottle and wandered out of the stadium, just happy the race was over. I walked back into the stadium a little later, and wondered whether I should stick around and see if I had won anything. But my experience in France is that there are so few races and so many competitive runners that I never win anything (which is typical for me in the US races I run). So I went to find my bag so I could change and find the bus back to Nice.

It occurred to me later that I hadn't seen many women during the race, and that maybe I had done better than I had thought against my competition. So I went to the internet, eager to see what my results had been. The results were posted a little later that night, and I found that I had come in 3rd in my division - V1F - women aged 40-49. That was pretty exciting - but I still didn't win anything, as prizes were only given to the top winners in each division.

My prize to myself that afternoon was to spend some time on the Nice beach, and to plunge into the ocean for the first time in 2009! The water was definitely chilly (62 degrees Fahrenheit), but it felt good on my muscles for the 2 or 3 minutes I stayed in the water. I'll be back in the water again soon And racing again soon too (April 19).