Adventures in Bordeaux

When we were planning a trip to France this spring, we decided we needed to spend a few days in Bordeaux.  We've always loved Bordeaux wine, but really we knew next to nothing about the Region, the city, or the history...and we had such a magical time here that I knew I had to capture it in my blog...   Being that it's July now, the memories are starting to fade, so I had to get this written now, or never..... 

In one of the wine cellars at a Chateau in St. Emilion Region

We spent three days in the Bordeaux region, one in the city of Bordeaux, one on a wine tour on the East bank in the Saint Emilion region and another day on a wine tour on the West bank in the Medoc Region.  Two days of wine tours, I know I know..... but these really weren't JUST about drinking the wine....   We were immersed in the magic of the chateaus, the history of the regions, the incredible complicated rules of French wine making, and the terroir (the earth) and all that makes the wine what it is.... so when we drank that wine it took on a whole other dimension.

One Winery we visited still gets the second press of their grapes by hand

I could probably spend the next 3 pages of this blog talking about all that we learned on the wine tours. I REALLY geeked out over this french wine stuff, the geography, the traditions and the rules; and it helped that we absolutely loved our tour guide Julie.... but I don't want to bore the heck out of everyone so I'll just say GO TO BORDEAUX!

And if you do, Ophorus Tours does an amazing tour. https://ophorus.com/bordeaux-wine-tours/

Chateau Hortin Ducasse

Now if you don't have the luxury of two days of wine touring, I'll say that the St. Emilion Region grows more Pinot Noir and Merlot, and the Medoc grows more Cabernet Sauvignon, so if you have a preference of one or the other you could pick that way.  But really if you can.... do both....

Streets of St. Emilion

St. Emilion is a Unesco World Heritage Site, an ancient monastery dating to the 2nd Century, and the wines we had there were quite possibly the most amazing liquid we have ever tasted, so maybe I will say St. Emilion was my favorite..... but then our absolute favorite winery was in Medoc, Chateau Hortin Ducasse. We loved them so much that we checked a box with 8 of their bottles, and missed our flight home to Denver so we could get that wine home safe and sound.   And the chateaus in Medoc were like fairy tale princess castles, which were a sight unto themselves.

A Chateau in the Medoc Region

But back to Bordeaux, the city itself.  Not so long ago, it was a gritty shipping town, and from what I've heard not much of a tourist destination, but they have cleaned it up, literally.  The mayor several years ago required EVERYONE to clean their limestone walls and the transformation was incredible.  It is a completely charming little town, with a whole downtown area that is cobble stones and no cars, fantastic restaurants, and of course amazing wine!

One of the gates into the City

I went for a run there in the early dawn one morning and it was euphoric to run down the cobble streets and along the river long before the shops were even open for the day.

The City square at Dawn

Lodging

So we stayed at this very trendy somewhat unusual hotel called Mama Shelter.  I think we are showing our age because the amount of social media available in the room itself was a little unnerving (a wifi camera in the room???)  but a great centrally located option if you are up for something different.

Eating

The food here was fantastic.... absolutely fantastic.....  you will need to get a reservation for dinner, because most of the restaurants are quite small and really only do reservations.  We found making a reservation on thefork.com  was incredibly easy, once we made one just 30 minutes before dinner.

At the recommendation of the hotel, we ate at Bistro Reno, which was a fantastic dinner.  In a lot of places in France they only serve what's on their chalkboard special that night, so they just bring over their board for you to look at while you decide.  Google translate and some discussions, and voila you have an incredible dinner with a fantastic bottle of Bordeaux from the Graves Region.

At the recommendation of our tour guide, the last night we ate at the Bistro Gloutton, which was beyond fantastic, it was sublime!   I remember my white asparagus with hollandaise sauce, and just thinking how can something so simple be so incredible?

We also found a great bread shop there for breakfast, Le Boulanger de 'Hotel de Ville, where we got croissants and an incredible praline sweet bread.  Our tour guide told us it's the best boulangerie in town, so there you have it...  you must stop by if you are ever there. And while I'm talking about sweets, the special dessert in Bordeaux is the canele, which is a sweet cake made with egg yolks.  In Bordeaux they use egg whites to separate the sediment from the wine, and so with so many egg yolks left over this became something of a hallmark dessert for the region. You will find a ton of shops selling caneles, pralines and beautiful chocolate, all things that go great with wine.

And if you still haven't had enough of wine yet, then you can go to Cite du Vin, the WINE MUSEUM.  Yes, of course, Bordeaux has a fantastic wine museum that talks about wine making all over the world, and finishes up with a wine tasting on their top floor overlooking the beautiful countryside.  

The highlight of our travels so far this year; Bordeaux, France.  

Happy Travels!

Process vs. Results - 25K Reflections

So I've been thinking about running a lot recently, which tends to happen to runners. And yes, I call myself a runner now. I've always heard people say a really long run is a metaphor for life; it has its highs and lows and the run is a journey through all these moments until you get to the finish line.  And this is what I've been thinking a lot about, the finish line. Was it a good finish, a bad finish?  Did I achieve my goals or fall short?  Am I "happy" with my "results"?  And the more I think about this the more I realize that this attitude is sort of a black hole of self judgement.  Am I a fast runner, am I a slow runner?  Am I good at running or bad at running?  Am I good at math or bad at math?  Am I good at spelling or bad at spelling? Am I a good driver or a bad driver (okay maybe this one is sort of important)

Putting adjectives onto myself is so easy to do, and yet goes completely against any desire for self-acceptance and self-love.  How can I love myself if I'm constantly asking myself if I'm good enough.  We have enough of other people judging our looks, actions and fashion choices; why do we need to pile it on ourselves?

So to the topic of this blog, process vs results.... I just finished reading a book called "The Happy Runner" which talks a lot about this... and the first thing it reminds you of is that at the end of it all, we will all be dead....and really isn't that the final finish line?  The book goes on to say if there's one thing you can guarantee in running is that for a period of time you will get faster, and then reach your peak, and then you will get slower, if injuries don't sideline you completely for a bit, and so if you judge your worth only on results then aren't you just setting up for disappointment?

To go deeper, if my biggest goal in life is to run an 8 min / mile, or to get a promotion to Director of Awesome Company, or to finally purchase that Aston Martin sports car, what happens when I get there?  Am I happy forever?  What happens if I don't get there?  Am I devastated with life?

And this is why I love this idea of process over results.  If life is a journey, then the goals and achievements on that journey are great moments in the timeline but they are not the only thing that define us.  The journey will have good and bad,  and we should try to give equal weight to each, because they are just moments along the long run of life.

I made a goal in January to run a 25K trail race, and yesterday I completed that goal.  And as I trained for this race, I worked on getting longer runs in during the week and building my mileage up.  I did some speed runs and started running trails with hills.  I got out of my comfort zone and started running with groups, many of whom were much quicker than me or could power hike up a hill like nobody's business, but they pushed me and gave me confidence.  I also got sidelined with bronchitis, went on a vacation that threw my training plan for a loop, had charlie horse cramps for 2 weeks and slept like crap the week before the race.  So come race day, the results of my race were nowhere where I wanted them to be in my mind.  And this had me down for a day... until I remembered process vs. results.  Here I was judging myself, good vs bad, fast vs. slow, and in an instant I had forgotten everything about the journey.  And that journey is where all the juice is, where all the stories live, and truly where you find all the happy tears of self love.

So whether my results were a personal record or I crawled across the finish line, at the end it doesn't matter. What matters is the journey; accepting that the world is going just they way it is at that moment, and we don't always have control over the outcomes, but we do have control over our attitudes to those outcomes. I am choosing to embrace the journey.

If you are interested in reading more about the Happy Runner, check out this excerpt

https://trailrunnermag.com/training/the-happy-runner-an-excerpt-from-david-and-megan-roches-new-book.html

  If you are interested in reading more about this idea of self acceptance without judgement, or if you are maybe 'not your average runner'  check out Jill Angie.  I could write a whole other blog on my reflections on a talk she did a couple months ago.
https://notyouraveragerunner.com/

The Couch to 5K Transformation

I've never considered myself athletic, in fact I think book worm would have been a good name for me as a kid.  It wasn't that I didn't enjoy soccer or playing outside, I just never excelled at it and so in the fierce life of competitive childhood  you were either good at something or were bad at something, and at some point society basically told you, don't try, you're bad at it, go work on the things you're good at.....

Well 38 years of doing the academic things I was good at and telling myself I wasn't athletic, that I can't run, that walking's great but I will never be able to jog more than the mile they made me do in high school.....I think finally a small part of me told me that was just Bullsh@t.  Maybe it was the yoga I've been doing for 10 years, teaching me to be balanced in both mind body and spirit, I can't say for sure, but something led me to ask myself why did I accept this definition of myself? Why can't I change this preconceived notion of who I am? Use my strength and determination to remake the vision of who I am, not at what others see me but how I see myself.

And that something took root, and it grew until it became a GOAL. like a Capital G goal, not one of those New Year's resolution's that last a week. And that Goal was to actually run a 5K.

And then because fate always helps you out when you need it the most, Amazon sent me a link to a book... And that book was "A Beautiful Work in Progress" by Mirna Valerio.  And that book and the Couch 2 5K Training App by Zen Labs helped me fundamentally change my self-image.

So I downloaded the 8 week C25K training plan and I signed up for a race that was 10 weeks out, because I knew I needed a deadline.... and I started.

So here's my journey in recap and all the conversations I had with myself during my 3x a week runs.

Week 1:  Holy Crap I'm out of shape!  How could jogging for one minute be so hard!?!?!  I'm never going to get through this, what was I thinking??  And then... you got this Erin. You are strong. You are brave!  Tell those muscles they can do it. And they did.

Week 2:  Wow my knees really hurt...Ed (my husband)  how am I going to do this? Am I going to break?  to which he said a little pain is okay, it just happens and it will get better, you just have to be strong...

Week 3:  I'm hot, sweaty and wondering how can I be sweating like this when it's below freezing outside?  My knees ache and I finally realize that it's because my hip flexors are tight, and so I start religiously doing a bunch of yoga moves to open them up.  Every day, doing stretches, doing ice packs, taking Aleve, and thinking to myself, you can't give up now.... make this pain count for something.  Also I'm reading Mirna's book and she's telling me the same thing... don't let anyone tell you that you don't have a 'runner's body'  or that overweight people should lose weight first, etc etc....  so I keep going...

Week 4 and 5:  These were hard weeks.  Just when I started getting my thigh muscles, knees, hips and core working together, the training program takes it up to longer intervals, and man my cardio just sucked!!  Then one afternoon I was plodding along, slowly dying inside, and a woman who was sitting in her car with her kids waiting for someone, smiles at me  and puts her thumb up and says sincerely "Hey, Nice Work"  Will she ever know how much that voice of confidence meant to me??

So I keep going......  I find new problems to deal with; how do I run at night? How do I set a route when I don't know how long I'm going?  I'm fortunate I have friends and family that helped me overcome each obstacle that I put in my own way.

Week 6:  Mirna has a great quote in her book.... "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience which you look fear in the face" 
At this point in the training plan it has you running "1 mile or 10 minutes"  Well I could now jog for 10 minutes without stopping but it sure as heck wasn't a mile.  I knew as a beginner runner you should only worry about time or distance, not both, but I kept asking myself how am I going to get ready for a 5k if my training plan thinks I'm running a 10 minute mile when my mile is more like 13 minutes. I have to run longer then my app has planned for me.  Another obstacle, but I'd overcome so many already.... so I started to create my own running plan for those last few weeks..   I got a timer app and set up my own intervals.

Week 7.  The week I ran 2 miles without stopping.... for the first time ever...in my life...  I still start to tear up thinking about it. 

Week 8.  The week I put Live Like Legends by Ruelle on my running play list and believed it....

Week 9.  It was Thanksgiving week, and I was at the end of my training plan but still hadn't gotten to 3 miles, so that Wednesday I went out there, on the fabulous Clear Creek Trail where it's uphill on the way out and downhill all the way home, and when my timer app told me to turn around I went just a little further,  and turned around at 1.5 miles instead of 1.3 and kept going and then I did it.. 3 Miles!!!!

Day of the Race....
So 5K day is here.  The weather is unseasonably warm, I didn't sleep well, I'm out of sorts, nervous,  start the run too fast, and start to really exhaust myself.... I don't know how I'm going to finish...I'm overheated, I'm sloppy, I'm distracting myself by all these people around me, so many doubts running in my head, but then I get to that 3 mile mark, and there's only .1 to go....  and I keep going....  My husband and my good friend Joanne are waiting there for me, full of love and support and they make me brave.  and I keep going... all the way.  And I tell myself I am brave, I am strong and I can be whoever I choose to be.

            



Sending Love and Light to anyone who journeys to create their own vision of themselves, and works to create a balanced mind, body and spirit through courage and through self-love.


Here's a link to Mirna's book if you'd like to read it too...
https://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Work-Progress-Mirna-Valerio-ebook/dp/B01N21CG4I

and the app I used for my C25K
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/c25k-5k-trainer/id485971733?mt=8