Another Long Race

So, I fabulously flamed out of my half marathon training last fall, after some freak thing happened to my calf. As I mentioned in this post, I was pretty annoyed at my middle-aged body betraying me in such mysterious fashion. Why the resentment to a little speed work, huh?

Undeterred, however, I’ve signed up for Around the Bay, the oldest road race in North America. 30K of fun at the end of March. This means winter training, and the last couple of weeks have been a treat indeed: frigid temps, slush, ice, and snow. Because I am trying to work in harmony with my body instead of at cross purposes with it, I joined a neighbourhood gym where I can hit the treadmill, cross train, lift weights, etc. It’s a tiny place, as far as gyms go, and works on the premise that all the members live in the area. So it dispenses with locker rooms, juice bars, and indoor lounging space. Come in, work out, leave.

Because of the aforementioned slush, ice, and snow, the gym nicely requests clean, gym-only shoes be worn inside. Although I find some of those directives to be super annoying, I also don’t want to have to lie down in the muck to do my crunches, such as they are, and this meant I had to buy new shoes.

Behold: the shoes of awesomeness.

This means I will be super fit and super fast, right?

Oooh, fashion!

Apologies to Mr. Bowie for cribbing his lyrics for a title, but when I saw the sight captured in the photograph below, this song shot into my head like a lightning bolt. Let me set the scene.

This picture was taken at the new school year celebration for the new first graders (German school starts with first grade, not K), and this man was standing in front of me. I was there because G-girl was in the theater piece performed for the kiddos. Yes, my daughter spoke German in front of a large audience, four times, no less. Anyway, it was a warm and somewhat muggy day, and the cafeteria building where this was happening is a GDR relic with impaired air circulation. It was hot in that room, and any sane person was wearing light clothing.

Not this fashion icon whose foot is here immortalized. Although it was August 8th, he was dressed from head to toe in black. Jet black, and not one little thing was any other color. Even the buttons on his shirt were onyx black.

Socks with sandals - fab!

Black long-sleeve shirt (with little epaulatte thingies a la a Members Only jacket circa 1988), black balloon cargo pants tied at the ankles, black socks, black sandals, as you can see. Nice guy, friendly smile, but, wow, dressed like the Grim Reaper on summer vacation, not to mention the dark sock in sandal thing for which Germans are known worldwide.

While walking to school with G-girl today, I saw him again walking his kid to school. Today’s ensemble was much lighter in tone (khaki – so why wear funereal black to a kid program?), but his shoes, socks, pants, and jacket all matched in tone. I so wanted to take him by the shoulders and suggest, kindly, that it is OK to mix colors.

I will now return to my glass house and pretend that I have never worn stripes with plaid. Ever. Nor did I have bright green leather shoes in the late 1980s. That is a nasty rumor.