track fan

44:47. After 20 hours of travelling we checked in to our hotel in Girona and went for a jog (it was about 3PM in Spain -- 7AM in SLC). Felt horrible at first (especially since I did not sleep on the plane, but did take an hour nap on the train from Barcelona) -- but felt pretty good after the first 20 mins. We went looking for a dirt trail we had run here a couple of years ago, but there were workmen blocking it ... so found went and discovered a couple of shorter trails and ran around the park. Very humid, but not really hot here right now (about high 50's low 60's).

1:07:01. Ran by myself today - Dean went to the conference in the afternoon -- I went a little later, but did not feel like spending the whole afternoon there. Rained all morning, so by the afternoon it was very humid, it is going to take a while to get used to the humidity again. We were able to stay up until 11PM the night we got into town (not easy as we both were pretty tired), and were able to sleep most of the night, or at least until 5AM Spain time (9PM SLC time).

Ran out to the outside of town and found a nice packed sand/dirt trail -- well muddy actually -- just did 30 mins out and then did a loop of the park on the way back to make sure I was out for more than an hour.

Tricky thing about this trip - as with our last visit here - is finding vegetarian food. Most resturaunts don't open until 10PM, so we end up eating a lot of the time in Tapas places - the selection for me consists of a Spanish appetizer sandwich called a bocatillo - the vegetrian options have either an omelet, potato, or cheese and tomato on a roll. When the conference folks go out to eat the places generally don't have any vegetarian entree's - so I usually end up with a salad and hopefully a side of a vegetable (they really don't eat a lot of vegetables here). Breakfast is the big meal, for me, lots of fruit, really good granola and yogurt. I should drop quite a few pounds on this trip!

I am still working this week, but looking forward to more sightseeing next week!

Funny thing, yesterday I was working and from outside my hotel window I heard a bunch of people talking. It took me a while to notice they were speaking English! I looked outside an there were about 30 people on bikes (very fit looking people) - a group that were doing a bike tour through Catalunya - well, they were introducting themselves in the group and about a 1/3 of them were from Park City!! pretty funny to come all this way only to run into a bunch of people from the same place as you. Later on I went and talked to a few of them - they were quite nice and someone even told me about a cool run they had done in the part of the city I had not been to yet ... it is a pretty tough climb but I will have to check it out sometime this week.

Hope all is well bloggers.

55:01 - ran 2.5 laps on the gravel path around the park (Parc de la Devesa) + 10 x :25 strides.

There were a group of people running pretty fast at the park today - they looked to be part of a running club. The 2 women in the group were running pretty quick, one of them about 3 stride lengths ahead of another one - probably the fittest running people I have seen here since the race we ran the last time we were here (though the cyclists yesterday were pretty fit too).

No matter how hard I try I can't sleep past 4AM here ... makes me feel very zombie like during the day! Probably just as I start getting used to the time here it will be time to go home.

Still cool, but humid. It is supposed to rain again today - dreary, but easier to work that way.

1:01:54

I found the best route today -- I followed the advice of the cyclists and ran up some hills past the Cathederal (1000 something AD !) and about 12 minutes from the center of the city is a series of trails that actually go over 100 km to different cities in Catalunya (including the fishing village we will be heading to on Saturday for the rest of our stay). The trails are pretty nice - almost roads. Today I climbed pretty high and could look down into the City of Girona - which lies in a valley surrounded by fairly high hills (I hesitate to call them mountains - but they are kind of low foothills that lead up to the Pyrenees (which are definately mountains and are still snow-capped).

Run well bloggers.

1:22:42

Ran a different route on 'my' trails today. This time I ended up running a little lower than yesterday - in the valley on a road that turned out to be a dirt road leading to some really old farm houses (some of them still habited, some of them abandoned). It was very nice, the earth smelled old out there, you could almost imagine seeing some of these farmhouses in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Yesterday the conference took a tour outside of Girona proper to some natural areas that were created from eruptions of a series of vocanos that surround the area. We saw a beechwood forest and some interesting geologic formations (many of the people here at the conference are geologists that use a certain type of statistical technique that Dean worked on for his dissertation). Then we went to a city that has been referred to in documents written in 1052 AD. The city is called Besalu, and as in many old cities in Spain once had a very large (relatively, it is estimated that there were about 2000 inhabitants of the city proper in the 14th century) population of Jews. These Jewish residents were forced to move into "Jewish quarters" (read, slums) in the late 12th and early 13th century until they were expelled from Spain (or killed) in the late 14th century. Most of these old cities have incredible Jewish quarters that are still preserved, including their ritual bathhouses. Usually these quarters are also attached to very very old Cathedrals and town squares. After our tour we had a dinner (there were about 45 of us total) at a very nice restaurant in the old city - it was my first real dinner in almost a week - they made me a very nice grilled vegetable platter (no starches). I am getting a little tired of potato sandwiches! Next week we will have a refrigerator and stove so we can cook our own meals.

Well, I am off to get some work done so I can relax next week. Have a good weekend bloggers. I might not be logging in next week - it is likely I won't have internet access again until we get back to Barcelona next Friday. Happy running.

42:51

Ran with Dean this morning - showed him the trail I had found ... it was a fun run, hot and humid but clear and the valley was beautiful.  Today we leave for el Port de la Selva, about an hour from Girona, 15-20 miles from France on the ocean. 

We are renting an apartment, so we can cook our own meals!  The town is very small (probably 3,000 year round residents) and the apartment is  up on a mountain about 1 mile from  the center of town and 1 mile to the Parc de Natural with tons of trails to run along the sea!