Sometimes, a run deserves it's own blog post, like this one.
Almost exactly 21.1 kilometers away from where I stay is a
place called Jai Ghati (translation: Victory
Valley).
It is a beautiful, isolated basin, surrounded by lush green,
forested slopes and carpeted with rolling emerald meadows. A sparkling,
crystal-clear stream divides it, spanned in a couple of places by quaint wooden
foot-bridges. The water is ice-cold snowmelt, good enough to drink.
Picture perfect and true to the words of the poet...
Gar Firdaus bar ruh-e
zamin ast
Hami asto, hamin asto,
hamin ast …
Yep, it’s heaven.
Did I mention that it’s on the other side of a 8 thousand
foot pass… that’s 17 and a half kilometers away from where the route starts, at an altitude of about 5 and a half thousand feet? Yep, that’s
nearly a 6 percent incline… more than three quarters of a kilometer of ascent in that distance. Here’s the
elevation profile…
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| Phew! |
I’d been looking forward to doing this run all last week, but as I turned in last night, thundershowers started raising merry hell on my tin roof, and chances of execution looked mighty bleak. But come morning… Hallelujah!
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| Hallelujah for clear skies! |
I poured a couple of bottles of Gatorade into my new
CamelBak , kitted up and stepped out instanter.
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| I'm a lot of things..."Color-coordinated" is not one of them |
While most of the country is reeling under loathsome heatwave conditions, I set off in pleasant low twenties on my weekend Long Slow Distance.
This run was intended to be a spiritual experience. Timing
was not a consideration, but I set myself an easy goal pace of 6:30 per km for
this. The route, as you can see, is too amazingly beautiful to not stop and
stare at the scenery every so often.
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| Nice work here, Mother Nature. |
I ran through a couple of small villages and hamlets as the
road climbed, enjoying the incredulous stares of farmers, housewives and
shopkeepers, to say nothing of cattle, mules, dogs and sheep...
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| You'll all be sweaters soon, guys... |
When I waved to a
bunch of curious children on the roadside, I was rewarded with raucous peals of
laughter. I can imagine what a strange sight I must have been to them. Crazy
man in shorts and shades sucking on a tube and running up a hill… Ridiculous!
Halfway through my run, I had left whatever little habitation
there is in this place, behind. Just me, the unforgiving slope of the road, the
wind in the trees and the valley laid out beside me. My legs were killing me
from the climb, but the sheer splendor of the environs kept me in the zone.
What goes up, must come down, as the common aphorism goes. I
crossed the pass and praised the lord for the downhill, and finally, after
about two and a half hours of running, at a pace a mite slower than planned, I landed up here…
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| Coming... |
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| ...and Going. |
Worth every single aching muscle fiber.
As I sat around resting my aching feet, some of my friends (all of whom think I’m insane, of course)
joined me for a picnic by driving up. I dipped them in the water of the stream until they were numb. My feet, I mean...not my friends!
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| Yes, some cold water did creep up my buttcrack. Not pleasant. |
Having breakfasted on a gigantic omelette, I set out to explore a bit. And do other stuff.
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| "Other stuff" |
To my acute delight, I discovered that there is a prominent,
very runnable pony trail that runs right through the valley...
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| Shahrukh ain't got nuthin' on me, yo. |
...and another that
leads from the pass back along a continuous ridge to a place very close to
where I live.
Finally, I have somewhere to do something about the irksome
virginity of my Salomon Fellraisers!
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| ...not for long, my beauties. Heh heh heh. |
I was almost on the verge of selling them on OLX...
