We're all out of ambulances

This past Sunday, I undertook one of the most difficult and craziest tasks I've ever done: I ran my second marathon in 2 months. While I did not have much time to both recuperate and re-train after the Barcelona Marathon, I had already registered for and set my sights on completing the Madrid Marathon. And complete I did. Barely, but still.
While I knew that I wasn't as trained as I was for Barcelona, I went into this marathon confident. The weather was nice, I knew the city and the course well, and I had friends who were going to be cheering my on along the way. And even though I was having knee problems before beginning, I wasn't going to let that stop me.
I started the race great. I was right on my pace at every 5 kilometers, and ran the half marathon in 1 hour, 47 minutes. That was putting me on pace to be right over 3 1/2 hours total, which is what I wanted. I made it all the way through mile 20 still feeling good, slowing down but still running. But then at about mile 24, I hit that wall. You know, the wall every runner talks about hitting somewhere after mile 20? The one that you think has to just be a myth because you've already made it so close to the end and all you have to do is just tough it out? Yeah, that wall exists. And I hit it hard. I couldn't even move. I had to sit down, then when I tried to get back up, I couldn't. I just laid there on the side of the road, accepting assistance from spectators offering me bananas and water. And when the EMT got there on his motorcycle, he tried to help as well. He told me he was going to get an ambulance to take me to the finish line area to get assistance. My race was over. I had come 24.5 miles, less than 2 miles from the finish line, and I wasn't going to make it. Now to just lay there and get taken away be an ambulance.
But wait. This being Madrid, of course not everything works the way you thinks it's going to. The EMT tells me that all of the ambulances are being used (yes, by the marathoners. 190 people had to be assisted during the race) and there was really nothing else that he could do. What does this mean? It must be a sign, I thought. So after laying on the ground for 45 minutes in complete agony, I decide to get back up and finish the race. Why the EMT let me do this, not really sure. But I stood up, put one foot in front of the other, and kept going.
With about 1.5 miles to go, Becca, Katica, Ali, and Katica's friend were all waiting for me to cheer me on. They were of course worried about me because I had not showed up yet, and this was an hour after I was supposed to be there. But they walked with me for a while until I got up the strength to run the last mile. So I toughed it out, picked it up to a jog, and finished the race with fans screaming my name and "Go USA!". My time was pathetic-- 4:24:19-- but hey, I made it. I didn't give up and wait for an ambulance to free up and take me away! Toughest thing I've ever done.
Although I didn't have my dad here to share this experience with me, I did have some friends along the way. Miguel (my old flatmate) ran in the race as well, finishing in an impressive 3:50:00. And Becca created her own "Urban Challenge" where she set out to see me at as many points along the course as possible. In total, she saw me at 5 different points. Along the way, she picked up other friends who joined her in cheering me on. Also, I was able to see Lisa along Gran Via cheering runners on.
Other than the people I knew, I was so happy to have many other spectators cheering for me. My outfit was... well let's just say, ridiculous. I got this amazingly tacky running singlet that had the American flag on the front and "USA" on the back. And I wrote my name in permanent marker on my bib number. So I had people chanting my name, chanting in their broken English for USA, and all sorts of things. It was so nice to have the support of the people.
While I'll never do 2 marathons again in 2 months, I am definitely glad that I've had this experience. And that I'm alive to tell about it.

Becca was very busy cheering, but was able to get one picture of me running. This is at about 8 or 9 km.

Aunt Lou visits Madrid!

So as soon as I get back from my crazy Spring Break travels, you think it'd be time to relax, right? Nope, not so much. The day after I got back to Madrid, my Aunt Lou arrived. She, a math teacher at a high school, was a chaperone for a school trip that came to Paris, Barcelona, and Madrid over an 8-day period. Quick, yeah I know. But as part of that, she got to spend a day and a half here in Madrid. I was so excited to have another family member come and visit, and was able to get the time off of work to hang out with her the whole day and a half.
Luckily, the weather here in Madrid was perfect. We were able to walk all around the city, see Fat Spiderman in Plaza Mayor, see the changing of the guards at the Palacio Real, and even rent row boats in Retiro. She also got to see my apartment, which she realized was actually as small as I said it was. It was such a nice time, and I was so glad for her to be here and visit me. I think her students, all 4 of them from her group, really enjoyed their time in Europe.

Us on the rowboats in Retiro, waving to the camera (like my aunt always does in photos).
Watching the Changing of the Guards at the Royal Palace.

But since she was here for such a short time, she's now just going to have to make her way back for a longer visit!

And to end, a great picture of my aunt posing with Fat Spidey.

Adventures of semana santa

After over 2 weeks have past since my adventures during Semana Santa (the week before Easter, which is the Spanish version of Spring Break), I guess that it's time for me to give a little recap of what went down.
Being one who is always up for seeing new places and having new adventures, I tried to take advantage of my 10-day hiatus from school by filling it with travel. In accomplishing that, I brought along my friends Lisa and Ariel to join me on a trip through 5 different European cities: Dublin, Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, and Amsterdam. While it was a cold one, it was so awesome ot see all of these places.
Dublin: We spent the first day walking all around the city. We took a free tour from a tour company called NewEurope. The tour showed us most of the city, but we explored even more after the tour was over. For our next and last day, we took a side trip out to see the Irish hillside. It was so nice to see, even though it was fairly windy and cold. It wasn't as green as you might expect, but still cool to see things like where Braveheart was filmed, the estate where the Beatles wrote the song "Yesterday," and Bono's Irish home.

Trinity College in Dublin.
Some of the awesome graves out in the Dublin countryside.
Me standing in front of the estate that Bono always stays at, also where the song "Yesterday" was written. My favorite Beatles song.
Ariel, Me, and Lisa all standing in front of one of the Irish lakes in the countryside.

Scotland: We flew from Dublin into Glasgow, Scotland really late at night. The next morning, we woke up and set out through the cold Scottish weather to the city of Edinburgh. We took a tour of the amazing Edinburgh castle, then participated in another free NewEurope tour that showed us all of the city. We saw where J.K. Rowling sipped coffee and wrote Harry Potter, along with the castle that it was based upon. We heard stories about famous escapes from the castle, and learned the origins of the phrase "s**t faced." Oh, and we saw an outdoor prison, inside of a cemetery, where they used to keep prisoners hundreds of years ago. While it did rain on us most of the time and was pretty cold, it was still an amazing city. The next day was our last day in Scotland, so we went out exploring and saw the Glasgow cathedral, the city's old cemetery, and explored some of the central part of the city. While I've heard cool things about Scotland, Glasgow def. did not live up to what I was expecting. Let's just say there wasn't really much to do there, and it wasn't one of my favorite cities.

Me standing in front of the Edinburgh castle.
In the cafe upstairs is where J.K. Rowling sat to write Harry Potter.
The four-towered castle that Hogwarts is said to be based off. What is it now? Yeah, it's a school.
The Glasgow Cathedral.

London: Let me just say, I really really liked London. Lisa and I made the journey there, while Ariel boarded a bus headed for Manchester and met up with us at the airport to make the last leg of the trip. We got to London in the evening and explored the Hyde Park area around our hostel, including seeing the world-famous Harrod's department store lit up at night) the first night.

Harrod's, all lit up at night.

I was able to get in a good run through Hyde Park the next morning, which was really nice. Then after my run and breakfast at the hostel, we headed out to see the city. We started off going up to the theatre area. We were lucky enough to pick up tickets to not one, but two musicals: Wicked and Les Miserables! We then continued our journey in the northern part of the city up to the National Museum, which is probably one of the coolest history museums I've ever been in. It had the Rosetta Stone, the stone that was used to decipher different ancient languages. It also had moai from Easter Island, the mummy of Cleopatra (comin' at ya), and pieces of the Parthenon from Athens. It was so cool! From there, we made our way down to see St. Paul's Cathedral and walk across the famous Millenium Bridge to the Tate Modern museum. There was a lot of cool and interesting modern art, which I enjoyed seeing even though I'm not a big modern art fan. After that, we made our way past the Shakespeare Globe down towards the London Bridge (which is actually nothing very special. I guess after it fell down, they just built a normal bridge there) and walked across the Tower Bridge. Along the way, Lisa managed to let the wind steal her umbrella and deposit it into the River Thames. Not fun in the moment, but pretty comical in retrospect. After making it across the really cool Tower Bridge, we saw the London Tower. Now, when you hear Tower, what do you think of? Yeah, probably a tower. But no, the London Tower is actually an old castle. It was enormous, and we just stood on the outside and got some good pictures of the thing. We then made our way back to the hostel for some r&r before heading out to the musical. That night, we saw Les Miserables, which was amazing even though we were in the very top row. I've seen the play many times before (esp. since I worked it when YPAS did it my senior year), but it was really cool to see it in London. After that, we saw London's version of Times Square, Piccadilly Circus, all lit up at night. One of the big videos was a McDonald's ad where you played it in paper, rock, scissors. And yes, Lisa managed to lose to the video screen game. Good work, Lisa.

The Rosetta Stone in the National Museum.
Me in front of the Thames River, the Millennium Bridge, and St. Paul's Cathedral.
Shakespeare's Globe Theater.
Lisa in front of the Tower Bridge, right before her umbrella blew into the river.
Us outside of Les Miserables.

The next morning in London, we had another very full day of sightseeing. We made our way to the National Gallery art museum for a little bit to look around before heading over to see the changing of the guards. We got there just in time to see the band marching in with the soldiers getting off duty. It was really cool to see them enter, but then it kind of got pointless to stay around. So we just headed back to the National Museum to look around a little more. There were a lot of great paintings there, including some from my favorite artist Seurat. Then we managed to make our way to yet another NewEurope tour, this time through Royal London. Our tour guide was pretty random and wacky, but we were able to see all the major London sites: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park. It was a really nice tour, even though it was again pretty cold and kinda rainy. That night was our last night, so we grabbed our stuff from the hostel, took it to the bus station to put in lockers, and made our way to Wicked. Again, we were in the very top (this time second-to-last row. moving on up!), but it was really good. I had never seen Wicked before, and I liked seeing it for the first time in London. That night, we went out to the airport and slept on the airport floor. Our flight left at 6 am the next morning, so that was pretty much our only option. It ended up working out, and we met up with Ariel and headed for Amsterdam.

Watching the old guards make their way to Buckingham Palace.
Me in front of Buckingham Palace. You can't tell, but the flag flying means the Queen is in there!
Lisa and I posing with a guard. My face was a little too close to his gun.
Me in front of Big Ben!
The London Eye, as seen from St. James Park. It was too nasty to actually pay to go up in it. Maybe next time...
Wicked! WOW!

Amsterdam: We actually flew into Eindhoven, but took the train on over to Amsterdam. We got there about noon, took some naps, and headed out to see the Anne Frank house. It was a very moving experience to see the house and space where Anne Frank and her family hid out. We then wandered around the city some before calling it an early night. The next day, we took a boat tour through the canals. There are so many of them, and it was really nice to see them from the water. We then met up with one of Lisa's Dutch friends who studied at her university and he took us around the city. Of course, we tried the local cuisine of raw herring fish with onions on a sandwich bun. I actually didn't mind it, but had the taste in my mouth for a good while. We then experienced the Red Light District for the first time, which I was surprised to see hoppin' in the middle of the day. Ariel and I made our way back there the next night, and it was even more hoppin' at night. But def. not my cup of tea, as it just seemed shady and pretty gross to me. The next day, we went down to the southern part of the city to see the Van Gogh Museum and the Heineken factory. Def. 2 of my favorite parts of Amsterdam. Both the museum, which was full of impressionist works (my favorite) and the Heineken factory were great. In the Heineken factory, it was more than just a tour. It was so interactive and fun and def. worth the 15 euros we paid for it.

Of course I had to jump in front of one of the canals.
Eating our herring (raw fish) sandwiches. Actually not too bad.
All of us at the I amsterdam sign.
Me inside the Heineken factory.

The next day was Easter, which meant most things were closed. But we were able to go back down to the south of the city to see Vondelpark, the big park in the city. We walked through there for a while, then made our way by train out to the town of Haarlem. It was a really nice city, but we didn't get to see much since everything was closed. It is the city where Corrie Ten Boom hid out. In case you don't know who that is, she was basically on the other side of the Anne Frank story. She was a Christian, but her family helped hide Jews in their house until they got caught. Her book, The Hiding Place, is one I would recommend to anyone. Also in Haarlem we were able to see Hadrian's Windmill, the only actual windmill we saw up close while we were in the Netherlands. We got some great pictures with it, then made our way back into Amsterdam. We went and saw a movie that night, then walked around Amsterdam again at night. While the town and all of its crazy shenanigans were not necessarily my favorite, we did get to see a lot of cool things there.

In front of the windmill in Haarlem.

The last day, we made our way early out to Eindhoven, where we were going to catch our flight from. We wanted to rent bikes in the city, but ended up just walking around by foot and seeing its cool architecture. Oh, and eating some Dutch pancakes. And while I'm not a pancake fan at all, they were really good.

This cool bowling ball/pin sculpture in Eindhoven. There was a lot of weird art there.

By the end of day 11, I was really worn out and glad to be back in my own bed in MAdrid. It was a great journey, and now I can def. say I've seen a lot more of Europe.