Turkish Tales

I mentioned in my previous blog that we had done this killer run from Ovacik to Olu-Deniz. Well, when we got back to our flat we met the old security man who doesn't speak any English. My wife was keen to practise her Turkish so she stopped him and proudly announced in Turkish that we had just run all the way to Olu-Deniz and back. He didn't seem very impressed at all and looked at her as if to say, "Why are you telling me this?" So May repeated her little story and still he didn't react in the impressed way that we expected and just looked at her with a quizzical look on his face. So we gave up.

About 10 minutes later my wife burst out laughing and told me what she had actually said to the guy, "Billy and I talked all the way to Olu-Deniz and back." I guess he didn't think that a talk-athon was such a big deal. No wonder he thought that May was a bit mad!

Given that our legs were a bit stiff from the runs we had been doing we decided to go for a Turkish Bath. If you've never had one of these then you really don't know what you are missing. They are just a treat! You come out feeling cleansed and renewed. He also gave us a massage and when I told him that I was a runner he kneeded my calf muscles until I gasped out loud with pain. Brilliant. We left there after a couple of hours and the muscle stiffness and pain was gone. The benefit lasted all the way home where the day after getting home to Berkhamsted I ran my fastest ever 9k (its a route we do around our area) in 38min 14secs.

We were supposed to run the Oakley 20 miler the day after we arrived home but our flight was delayed so badly by a violent electric storm that we never got home until 4 am in the morning and had to get up at 7am to get to Bedford in time. There was just no way our dehydrated bodies could do it, so we just slept on and got our energy back. I was so sorry to miss the race as I had hoped to gauge my marathon progress and it was also a lovely day.

Our flat in Turkey is for rent by the way and if you want to take a look then go to www.relaxinturkey.net