Buying Flowers, Making Friends and a Race Registration

I made friend number 14 at the flower market today (friends 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 make up my new French class, which I discovered when I literally walked into it by accident while looking for a wifi zone in the community center - more on that later). Back to the market: in addition to the daily morning food market in a covered market hall known as Les Halles, a bio food market on Saturday mornings in an open air park, and an everything-you-didn’t-know-needed market that stretches along the canal on Thursdays and Saturdays, Narbonne has a Thursday morning flower market along the right bank of the canal that includes a lot of herb and vegetable plants, which couldn’t be more convenient for me as I have big plans to grow as many edible things as possible on my suntrap of a terrace.

After buying an assortment of parsley, thyme, mint and cilantro plants to get my herb planters started, I bought a large potted jasmine vine from a kid with exceptional sales skills and a remarkable horticultural knowledge (for an adolescent), with a special focus on roses. He was manning his uncle’s stall while his uncle smoked. That kid became friend number 14 when he insisted on walking me home to carry the jasmine. He introduced himself as Ludec as we walked. Ludec was dying to practice the English he's learnt in school, but after we discovered he didn’t have more than a dozen words in his vocabulary, we switched to French. By the time we reached my front door – it was a short walk - I had learned that he comes from Toulouse and does the two-hour drive to Narbonne with his uncle every Thursday for the flower market. Next week he’s going to help me pick out the right roses for my terrace, which isn’t what I was planning on growing (not edible) but it’s hard to decline enthusiasm like that.

Now back to the community center: I was scoping out a possible wifi zone there because I still have no internet at home. It’s coming, they assure me, any day now (oh – and the hot water arrived two days ago). The upside of this inconvenience was discovering that there is a once a week French class in town, which happened to be in progress when I was making my wifi inquires. They asked me if I wanted to try it out, which I did, so I sat down and joined the last hour of class. I found that it was just my level and registered for the remainder of the sessions, which finish up for the summer in late June. I was surprised that there were any local non-French speaking residents in Narbonne, and they seemed just as surprised to see me. I think that must be all of them, in one room together. Now we are five. And I got to add five (including the teacher) new people to my friend map in one afternoon, and while I was feeling a little proud that no one on the map speaks English until now, new friends are new friends and I’m not going to discriminate (God help me if any of them ever read this).

So improving my French is very much on track, as is meeting people, as is being vegan (it’s hard to go wrong with this many markets, and it’s actually a little overwhelming after the slim pickings of Switzerland; I think I might have vegetable choice anxiety) but training is lagging behind a little. I caught a slight head cold and there have been heavy rain showers for days, which is not exactly what I had in mind when I picked a town that claims to be the sunniest in all of France to live in, so I’ve been reluctant to do much. I did, however, register myself into an Ironman race. I had been planning to do a somewhat obscure Ironman-distance event called Elbaman on the Tuscan Island of Elba in late September, but hadn’t actually registered for it yet. When I discovered that there is another late-season race that’s easier to get to and has a flatter course last week, I registered into it in a heartbeat. It’s also a week later than Elbaman, which buys me an extra week of training time, which doesn’t make a modicum of difference in a nine-month training program but feels psychologically good right now.

Challenge Costa Barcelona-Maresme is second year of operation, is capped at 2,000 participants, and is organized by the same group who do Challenge Roth in Germany (one of the most popular Ironman-distance events in Europe; it sells out in hours). It’s a two-lap ocean swim, a flat and fast bike and run, and it’s a short 2-hour train ride away in the coastal resort town of Maresme, outside Barcelona. I couldn’t have asked for a better first Ironman race than this, and there is truly nothing like actually registering into something to encourage a quick re-focus and get the excitement going. I’m suddenly feeling ready to move into the next phase of training and see what this vegetable diet really can do.