Well, I’ve let the blog slide quiet again, but that’s another temporary situation. Things have been busy pulling together a variety of work plans, revising them, bouncing for the occasional training, and a lot of other boring work stuff that you don’t need to hear about.
Late January was spent getting things together for my big work push that’s upcoming this spring. I’ve been working hard on greasing the wheels and preparing everything for a variety of additional trainings upcoming, despite things being pushed off a bunch and other things moving at a slower pace than I’m used to.
I’m particularly excited about my traveling training series. Back in December, a bunch of attendees of my HIV stigma training invited me to come do trainings in rayon centres across Osh Oblast. I’m finally going to get to do those after a brief pilot and tweaking that I’ll be doing in the next few weeks.
Other exciting news is all around marathon training. I’ve been working my way up in my distances, and two weeks ago hit my longest long run before Almaty. Running here is interesting – there’s actually quite a few people that run on the trail along the river that runs through Osh, but that’s quite far from my house, so it’s not practical for me to run there daily. On the other hand, I happen to live very close to two major intercity roads that have very wide shoulders. So, every weekend that’s had good weather (which really means like every 3 weeks) I go out and run out and back along some amazing roads into the mountains, one of which has a ton of vertical that goes along with it. On a 10 mile run, I’ll do 500 feet up and 500 feet back down, which is kind of insane, but exactly the kind of training I need to be doing for the long gradual hills that mark the course in Almaty.
We’ve got about one month until that race, and things are feeling great. I’m really excited to get back to Kazakhstan in a warmer season than my last trip, and this time to be going with a bunch of other volunteers who will also be running various distances. This will be my “Boston substitute” this year. As some readers know, I was a runner in the 2013 Boston Marathon, and narrowly missed being caught by the bombing at the finish line. Ever since then, my friends and I have upheld a pact that we will run a marathon every spring around the time of Boston. This will actually be my SIXTH marathon, if you can believe it! I know I can’t.
In other news, spring has sprung! It’s warm, the patios at cafes are opening again, the trees and flowers are starting to bloom, and we celebrated the traditional holiday of Nooruz, which is a spring equinox holiday of Zoroastrian Iranian origin that is celebrated across Iran and Central Asia, marking the traditional new year in the Iranian calendar. Every city had a celebration of some kind, from dances to parades to events at schools. It was wonderfully festive, even if I was too busy to go see much of the festivities. Once I’ve got more time, I’m definitely planning to go wander the parks before it gets too hot again! Until that happens though, keep on reading!
On the blog front, some other exciting news; we hit 6,000 visits recently, and I’m continuing to develop a variety of new content to hopefully keep things interesting and regular as we prepare to welcome a new class of PCV’s to Kyrgyzstan and as we head into our peak tourism season here, so definitely stay tuned!