Montreal: A run that could kill me

         MONTREAL – On rare mornings, I wake up and think: A run would kill me. I either had a little too much beer, or pulled an all-nighter, or felt horribly sick. Sometimes when I made the decision to go anyway, I not only survived, but ended up feeling somewhat cleansed.

                And sometimes I felt worse. Sometimes, the run was deadly. I can remember on a few times I ran, showered, and crawled back in bed.

                On a recent morning in Montreal I woke at 5:30 a.m., eyes blinking, thinking maybe I should just pass on the run. I simply had too much to eat the night before.

                At a Chinese restaurant, one friend ordered for a group of us. Jellyfish and duck tongue. Shark fin soup. Filet mignon with pea pods. Peking duck. Vegetables with shrimp and octopus.

                The food was delicious. It was one of the best meals of my life. And it was so much more than I ever eat. I felt so full.

                At 5:30 a.m., I still felt full. It was as if I had just finished the dinner.  

                Still, I rolled out of bed. I hadn’t run in Montreal for five or six years, and so I got myself to the hotel lobby. I asked a clerk for a route, and he gave me a small map and recommended that I run past the old city and go along the St. Lawrence River, along the city’s Vieux Port, or old port, which was first used by French fur traders in the early 17^th century. “It’s a great way to see the sun rise,” he said.

                When I stepped outside, his optimism washed away: Rain was coming down in sheets. It felt like 50 degrees. I would have shivered if I wasn’t so full.

                I stepped out and put one foot in front of the other. Luckily, the first few blocks were downhill, and I tried to bend at the waist and lean forward. I thought if anyone saw me (and it seemed I had Montreal to myself), they would think, “That guy looks full.” Or, perhaps, rough.

                I kept moving. I passed steak house after steak house, restaurants with pig drawings on signs (what is it about this city that makes it so in love with meat?), and cafes with breads and pastries. Ugh.  But the shops ended by the St. Lawrence. In the rain, the boardwalk almost shone. The river opened wide and I ran along by myself, the only sound the rain and my footfalls. I turned back at the Jacques-Cartier Bridge.

                I felt full no more. I felt like myself. The pleasures of running in an empty city, by a broad river, and then along the narrow Rue de Notre Dame and its magnificent square with the glowing Notre Dame Basilica, took over. I forgot about everything for some moments. Montreal had given me a great meal and then a morning that allowed me to run it off.  

Running along the mighty Congo

               

               KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo – We flew into the other Congo, capital Brazzaville, at dawn, and then took a slow boat across the Congo River to Kinshasa. It had been five or six years since I had been to Kinshasa. I remember the trip well. On the way in, I walked into a mob scene at the airport (like everyone else) and paid a $50 fee to a service that got me out of there in one piece; on the way out, I walked into the airport with a leg pouch containing $1400, and by the time I was on my flight the leg pouch was no longer on my leg, the money gone.

                So I liked arriving by boat.

                There was no crowd to greet us -- just dignitaries and their security details -- and we slipped into waiting cars and raced through the city with a police escort to the Hotel du Fleure. The building rose 22 stories on a high point above the Congo. My room was on the 19^th floor, and I looked down on the city from the vantage point of a hawk.

                I eyed a running route under the canopy that hugged the river, laced up my shoes, and I was off. I felt almost wobbly – I had slept the last two nights on planes (Washington-Geneva and then Geneva-Paris-Brazzaville). But I figured I should follow my own advice about running in the morning after a long flight to fight jet lag, or pay the price (of jet lag or scorn from my friends).

After a few minutes on a main road, I took a left, then a right, and I settled on an easy pace down a near-empty road of privilege. Cut grass lined the road. High walls obscured properties. Every 50 yards a man or a woman, wearing blue uniforms, swept the road with a palm frond. Tiny leaves went skittering under my feet. I was running on clean asphalt in a city with few functioning sewers.

I passed the British Embassy, then the German, and soon came upon a roadblock. I waved to a soldier, who stood up and greeted me with a rifle. “Go back,” he said. “No passing.”

                I hung a left and as I crested a hill, the Congo spread out before me. It was muddy brown, seemingly a mile wide. Parts of the river are 700 feet deep, and there are more than 700 species of fishes in it, and scientists say there surely are many, many more.

Even from the road, the river, which passes through the Congo rainforest, seemed extraordinarily powerful and dangerous. It is Africa’s second longest river (the Nile is first) and is the  largest by volume (which has helped spur dreams and plans to build a hydroelectric dame called Inga III that could power most of sub-Saharan Africa.) I am not a good swimmer and I started imagining preposterous scenarios like falling off a boat in the middle of the Congo and trying to swim to one side. I was sure the current would sweep me away and I would be gone forever.

I kept to the middle of the road. Ahead, I heard a commotion and saw dozens and dozens of schoolchildren dressed in identical blue and white uniforms. They were crossing the road, and as I came closer, several shouted out at me. I ran into their midst, skirting them slowly, and some giggled and took a few steps as if to follow me. But the gaze of a stern headmaster spoiled those plans, and soon I had the road to myself again.

I ran for a few miles more and was about to turn toward the hotel when a tiny blue bird darted in front of me. I stopped and looked into the grass. There it was – an indigo bird. I watched it hop and flit around the grass, and then it settled next to three others. I stood and watched them, transfixed at their beauty.

 

The indigo birds flew off, and I started off again. I didn’t know when I would see such birds or the Congo River again, but I was feeling more euphoric than sad. I had stolen some wonderful moments by the river, some balm perhaps to temper the memories of my last trip here.

In Romania, a boy on the streets at 5 a.m.

            

 BUCHAREST, Romania –The sight of the boy shocked me. Maybe it was because of the focus of our trip. Maybe it was the hour, just 5 a.m. Or maybe it was how he smiled at me. All I knew was that just five steps into my run here, I stopped when I saw him.

He was of Roma descent; his clothes were a dull color, dulled by dust. His eyes almost shone. He couldn’t have been older than five. Nearby, a woman and a young girl were sitting on a large piece of cardboard, their bed, against a building. All were fully alert. I stood just a few feet from the boy, expecting him to beg for money. He didn’t. We just looked at each other, and he smiled. In a few seconds, I started again, and he gave me a shy wave. I waved back.

We had traveled to Bucharest partly to learn more about the Roma people, also known as gypsies. The night before we had met about 10 Roma college graduates who had received scholarships and who spoke of their great aspirations to succeed in a variety of fields – diplomacy, architecture, development, law. We left feeling very hopeful of their futures.

But the boy was another story. I turned a corner and I saw another family of Roma, and then a third, all awake, and several children moving around with great ease as if the streets of Bucharest were their livingroom, even at 5 a.m.

I turned off the narrow streets and descended down a darkened path into a park. Birds called out from the trees, frogs from the ponds. Birds always seem the noisiest just before dawn; Bucharest’s birds were deafening.

And yet, on park benches along the way, many homeless slept right through the calls of the urban wild, blankets pulled to their ears to ward off the chill, and perhaps the sound. There was other movement here, too. Every few minutes, men emerged from the shadows as I ran by, and it felt like I was in a medieval European city with the darkness hiding secrets.

In my back pocket was a map of the city, which had large areas of green, delineating the city’s numerous parks. I stopped under a light to find my location. I had gone from one park to a second, making several zig-zags, and yet I felt strangely at home. I felt confident of my way even though I had never been here before.

I ran around the Palace of the Parliament, a grand structure in neoclassical architectural style (and built with thousands of tons of marble from Transylvania) that sits atop a hill, surrounded by a park and wide boulevards. Weeds grew on the lower lawns. There wasn’t a guard in sight.

Then, I headed back to my hotel, taking solace in the parks. The birds had mostly gone quiet. The sky had started to light up. I looked up and saw a long bright pink contrail from a plane. It was a startling vision, like a dash of lipstick on the sky, and I ran on, looking up every few seconds. I was getting used to unusual sights in Bucharest.

Near my hotel, I passed the spots where I had seen the Roma families. They had left, removing all evidence of their presence, including their cardboard. I wondered about that boy. I wished I had seen him again. I’m not sure what I would have done, or why seeing him would be better than not. But it felt like a loss. Perhaps because the shock of seeing him had worn off, and I knew his future, like that of so many street kids around the world’s cities, was bleak. I returned to my room with my thoughts stilled and my mood saddened.     

‘Stop! Stop! That’s the Kremlin!’

 

 

 

                MOSCOW – We arrived at the hotel at midnight, and I went straight to bed. I wanted to start out for a run around 6 a.m. On this trip to Russia, I had just one destination in mind: Red Square.

                Our hotel was about two miles from the Square; a colleague gave me directions. It was basically one turn and then head straight, passing through two underground tunnels.

                The air was cold, not cold enough to freeze eyelashes, but cold enough to make me run hard for the first mile. The boulevard was lined with high-rise buildings that flashed purple and red neon. On one building, white neon lights gave the illusion of snowflakes falling. Almost no one was on the streets.

                After the second tunnel, I emerged near one of the entrances to the Square, and ran under an archway. Ahead, two groups of people wearing fur coats and fur hats took pictures; one woman held an iPad. In front of her was the eternal flame of Red Square, commemorating those who died from World War II.

                The two groups faded away and I made a turn up a hill on an uneven brick path. At the top, another section of the Square opened up: a giant white dome, which covers Lenin’s Mausoleum, now closed to the public for repairs (though the body of Lenin remains inside) because of a roof leak; and the Saint Basil’s Cathedral, which literally stopped me in mid-stride.

                The structure is a fantastical collection of almost whimsical spires, or domes, painted in vivid blue and white, red and green, yellow and green, and red and white, to name just four. Near the tall red walls of the Kremlin, back lit by flood lights, and with the only others in the Square a few soldiers in the corners, I walked toward it spell-bound. I’d never seen anything like it.

Nearly alone in the Red Square, I stopped, just taking it in. A few minutes later, a chill ran through my body. Cold crept in. I gave Saint Basil’s one last look and then returned back.

I ran past the eternal flame, past the archway, and past tall red walls until I came to a major highway. This didn’t look right. I didn’t remember a highway. I stopped and looked around. I ran to a couple of walkers and asked if they spoke English. None did. So I retraced my steps to look for the tunnel, my way home.

I ran back to the eternal flame, and then slowly followed the line of tall walls. I ran for 10 minutes, maybe 15. I started to worry. Our meetings back at the hotel were starting soon. I was lost. I saw a Russian soldier and ran to him.

He spoke a little English. I showed him my room key card. He didn’t know the hotel. He said something over his walkie-talkie. He waited. No reply. To my right, I saw a gate open – it looked like a tunnel entrance. I thanked the soldier, and started running to the tunnel. He yelled at me.

“Stop! Stop! That’s the Kremlin!”

I stopped and walked back to him. I started to pantomime running in a tunnel. The soldier said, Metro. I said maybe. He said, “Look for M.” He drew the letter in the air, and then he pointed the way, toward the eternal flame. I followed his directions, found an M, and ducked into the tunnel. It was the way back. I almost crossed myself.

The tunnel was a maze, and it was busy now with commuters and bread sellers, but I danced among them and emerged on a street that looked familar. Soon, I was running along the neon-lit high-rises, making a turn, stopping to stretch at my hotel. I looked at my watch. Ninety minutes – double what it should have taken. I didn’t care. I was no longer lost in Russia, I had run to the Red Square, and a Russian soldier had set me right.  

In dark, in light snow, a run in Stockholm

                STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Windows of time are precious on these trips. They happen usually at the ends of days, well after dark or before dawn. Here, in Sweden, in blustery mid-December, running in daylight was unlikely to happen no matter the schedule: It’s dark for more than 18 hours every day; the sun sets about 2:30 p.m.

                So when we checked into our hotel at 5 p.m., with a few free hours ahead, the first thing I did was unpack my running shoes and winter gear and asked the hotel clerk for a route.  He kindly gave me a map and showed me the way to run onto one of the city’s many islands, connected by bridges to the mainland.

                As I prepared to go, a few colleagues in the lobby asked why I would bother. Two days earlier, nearly two feet of snow dropped on Stockholm, and what was left was four to six inches of mushed-up semi-packed snow, the kind where you slide back half a step with every stride. “Wouldn’t you get as much exercise if you just walked a few blocks?” one person asked.

                Actually, no. The hotel was near the sea, and so I ran to it, and then kept the sea on my right (a variation of the Vermonter advice of not getting lost in the woods: Keep the river on your right). It was below freezing, a light snow was falling, and many people were walking along the path under street lights. There were a few runners and even a biker, who kept a certain pace in order not to topple.

                I was thrilled to be in Stockholm, running in snow on snow, and stealing a view of the city in my window of time. I turned right on a bridge that crossed a canal, and then, less than a mile from the city center, found myself running alone on a snowy sidewalk.

                It felt like I was back in a small New England town – the snow lightly falling, street lamps illuminating the snowflakes, emptiness ahead, silence, Christmas lights on houses, candles lighting windows, shadows of figures moving from room to room. I passed a young couple walking home. In their wake, they were tugging a bundled-up one- or two-year-old in a red sled. The bearded man and long-haired woman talked excitedly; the child in a snowsuit in back sat mute, eyes wide looking at me. I blurred past her, waving but getting no reply.  

                I ran on a plowed path in a city park lined with tall trees (the benches had humps of snow, no one had sat on them since the storm); to a ferry landing, where a sign said a ferry arrived every 24 minutes to take people somewhere in Stockholm; and then back toward my hotel.

                One trick in running in a foreign place is not only to find a route, but also to find the route home. So when I left my hotel, I looked around and found my landmark: a billboard advertising “Dirty Dancing.” It was in pink neon. On the return, I could see it from a quarter-mile away, and I shuffled to the hotel, Dirty Dancing a hot-pink beacon.  

I checked my watch: just 35 minutes. But it seemed like I had escaped for hours and had entered a hushed Nordic world during the Christmas month. My cheeks were cold. My hat was white. I stretched next to my hotel door, and I felt the tightness ease from my calves. It felt good to run in the dark, in cold, in Stockholm.  

Under a full moon, a run to Tiananmen Square

               BEIJING – I didn’t expect to run here. I expected the smog to make running counterproductive. I expected work schedules wouldn’t allow it. And I expected that I wouldn’t be interested – not in an intensely urban, polluted city.

                I was wrong on all accounts. As I set out one morning late last week at 6 a.m., the air was cold and clear. It was so clear that I looked up and saw a full moon.

                The moon would lead me, I thought. Where? How about Tiananmen Square, the third largest city square in the world and infamous as the site where the government violently quashed the pro-democracy movement in 1989, some 23 years ago.

I started down a sidewalk illuminated by street lights and right away I saw a highway sign: Tiananmen Square 4.5 kilometers. Doable, I thought – as long as I didn’t get lost.

The temperature was 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind blew at my back – a worrisome sign because it meant I’d be running into it on my return. But I was so excited about the thought of running in Beijing, running to Tiananmen Square, just running in general, that I blocked it out.

Other obstacles, though, appeared quickly. I immediately came upon major intersections; I learned that cars turn right on red here, along with multiple motorcycles and bicycles outfitted with tiny motors. I stepped out at one intersection and one of the swift soundless bicycles almost ran over my toes, causing me to leap back. One lesson learned in Beijing traffic: don’t depend on your ears. Three kilometers into the run, the wide sidewalk became full of large groups who wore red hats and carried red flags. Was I running into a demonstration of sorts? Why were so many walking in the cold in the dark?

I kept going, dodging the groups, trying not to trip, watching out for the bicycles, all under the full moon, which was sinking lower, still bright. And then I arrived at the Square, the sidewalk opening up to a walking boulevard, with Tiananmen to left.

The Square is treeless, a vast expanse of stone. It sits between two ancient, massive gates: the Tiananmen to the north and the Qianmen to the south, and alongside it are the Great Hall of the People and the National Museum of China. I ran up to a giant portrait of Mao.

Traffic from the highway blocked my way to the Square. I asked two Chinese military guards for directions, using various types of pantomime, but they shyly turned away. I was the only Westerner in sight – the only runner as well – and so I had to find my own way. It wasn’t hard. Just a block away was an underground tunnel and the Chinese wearing red hats were all going that way.

After the tunnel, I crossed a smaller road to get to the Square, where I ran to a large group of people who were standing in front of a line of soldiers. Others were running toward us. I asked several people if they spoke English and found none. What was going on?

A police car with a loudspeaker approached. It said something in Chinese and then followed in English: “Welcome to the national flag-raising ceremony,” it said. “Please stand back. Do not push. Stay calm.”

Alongside more than 1,000 Chinese people, I had arrived in time to watch the country’s official raising of the flag, which I later found out happens every morning at sunrise. I had to get going, though. It was almost 7 a.m., and my first meeting started at 8.

So I retraced my steps, crossing the road, taking the tunnel, and then running back along the sidewalk. The sinking moon was at my back, the sky ahead turned orange, and I felt warm and excited. I had run to Tiananmen Square. I picked up the pace.              

                 

Surprises in Tokyo: Mad swan, bird punt

TOKYO -- In the last few weeks, I have gone on runs in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire (through a rough slum area); Pretoria, South Africa (around the majestic Union Buildings on a cold morning); New York City (three wonderful at-dawn loops around the reservoir in Central Park); Seoul, South Korea (in such a daze I barely remember); and numerous runs around Chevy Chase, my home.

I’m not running all the time. But I am moving all the time. My new job at the World Bank has me traveling in short intensive bursts (four days to two countries in Africa, one day to Seoul, five now to Tokyo). I was concerned that with this kind of travel, I wouldn’t be able to run much. That hasn’t been the case. But I haven’t found much time to write about running.

I have almost an hour this morning in Tokyo, where I’ve run the past four mornings, and I have a bit of a story to tell.  I’ve found a Starbucks to sit and write and drink black tea, and where a Japanese man with a wispy beard and a heavy pack on his back just walked in and started telling me, in rapid English, about his 10-day bike trip to Tokyo, a narrative interrupted by the kind clerk, but as he left he said over his shoulder, “I look forward to seeing you again.”)

No running by the Palace

Everything here is a little hard to comprehend at first. Maps are impossible. Rules confound me. (About crossing streets --I’ve been chastened by a couple of policemen already for jay walking, and have since stopped; about running near the Imperial Palace -- it’s apparently illegal in certain sections; you have to walk.)

But it’s been wonderful to explore a completely different city and culture, and the runs have been a huge part of that. For three mornings, I ran around a park near the Palace for 35 or 40 minutes, but today I took a chance and ran a longer loop around the royal estate, hoping I wouldn’t get lost.

You don’t actually see the Palace. But in the midst of a landscape of skyscrapers, the Palace grounds are an oasis of green, rimmed by a wide moat. When I grew up in Vermont, I was always told when in the woods to “keep the river on your right.” Here, in order to not get lost, I just kept the moat on my left, which did the trick.

Menacing fish

The moat is full of large coy fish, and I stopped in one section to look at them but quickly backed off. The fish seemed pretty menacing, their huge heads rising well above the surface to open and shut their mouths at me, almost as if they were saying, “Feed me, feed me.” I scooted away but then moved close again to see a majestic swan.

The swan, like the fish, moved to the edge of the canal. After a few seconds, the swan started squawking at me and snapped its beak in a kind of menacing fashion. These moat dwellers apparently are used to being fed upon demand, and upset when not. I bid farewell, and made my way around the loop.

Bird in flight

I had another unusual animal encounter – not what I expected in Tokyo. I came upon a grouping of tiny sparrows and thought nothing of it, but I felt my right foot strike something, and suddenly a little sparrow shot up in the air. I had punted the little thing, not unlike a football kicker. The sparrow seemed to right itself after a momentary wobble, and shot off to the left. I was so stunned that I stopped. I have run for 30 years and it was my first punting of a bird. I kept my eyes out for other birds after that, just in case other Tokyo birds were asleep on my path.

As I finished the loop, I ran down a hill and a vista opened up: the moat wide below me, the Palace forest to my left, the city skyscrapers to my right. It was a moment of natural beauty, only the latest of surprises.

I’m off. Hour’s up. Maybe I’ll run into the man who biked for 10 days to Tokyo.