Bon Voyage!

I had a clear out of clothes today. I have stored for them for long enough. I know I shall probably not wear these things again. Items that are either too old or too small went in the sack. Sadly, more so the latter it would appear, according to the Health Check Nurse yesterday. 

However, I enjoy this process when the mood takes me to do it. I do, however, have a rather large sentimental streak. I blame my mother for this weakness in me and the books I read as a teenager that further influenced it.

At the bottom of a very small box I found a fairly old, technical (running),T shirt. It was won in the heat of the South of France. It took 10 miles of running from Martigues to Carro to get one of these shirts. Incidentally, even after running the race, the shirt never really fitted. It was always too small to begin with, yet I have still got it after about 8 years. I have never thrown it away. It meant something to me.

It meant a hot summers evening spent running under a blistering Mediterranean Sun. A sponge held between my wrist and wristband (A wise race, the French, in many, surprising ways!). I even wore a sun hat. I cannot remember wearing a sun hat to race either before then or since...Have I explained the heat? Toasty, from start to finish. Ideal for large, tall, Northern Europeans...

Odd, isn't? The way in which you can access memories from physical items. In this case, a T-shirt that is to small to ever wear. It therefore cannot even serve the purpose it was designed for. It never shall. Yet. I still have it in a box. I can see the race, clearly, in my head. I can smell the start and that gorgeous, warm, evening air in Martigues. I felt the adrenaline in my body at the start. I remember the pleasure in knowing that I was, probably, one of the few non-french in the racing field. I can also feel the pain of the intense heat, sapping my body over those 10, hard, miles. I smiled a lot of the way. I smiled because I was doing something different, something I could not have ever envisaged - racing along the southern French coastline - and I enjoyed every painful moment. 

Yet, the one moment that sticks in my mind, even now, after almost a decade, was the descend down the D9E ( I have even researched the road - memory is good but not that good) towards Carro. There is a magnificent railway Viaduct about half way down. It dominates everything around it. A beautiful thing. It was also the first recognisable point in the race where I was certain that I knew where I was and, more importantly, where I had to go. I can assure you these are two wonderful emotions to experience for a runner in an unfamiliar country. You then swoop down the D9E and before you run straight into the beach you veer right and power up the Avenue de Carro towards it's namesake (A naughty final climb too!). The finish was along the small, picturesque, harbour-side. 

Carro, in the foreground

I remember the joy of knowing where the finish would, roughly, be. It's a pretty, little, fishing village. It has a wonderful little place to eat too. Here, below;

This photo of Le Carro Bleu is courtesy of TripAdvisor

I can see it now in my minds eye. It was one of the nicest places I have ever finished a race; The heat was dissipating as it had become evening, and you had that lovely Mediterranean warmth. The type that makes you fall in love with the coasts from France to the Greek Islands. The temptation, due to the heat to continue on and jump off the harbour into the sea was quite strong at the time, however, I got the T-Shirt. 

I, essentially, lived the highlights of that evening by just picking up that shirt again and re-connecting the physical to the memory store. It is still here, at home, folded and put away. It'll never get worn. It will remind me of how much I loved my visits to the south of France and how much I miss the place. How much more I would like to have re-visited.