{"id":32615,"date":"2019-07-26T07:16:57","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T11:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/?p=32615"},"modified":"2019-07-26T07:16:57","modified_gmt":"2019-07-26T11:16:57","slug":"july-26-2019-stuck-between-the-sunrise-and-uluru","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=32615","title":{"rendered":"July 26, 2019 – Stuck Between The Sunrise and Uluru"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was wearing pants. It was colder in the morning, something in the single digits Celsius, and so I had a couple of layers ready to strip at the temperatures rose. We were headed off to a sunrise coach trip to see the colors of Uluru change as dawn. A few other people were dressed in running gear and mentioned they were going to run around the rock afterwards. I had planned on walking it but Mom wasn\u2019t feeling up to a 10KM distance. It dawned on me if I changed into running shorts I could hoof it around the thing and hopefully she\u2019d only have to sit around waiting for me for an hour or so. So I ditched my pants.<\/p>\n

I was leery as we boarded the coach in the brisk, windy dark. But I was confident it\u2019d be fine once we started moving. I figured Mom and I could just selfie shots of us at the sunrise and thus avoid photos of me in shorts. I\u2019m self-conscious enough about how I look during runs and in general so I try and hide as much as I can behind pants and long sleeves. There aren\u2019t a lot of full body shots on this blog and there\u2019s a reason beyond I tend to travel solo or am shy about asking folks to take photos of me and my crew. Sometimes I err on the side of, \u201cCan I take a photo for you?\u201d hoping the other person will reciprocate\u2026 but sometimes they don\u2019t and I\u2019m stuck without anyone to snap me and my Mom or me and my brother or me and Jeff Goldblum (that only happened once\u2026 and I did get somebody to take that one).<\/p>\n

But I digress \u2013 here\u2019s Uluru at Sunrise:<\/p>\n

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Afterwards, our coach driver Aaron dropped us off at the Mala CarPark, the starting point for the soon-to-be-closed climb to the top of Ayers Rock (the locals ask you not to climb this sacred site\u2026 and once I found that out, I vowed never to climb it). It\u2019s also though a good starting point for the base walk around Uluru and I was looking forward to that. Mom staked out a spot on a bench\u2026 which I later found out was apparently smack dab in a wind tunnel effect so she was too cold to take her hands out of her pockets to read her Kindle. She passed the time people watching and taking in the surroundings\u2026 which is great, but I feel a little guilty about leaving her for the 75 minutes it took me to go round the rock.<\/p>\n

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My foot continued to bother me during the runs and I\u2019m slower than I\u2019d like anyway. But in my small defense, I also got lost a few times. You\u2019d think it\u2019d be easy \u2013 follow around the rock in a clockwise fashion. Easy right? It\u2019s a big circle. You\u2019d have to be a real idiot to get lost.<\/p>\n

Have you met me? I\u2019m the Executive Vice President of Idiots\u2026 and that\u2019s only because the idiot organization isn\u2019t smart enough to have anything higher than that title. Like I always say, you can\u2019t spell idiot without me\u2026. Er, um\u2026 without I.<\/p>\n

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Quick shout out to John Baird from Christchurch who I met in Burma last year. John’s been a virtual RKR supporter ever since.\u00a0 It was a real treat to find out he was coming to this race. And he brought his son Sam from Melbourne as a support crew. I figure he and Mom can have a drink or two while they wait for us at the finish line tomorrow.<\/p>\n

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And here\u2019s Mark and his partner from Antarctica and Madagascar! It\u2019s a small world\u2026 and a joy to run into people while running.<\/p>\n

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The Re-Run-Unions continued in the afternoon when I came across Diane and Bill and Graham and Rebecca who had previously met Mom and me in Reykjavik. What a crazy thing to type.<\/p>\n

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When the world seems crappy and depressing, I need to remember the great people I\u2019ve met along the way\u2026 and who I\u2019m lucky to meet again.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019m wont to do with sightseeing, I sometimes wind up taking so many photos that you can create a 3-D model of the place. I was joking with my family the other day about things that really met or exceeded the hype. Steve and I both said Mount Rushmore blew us away and when my Mom asked us about Devil\u2019s Tower, I explained that while it was neat to see as an inspiration for mashed potatoes art, I was much more impressed with Gutzon Borglum and Co\u2019s work because humans made it; god made Devil\u2019s Tower and thus, meh.<\/p>\n

Conversely, I remain pretty blown away by Uluru\/Ayers Rock (the name depends on your preference for indigenous versus imperialistic nomenclature\u2026 hashtag: Team Uluru). I was struck as I went running that some of the places were familiar from my study aboard ditching classes to see the Outback. Twenty-two years later I remembered the Darth Vader face, the Trojan Warrior head, and the surfing curl. These obviously are imperialistic individual nomenclature that are exclusive to me but, well, that\u2019s what they look like to me:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mom was a fan of the thumb and infinity gauntlet by the climb and so we documented that as well.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m glad Mom and I are getting a second chance at the Outback Marathon; it\u2019s nice to share this memory again with her.<\/p>\n

Tonight: A Mandatory Safety Briefing \u2013 which I\u2019ve been told is simply, \u201cDon\u2019t Get Lost.\u201d As we\u2019ve established above, that feels more like an Alanis Morissette-ian irony than anything else.<\/p>\n

Telling me not to get lost is like telling Bugs Bunny to take a right at Albuquerque\u2026 or telling a scorpion not to sting the frog helping him across the river. It\u2019s just not in our nature.<\/p>\n

But always leaving \u2018em laughing so here\u2019s the best joke from our coach captain Aaron \u2013 \u201cWe have to be on the lookout for the most dangerous creature out here in the bush\u2026 a Brit in a rental car.\u201d<\/p>\n

ZING! Take that, you lousy limey bastards!<\/p>\n

Tomorrow: A Marathon To Run… Hopefully.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was wearing pants. It was colder in the morning, something in the single digits Celsius, and so I had a couple of layers ready to strip at the temperatures rose. We were headed off to a sunrise coach trip to see the colors of Uluru change as dawn. A few other people were dressed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}