More running

We have participated in two races since the last time I wrote about running. Neither of them went really well for me, though. Somehow I managed to catch a cold before the first one and was ill for a week just before the race. It really feels stupid to get a cold when it's around 30 degrees, but it is actually surprisingly common. The reason is that they make planes and long distance buses really cold with the air condition on at maximum. 

Then I managed to get injured one week before the second race. It's not horribly bad, I just can't run very well. I had to stop after two kilometres both times I tried to run during the week before the race, which is not really ideal when you are about to run 10 km. However, I did impress myself during the run (obviously I am so stubborn that I still participated in the race). You could choose between running 5 km or 10 km and I impressed myself by being sensible and only going for the 5 km. My leg still hurts, but I don't think I made it too much worse. 

S. impressed as well, but she did it by running really well. In the first race, which was two laps around a lake (Lagoa Santa) in total 12.8 km, they had prices for the best three in each age group, 25-29 years in our case. S. came second in her age group!!! Here is a picture of the top 3 on the podium:

In the second race (Ecorun), she did even better and finished fourth of all women! She finished 10 km in just over 50 min.

There were some advertising for green energy around this race, since it was an eco(logical) run. There was also some talk about that it is good to turn off your computer screen (when not using it) to save energy. And OK, these things are good, but, there was no recycling or anything like that. This was a perfect opportunity to show that recycling is good and that it is good and easy to for example simply separate the trash. But no, countless plastic bottles were mixed with organic waste such as banana peel. In some places in the university  they do recycle and so on, but they are so incredibly far behind most of Europe. 

Brazil is developing and improving a lot and fast, but in many ways they still have a lot to learn. Sometimes I hear stories of people going to (some parts of) Europe or Australia and they are amazed of how clean it is and how everything works.