After only 4 days back in Slovenia I am off early tomorrow morning to Subotica in Serbia. There is a special event at the Zoo in Palic this weekend and I will be going there with at least 3 of my friends. It's a bit of a drive but it will be worth it. I have some very good friends in Subotica and Palic and it will be nice to see them. I am hoping to run near the lake there, where later this year their will be a 12 and 24 hour race. Hopefully the weather will be good, it seems to be improving here. Anyway, check back for my post on Monday about how things went.

I am alive, I know it may not seem so since I have not been posting for a while, but I am. On April 19 I managed to fly out of Trieste airport to Rome and then on to New York. The airport had been closed for 2 days because of the ash cloud, but opened that day and then apparently closed the next day. I went to NY to run in the 6 day race which started on April 23. It was an interesting experience which I will talk about on my other blog iliketorun, you can get there by going to my profile and clicking on the link at the bottom of the page. When I arrived in NY my bags did not, they were still in Rome and arrived the next day. When I came back on May 4 my bags also stayed in Rome this time they were flown to Munich than to Ljubljana and delivered to me the next day. Which my journey from Trieste to Ljubljana a little easier.
Well now I am in Ljubljana, a little jet lagged and still a little sick from a cold I had developed, but happy to be home.

Sunday I drove with a friend up to Maribor to participate in the last Pohorje winter cup race of the season. It is the 13th race for this edition. This was the 3rd time I participated. With the recent problem I have had with my back and hip I was not sure how I would hold up, but I felt pretty good at the start and the temperature was quite mild. The race started and within the first few minutes my breathing was hard, this is normal and usually settles down after a time, then I lose my legs which also settle down. This time my breathing never got better, I had a problem the whole race, but my legs stayed strong. It was only after I finished and developed a chesty cough that I realized, I had a cold. I was happy that I had a good workout and finished the race. To cap it all off we got free pizza after wards.

Friday the 26th of February was a really rainy day here in Slovenia. I had to walk into the city to get the book for my Slovenian classes, at the Filosofska fakulteta and got quite wet in the process. When I signed up for the course I got a temporary student card and this allows me to get a discount at the school book shop.
In the evening it was the Premier of the Opera/Ballet season in Maribor and a group of us were given free tickets. The opera was Werther by Jules Massenet, which I am sure is a good one, but I have to say I was a little disappointed with the production. It was very sparse, everything was done on an empty stage. It was nice to have a night out though with some friends, so it was pretty cool.

This and a few of the following posts are on a time delay. Well it's just that I meant to write them on the day the things happened, but...
February 25.
Today is the day of my first official Slovenian language class. I was thinking about it all day, I ran early so that I did not have to get in a quick last minute run.
The class consists of 8 people, 2 from China, 2 from Italy, 2 from Finland and 1 from Romania and of course me from England. I am the oldest in the class.
It is a beginners class though most of us have some knowledge of the language.The length of the class is 90 minutes and it went by really fast.We start with the basics and for me it is great that we worked on word structure. It's relaxed group and the teacher admitted that her English is not so great, so while she was correcting my Slovenian I was correcting her English. For which one of the class joked I should get a discount.

Last week a Slovenian friend of mine ran in the Trans Slovenia run Winter edition. It is a 220km run across Slovenia.The original plan was for me to help him for the whole race, but for various reasons that did not work out. On Friday the race came within 3km of my place, so I ran out to meet it. I then ended up running and also getting rides with a helper to the end of the stage. I got to meet some old friends from last years Summer race and then got a ride back to Ljubljana with one of the crew.
On Sunday I took an early train out to Sevnica, where the last stage would start another friend with a car had driven down from Ptuj and together we acted as support for my friend Tomaz. It was only Tomaz's second Ultra race, having previously run a 100km. Out of a field of 34 runners which included 4 women, he finished 9th among the men.

The week as gradually become warmer as it has gone along. My runs in the afternoon have been reasonably pain free, a little after I get home I seem to get some major pain from my sciatic nerve. This goes away eventually and then does not bother me.
After a chat with my business partner ( it was kind of a meeting ), we are looking at different ways for our business to operate and everything is very constructive.
At the moment I seem to like being mobile and will once again be out of town this weekend, well part of Sunday anyway.

I was in Serbia for the weekend. When we left around 7:30 Saturday morning it was snow, When I got back around 1:30 this morning there was quite a lot of snow on the ground and actually up in the trees. Before I left I had some problems with my Sciatic nerve down my right side, as a result I did not run the Half Marathon I had planned to run on Sunday. It turned out that the organizers ( who are friends) needed some help, so I worked on the set up and then did some counting. I made the decision to not run the 2 days I was there and this broke my streak of 5 and a half months. I do feel much better for it and will now resume my running.

OK so it seems the gap between my posts is continuing to be long. I have been back in Slovenia for almost 3 weeks now and quite a lot has gone on. I had a meeting at the Chamber of Commerce and have all the information for starting my business. The plan is to get all the capital together by the end of February and then register the company.
I spent a few days in Croatia, where I got a copy of the transfer of ownership for my place and also had the Electric company put my name on their billing records. I also got to spend a couple of days in Rijeka with some family. Where it was reasonably warm, especially compared to Ljubljana.
On returning to Ljubljana I signed up for the beginners course for Slovenian language at the Uni, the classes start next month.

I was supposed to fly back to Ljubljana non Saturday, but a missed train connection got me in too late to check in. for a small fee I was able to transfer my flight to Sunday. So I spent the day in an hotel near the airport with dinner and breakfast included. No problems with my flight on Sunday, except for a 35 minute delay. I am now back in Slovenia, where there is quite a lot of snow on the ground, but it is not as cold as in the UK.
I must also mention that had he still been alive, some people think he still is. Elvis Presley would have celebrated his 75th Birthday a few days ago and I am sure many of his fans celebrated on his behalf.

OK I realize it's been a while since I posted. So it has been 9 days since I flew over to the UK for the holidays.Though I had to deal with a late start, due to my flight being delayed 2 1/2 hours because of the snow in London. Once I got here everything went really well. I was happy with the train ride and by 8pm I was eating dinner at my sister's house. It was quite cold leading up to Christmas and we even got a little snow on Christmas eve. I enjoy spending some time in the quiet village where my sister and her family live and I will be here for 2 more weeks.

So I decided on Saturday that I would run the Winter Cup race in Pohorje for the second week in a row. I was still a little sore from the last one, but figured that it was just going out in a multiday race. Anyway I stayed at my friend's, who just happens to be the race organizer, on Saturday night. As we left for the race there was a light snow falling, he showed me on his computer that there was snow on the race course. The temperature was also below freezing. There was a big starting field of 173 runners and walkers. Once I got going I did not feel so bad and quickly warmed up. I had changed my shoes from last week to ones with better grip, but once I got onto the steep snow covered slopes I began slipping a lot. In general I felt better when I finished, with a slower time than last week and I have to say that my recovery has been much better.

So at this weeks 2 mile race we had 7 participants. It was once again 2 C though not misty this week, just a little overcast. The Sun did make a brief appearance near the end. I will be out of town for the next 4 weeks and will try to have someone else organize the race while I am away. I am hoping that the field will grow.
Last Sunday I was in Maribor for the second race in this years Winter Cup on Pohorje, it is a 3.8km race up the Pohorje mountain. This is the 3rd year and the field has been steadily growing. There were 155 runners and walkers. The course is a little different each week combining trails and ski slopes. I was a little faster than when I raced in January, but then you cannot compare. I was really tired and quite sore afterwards.

A friend of mine knows the Slovenian composer Alojz Ajdic and got me a free ticket to go see a performance of his work by the Slovenian Philharmonic. It was last night and although it was raining pretty hard I walked the 35 minutes to the concert hall in the city. It has been a long time since I went to a classical concert and it was truly wonderful. 2 pieces were played, a concerto for Piano and Orchestra and his 2nd Symphony. The composer, who is 70 was there and was able to take several bows from a moderately sized audience. I very much enjoyed the evening.

It's been 100 days since I last missed a day of running and since I ran this morning it is now 101. Over the years I have had a few running streaks, the longest being just over 4 1/2 years. I never plan them they just happen and on they go.

As I walked around the city yesterday I noticed a few things; the trees are almost completely bare of leaves. I can remember that at Thanksgiving in New York the last few years there have still been many leaves on trees. I also observe that there seem to be more and more people sitting at the outside cafe's, I don't know but this seems to say to me that people are a bit more comfortable with their finances these days. Maybe it's just me.

Today is November 24 and it would have been my Mother's 81st Birthday. I was thinking of her and wanted to mention it.

Well it ended up being a tiring weekend, I went up to Maribor and on Saturday night went with some friends to Graz. It was almost 2 am when we got home. The next day we went to a place called Cankova which is near the Austrian border and not far from Hungary. There is a small bridge about 5km away that crosses a small stream and it was named a peace bridge a few years ago. There was a nice local ceremony to celebrate the anniversary. I ran with some WHR team members and some local runners to the bridge where we met with another group of WHR runners from Austria and we had a nice ceremony with 2 neighbouring mayors.

When the European Union passed a law banning smoking in Restaurants and such it really hit the coffee shops in Slovenia. The solution was to set up some tables and chairs outside for those who wanted to smoke. Of course this posed a problem when the weather turns cold. So now the coffee shops have propane gas heaters and also provide blankets for the patrons who want to smoke. It seems to work and of course it spawned a whole new business with companies providing the street lamp like heaters.

The seasons in New York are not clearly defined. Over the years I noticed that sometimes we did not seem to have a Spring and December would sometimes have days that were like cool summer days.
Here in Slovenia I can clearly see that there was a change in the middle of October from summer to autumn. Though there are the occasional warmer days they still have that autumnal feel.There is of course the colour change on the tree leaves and the snow on the distant mountains that can be viewed from Ljubljana.

This weekend has been a pretty quiet, stay at home kind of weekend. Yesterday afternoon I spent a lot of my time sitting in front of my computer, check out the live updates on the World Trophy 50k Championships. A friend of mine, Amanda Stickel was participating and for a short time was in second place, eventually fading to 5th place ( she was second American woman). It was her only her second 50k race and first time on the World stage, so she did very well.
For me I got out there this morning and ran in cold and foggy Ljubljana. For her it was hot and humid Gibraltar.