Welcome to the twelfth episode in the Out Of Breath series! This run in Toulouse occurred on the 10th of January, 2018.
It's been months since my last run. I took about eight weeks of a break due to getting dengue fever, and then finally after I was healthy we spent two weeks in Guatemala hiking a number of volcanoes. After that, it was off to France for the holidays with Clo's family. As part of this trip I spent three days in Toulouse with very good friends, and luckily enough the weather was great while I was there. This meant I could go for a run!
Even better was going with my friend whom I've gone on more runs with than anyone. He actually is the one that gave me the idea of this whole "Out of Breath" concept, and I haven't gone running with him since we lived in Singapore. I was pretty happy to be able to go tour the city with him and see how my legs felt after three months of rest and hiking.
Not too bad at all, it turns out. It helped the run was along the Garonne river, which was lit up very nicely at night. This was the first occasion I've had to spent any time in Toulouse, also; I've been at the gare (train station) many, many times but never beyond that. It's a really pretty city.
There are well lit paths alongside the river, and the downtown center is great to walk around in. It was quite chilly on the evening we went for a run, but as always in France when it's not raining (and sometimes when it is), there are multitudes of people out and about. Having dinner, having a drink, walking around; it's a very fun and active ambiance.
There are quite a few bridges over the Garonne and we ran across a couple of them. Beautiful! It reminds me in many ways (albeit not at all from a temperature perspective) of a similar run in Singapore we did many times. It was awesome to run again.