And a bit fed up of tiredness, stress and a missed session today.

On the flight back, I had a chance to see a movie eponymously named after the famous runner Emil Zátopek.

I had of course heard of him but the movie brought facts about him that I did not know and had forgotten. The training, the famous tortured expression while competing, the portrayal of the romance and marriage to the javelin thrower Dana Ingrová was all so wonderfully and invigoratingly depicted.

Another sports film on the ride home 80 for Brady had me laugh and that was my round up for this Monday’s rest day.

I usually don’t check out my map figures on the Garmin Connect but this morning, I had run in all manner of myriad directions in Aix.

I wanted to get my long run in before a breakfast meeting and I kept increasing the pace while turning this way and that using the maps in one hand to run to the Cezanne Studio, the Grand Theatre, the Rotonde, here and there, helter-skelter, up and down avenues, until I finally finished just in time for a quick shower and out for work.

Curious to see what the run looked like, the diagram in the Connect app resembled a bowtie come undone.

Because of long haul travel, I couldn’t run today. At any rate I had switched out the runs in accordance with travel but I was still hoping to sneak in a run upon arrival in France.

It didn’t happen but thanks to my friend Aditi, I got my dose of seeing the physicality of Akram Khan’s Gigenis on stage.

The dance-drama was gripping, the live music was fabulous and seeing the strength and movement on stage caught my breath and imagination.

The athletic and creative prowess of the dancers from different strains of Indian classical dance – I am sure it is a physical effort and training of its own magnificent accord.

Tomorrow I will do my long run, here in Provence.

After a late evening with colleagues, I skipped the track workout. So much for wanting to workout more.

At any rate, I stepped out to do an interval workout in the driveway. That meant relentless 300s. It was good going and tough enough.

After that it was to pull up bars and then a core workout that I had read in the NYTimes. It’s always fun to change around strength workouts.

I am enjoying sleeping in this week. But not so late that I can’t dust myself off to jump on the treadmill for a quick hour.

It was Sapiens all over again. This time, at the onset, I put the treadmill into a higher gear. I felt impatient and I didn’t want to be as slow as I normally am on the machine.

As the day before, Harari tells a wonderful story and for the most part I was engaged other than when I was climbing the inclines.

There was a section on hunter gatherers that got my attention – that the individual man back then had far more skill and knowledge, greater flexibility and strength and the stamina of marathon runners. Of course, I paraphrase here but listening only motivated me.

Need to workout more.

I didn’t run today, the day the young boy turned double digits. Perhaps my coach missed to pencil it in, or because of race day Sunday, I got an in-between rest day.

Either way, I did have a strength workout that left me drenched and spent.

I’m still feeling the after effects of Sunday, so in the evening I treated myself to an extra piece of cake.

Last night, I was reading the enormously popular illustrated version of Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens to the young boy. In a few sentences, I was more absorbed in it than he was. At any rate, I was disappointed when the chapter ended and the lights turned out.

This morning, I decided to run on the treadmill and downloaded the audio book of Sapiens. This is the first time I ever downloaded an audio book and it turned out to be quite the combination.

Running slow and easy, albeit toggling with the speed and incline and listening to Harari’s master storytelling was a wonderful way to begin the day.

After race day, I always find myself particularly hungry. It is as if the body thinks it is depleted or shoring up preparing itself for more to come.

I am looking forward to a relatively normal week ahead other than travel on the weekend. I don’t think I will be racing until October.

But the ‘more to come’ should be in the form of intervals and some hard sessions. Whatever the weather might have been, I should have done better than that.

It’s still a good feeling though. Motivating and a reminder of where things are at.

I picked my sister Roshini just at the 3:45 AM mark. It’s a fairly long drive to Dwarka even at this time.

Coach Ravinder organises some of the best races, and we had both registered for the half marathon.

It was a flat, mostly out and back race with small participation – about four hundred participated in the half marathon distance. Boutique races, localised and especially done to this quality are so fun and all important.

Far from the usual Sunday Nehru Park, running swaths of tarmac and occasionally watching plane take offs, (we were near the runways), the race was a mixed bag. For me, it was the first race of the season, and I was expecting it to be a training run but not as slow as I went.

It’s true that I didn’t check the watch till nearly the seventeenth kilometre and I ran it by feel but later when I checked the statistics, the pace had fallen quite a bit before steadying itself. I hadn’t expected that.

But it wasn’t a disappointing run – in fact quite the opposite – taking part in a race the same as my sister was fun and we chatted and caught up on the long drives to and from the location.

Waffles at breakfast later – what more could one ask for.