My most precious drink: water!

A short post to join the blog fest, the 2010 Action Blog Day on Water of this Friday (October 15, 2010):

 

A bit late after a busy week and weekend in New England. 5,652 bloggers, from 143 countries with 40,102,903 readers, according to the organizers, quite some impressive numbers for such a noble cause: raising awareness for our most precious resource on the so called blue planet.

One of the many findings that I made in my running experiences is that water is one of the most important constituent and key to success. The first times I ran farther, let's say for more than 10 miles, I was surprised to discover how much water was allowing me to go beyond what I thought I was capable of. Just plain water. I had the preconceived idea that only sugar and solid food could give you the energy to run longer. That you only needed to drink when thirsty. Thankfully, I train enough to have figured it out before the big and long races but, the fact is, I like simplicity and I do like plain water and prefer it over many other drinks.

In several of my posts about the Tour du Mont Blanc, I highlighted how wonderful it is to drink from natural springs and fountains when going through the many villages around the European summit. When Gordy Ainslegh first ran the Western States course, he could drink from the creeks but that's not a luxury anymore in North California where most of the streams are now infected with bacterias.

Now, thinking of us runners when discussing water is quite diminishing the importance of the water crisis for the planet. Running is a hobby for us and we are lucky to have enough to enjoy, even volunteers manning aid stations during races so we are not without water for more than 10 miles or so at once. How convenient this is when billions of humans lack access to water for their basic needs, access to water to just survive.

The water.org site has a lot of information and statistics about the crisis, please have a look beyond this initial statements: "Nearly one billion people lack access to safe water and 2.5 billion do not have improved sanitation. The health and economic impacts are staggering." And let's all make what we can to preserve water and the Earth's resources. Here is a small example I spotted yesterday in the Men's of Yale's the Payne Whitney Gymnasium:

Or this one:

You see, as usual, a journey of thousand miles starts with one (simple) step!

By the way, a few months after our return from our trip to Ethiopia, we were delighted to learn that Emebet and Joseph (from The world Family) managed to get drinkable water to the village and the community of Gara Dima where we stayed! The project required many more than one step definitely, and quite some money (about $200,000) so, if you can do more than the simple actions above, I encourage you to consider making a donation to this organization, I know for having met them and being there that the funds will help people in much need.

Back to running, not much this week. I managed to go out on Monday evening albeit the danger to run against the fast traffic in the winding and narrow road of New England. Then I got killed by a bad cold although I was able to still attend the training during the day and several conference calls with Asia at night. I was still feeling feverish on Saturday when meting Max at Yale but, thankfully, much better this Sunday, which allowed the both of us to go for a 10-kilometer run from his dorm to the "summit" of East Rock Park in New Haven.

Here is another picture, in action, and you can see more of the campus in my Picasa photo album:

As you can expect, this is a fantastic campus and it is amazing to see all these students from around the World alternating hard work (everybody is reading or writing) or playing "hard." What I mean by the latter is that even the hobbies turn to a lot of hard work too with world-class art performance in music or drama for instance, and sports of course (in addition to the tour of the campus and some out-of-town shopping, Max and I went to listen to the Yale Symphonic Orchestra, to see a volley-ball game and an organ concert). As you can read above the indoor rowing training tanks: "Work Hard, Go Fast, Have Fun." Sounds actually and strangely quite familiar after one week of Big Blue training... ;-)

Let's go back to work, speed and fun then...! And keep saving our precious water so everyone can benefit from it for many more centuries.