Sort of – and only for running, not to change the world sadly. So yesterday I wrote about my inability to make decisions when it comes to running. I can’t even decide on a training plan. Brains can be funny things, can’t they. A plan would definitely help me get out and tick things off the list because having a plan means fewer decisions need to be made at the point of running or while running, that’s good. However, deciding on a plan is still a decision that needs making. And I just somehow didn’t want to engage with making that decision. So Kath made it for me. She came up with a plan that is based on time on feet and not distance. It’s essentially a half marathon plan and it is very gentle. It has no set miles in at all. It is all about time. I was skeptical. How do I tick off the miles when there are no miles on the plan. How do I know I can run far enough? But I had been procrastinating about not running for a while already and I needed something to kick me out the door so why not try. It didn’t solve the problem about where to run but Kath gave me a suggestion for that, too. I didn’t like the suggestions so said I would go a different way – there you go, sometimes I just need to be told what to do so I can decide to not do that and do something else instead.

So the plan for week one is to walk 5 minutes, then do 12 minutes of run/walk intervals and walk for 10 minutes. The original plan had the intervals at 30 seconds walk and 90 seconds walk 6 times but that seemed too easy. Instead I did 12 x 30/30. It was fine. I also walked for slightly longer at the end just to get home. The run was fine. Not as easy as I would like to pretend but absolutely doable. My brain liked this plan. It was more like the bike where I don’t have to make decisions. Of course I still had to decide to start running again at the relevant beep but because I knew I was doing 12 runs, it was just about ticking them off. The goal was not the distance, the goal was to tick off 12 thirty second runs. When I have a distance goal, it is much easier for my brain to justify inserting an additional walk because as long as I cover the distance, that’s fine. Distance based plans seem to make it easier for my brain to give in and not do hard much more easily than wen I have x number of runs to complete. So yeah, this might work for a bit – at least until my brain comes up with some way to cheat this system.

I have now also moved along the Challenge a little. I have left Cienfuegos and have arrived at the edge of Santa Clara. I remember Santa Clara better than most of the other places we visited apart from maybe Havana. And I think this must be because of how I felt, the conversations we had and a sense of being able to touch history. We stopped at the scene where an armoured train was derailed marking a significant victory for the rebels. I don’t really have any good photos of the scene other than the bulldozer that was used in the derailment.

Later we headed for the Che Guevara Mausoleum which is an odd place. It’s so full of concrete and the statue of Che is slightly ridiculous in size. The weight of history rests heavy there. I don’t remember what items we saw in the museum, I remember the feeling coming out of the mausoleum, I remember the sense of almost touchable history – after all Che’s remains were only moved there in 1997 and I think the most recent internments took place in 2000. It’s an evocative place. I remember it was one of the few places our tour guide didn’t joke around and be silly. It was the only place I ever heard or saw him get sharp with some of our fellow travellers who seemed incapable of being quiet for a few minutes to pay their respects or at least let others do so. There is something about the place which commands, not respect exactly, but emotion. I remember feeling a little heavy as I got back on the bus but also grateful to have been able to see this place, bow my head and give a nod to the eternal flame. I am almost certainly getting days muddled so this may be a false memory but actually looking at the photos I think I am right, that evening, a few of us stayed up much later than the others and sat talking, perhaps a little more openly and earnestly that we had previously about all sorts of things. I don’t think it was just the bottle of Santiago Rum we shared, I think it was also something about that little group of people who, after the rest of the pretty annoying group had gone to bed, felt a shared sense of history and wanted to understand, learn and sit with it all for a bit. It wasn’t the sort of day you just ended by simply going to bed. I look back at the day now and I struggle to know what to think. Cuban politics is complicated and I don’t know nearly enough to write about this. In the meantime the US continues to threaten Cuba, the blockades continue and people suffer. And for what exactly? I am grateful I had that day in Santa Clara where I could stretch out my hand and touch history. It’s a day that reminds me to sit with the heaviness, to sit with discomfort and contradictions, to accept that life and with it politics is complicated and contested and to pause to think about what is worth fighting for and what I am prepared to be complicit in.