Day 40

Me and Jean Noel, originally uploaded by Ryan Runs Europe.

36.4 Kilometers.
It has been pretty rough finding a computer over the past few days, so I'm going to try to catch things up by making this one short. It was a pretty awesome day though. Since I left Paris, I have only had two days where I knew where I was going to sleep before I arrived in town, and the constant search in desperation thing was beginning to get a bit tiring...much more so than the running part.
This day, I decided to split my run into three legs of 10 to 13 km of running, with a 3k walk after the first leg and an extended stop at the first internet cafe I had seen in days after the second. I have been trying to vary the way I manage my mileage, as never before in my life have I done almost the same run every day, instead I have always alternated long runs with short runs and easy runs with hard ones.
I needed to spend some time in the cafe, writing my posts for days 38 and 39, checking up on e-mails and sending out some couchsurfing requests (something I hadn't done since I left Paris), so the Internet cafe in Saint Loup was a great find for me. Much to my dismay however, the entire town shut down between 12 and 2, and not knowing how big Luxeuil-les-Bains was, I decided to wait around town for things to start up again. After the cafe opened and I satisfied my addiction to the Internet, I did the last leg to Luxeuil.
I arrived into town not long before 6, and was pretty disappointed to see that there was a bunch of cool historic buildings that I could have seen the interior of had I gotten there a little bit earlier. Wanting to make sure I didn't miss anything, I went into the Office of Tourism, and asked if there was anything I should see that would still be open. After bringing up why I was in town, and that I didn't have a place for the night, the woman working there was happy to help me find a place to stay, and after a few calls I was put in touch with Jean Noël and his wife, who were happy to put me up. Everyone pointed to him when called for a place, because he happens to be the runner in town. The evening was awesome, and I was floored that not only did I not have to struggle to find a place to stay, but that I was staying with another runner. It was the first time in my trip that I stayed with someone who was also crazy about running, and it was great going over some war stories with him. It was cool to find someone who immediately recognized why I keep my calcium bottle stuffed full of toilet paper (to avoid the 'click clack,' and for the other, obvious reason). Jean Noël has run the same 73 minutes for the half marathon that I did in NY a few years ago, and has run the Marathon in Athens that I'll kind of be doing in a few months. We had a barbecue (with pasta) and had some drinks with some of his friends. I went to bed feeling much more happy with my luck, and knowing that I was in the home of another member of the cult that is running.