A Sidewalk Next to a Busy Road
Running in general takes you to many interesting places and running in Morocco can take you to some really interesting places and sights. Like the run through the middle of a huge thousand year old souq (market) or to a 1,500+ year old castle with roman ruins inside.
However, as most runners will attest, on a normal day of running it is getting comfortable and enjoying running in the mundane. If you're a road runner, you probably spend hours on the empty roads on the outskirts of town. If your a trail runner, you often run the same trail loop in the woods close to your house over and over again until you can make it to the big parks on the weekends.
One of the things that I have learned in the last few years about running is not only being comfortable in the repetitious sights but to see the unique in all of my runs. Whether it be a small park in Rabat or a long stretch of city road in Marrakech, I am thankful that I have learned to find unique things in even the most repetitive runs. Before this gets too deep lets be clear, some of these things I see could be due to dehydration, the strenuous forces placed on my body by a hard training run, or the unhealthy intake of vast amount of engine exhaust associated with running in a highly populous city. I am sure that these things are more likely.
The pictures in this post are from some of those repetitive routes that I did this past week. Notice that in the next two I'm running in a bike/moped/scooter lane. Although in Marrakech these lanes are few, when you can find them they are an awesome relief from running on the side of big busy roads, since these lanes are seldom used by anyone not on a bicycle.
A Bike Lane
The Same Bike Lane
Now, go for a run and enjoy those awesome empty roads, trails, and bike paths.
