2.75 hours, a May Day Parade wearing a backpack

Words 690; a few pictures

            I’ve heard there is going to be a marathon on the 18^th of May.  It’s sponsored by the Sber Bank.  I teach at a branch of Sber Bank on Tue, Wed, and Friday.  I looked at their website, and it seems that the run may be distance of 4.2 km, instead of the 42 km needed for a marathon. 

        
Anyway, I went out today to run a significant distance and see how it felt.  My running app told me that I ran 35.15 km.  I’m not sure I believe it, but it’s at least one estimate.

            I wanted to see if I was in shape enough to run a marathon.  Yes, I am.  By the time I was done, I was quite tired, but the tiredness didn’t appear until quite near the end.

            The most amazing thing about the run today was the seemingly huge distance that I traveled.  At one point, I couldn’t believe that I was already down to Tugenevskaya station, which is very near the Native Speaker’s Club—my goal for the run.  Then, a couple minutes later, I recognized another building as one that I had visited while doing the CELTA course.  I was flabbergasted to realize that I was right next to Tverskaya and the downtown office of BKC, where we had done CELTA.

            I was wearing a backpack with a book and a map inside.  Considering the events in Boston, I wondered once if they were going to look more closely at me.  I didn’t feel it—and the German Sheppards didn’t bother me.

            There were police officers all over the place telling people where they couldn’t go.  There was a temporary fence with a gap in it, and one young man guarding.  He didn’t want me to enter, but I could see other people, simply people—not police or officials—walking along the street.  I couldn’t understand why THEY were allowed to walk there, but I was not allowed to enter.  After several questions, I understood that this guy wasn’t going to budge.  I went around the building.

            I found an alleyway with another policeman standing there.  He also said I should not enter—this time the people walking down the sidewalk were much closer—only about 10 feet away.  This guy was happy and laughing, talking to a jolly, rotund friend.  They made some jokes about my outfit of a t-shirt, shorts, and a backpack.  When I said, “It’s not logical (that they should be able to walk down that street, while I am not allowed).  Maybe he was feeling friendly, but for whatever reason, he let me go.

            So now I’m walking down along the absolutely (except for cops) empty 8-lane street called Tverskaya.  About 10 people were standing at the entrance to a passageway under the street.  Three policemen had been ordered to stop everyone from entering the passageway.  Nothing was on the street and we could see nothing coming down the street toward us.  We spent several minutes pleading our case that we should be allowed to go to the other side.  No luck.  Two of the young men were laughing.  They could see the arbitrariness and absurdity of the situation.  One man, the shortest one with the least hair, however, was not in good humor.  He knew his orders, and by golly, he was going to carry them out.  I’m reading a book about the Russian gulags—Gulag, by Anne Applebaum—I imagine the relative ease of life for the Russian guards in the last century compared to guards today.  In years gone by, the guards did not smile; They did not stray from their instructions; they did not let strangely attired foreigners past their checkpoint when they argue—for that matter, there weren’t any uncontrolled foreigners running around.

            So I continued walking up the street.  Pretty soon, the parade appeared.  It was like a modern egalitarian parade.  Heaps and heaps of simple people walking behind banners.  Pretty cheap it looked like. The banners stretched across the entire street, so even if I knew what all the words meant, I’d have a hard time reading them.  These masses of humanity were simply people dressed in nothing special.  The groups walking slowly behind their banners stretched as far as the eye could see.  The banners were announcing the employees of whatever company was behind it.  I don't know how those companies were selected.

Here are some pictures:

This was the only band.  There were also a few dancing girls.