Saturday, December 12, 2009

Running into the Noughties

Mile 14 of a run is usually not that significant, but at that point on this morning's 25k run I passed a nice little personal landmark - 2000 running miles for 2009. Having beer and pizza at the end of the run was a bonus on a wet and miserable morning.

This evening, my parents are babysitting so I can take Nancy out on a date (for the first time by ourselves since I don't know when). We're going to dinner and a movie, the movie in question being "Invictus" - a study of Nelson Mandela and the rainbow nation during the 1995 rugby world cup held in South Africa.

Americans are probably unaware of the rugby world cup, but everywhere else in the world it's huge. It is staged every 4 years, and I have very fond memories of that particular tournament - probably the best rugby world cup to date - so I'm very excited to be seeing this. Nancy is also excited because she's always had the hots for Francois Piennar (the South African captain of the time).

Back then I was living in Worcester, England and it was a magical month of rugby, with all kinds of dramatic twists and turns, and a fairytale ending. Some the images - in particular Mandela wearing Piennar's springbok shirt - are truly iconic.

As you can tell, I'm looking forward to reliving some of those moments.

2 comments:

John said...

Hey Marky, heard about that, it supposed to really good. Wouldn't mind seeing that film when it comes out over here.

Francois Piennar ? Nancy, seriously !

Mark said...

Yeah, it was a good night out but the movie was awful!!!