Just like the famous 80s blague that says that the best way out is Cumbica, the best race that São Paulo residents can do is outside the city: on the beach, in the mountains, in Rio – elsewhere.
This may well be true, but it doesn’t solve the lives of those who leave the city much less than they would like – and than they should. Gift.
And, if training is a race and vice versa, if pleasure is or should be inseparable from gravel, as I’ve said before here, we better do our best to break the routine, changing the racing scenarios in the fast-paced city.
If the capital of São Paulo, which is now celebrating its 471st anniversary, does not have a beach or Corcovado, nor scenic overlooks or bridges, at least it has a varied panel of locations, some of them full of trees, essential in this January climate apocalypse. Certain itineraries may even include a lake for contemplation.
The lake immediately refers to Ibirapuera, perhaps Horto, but not even I, who like hiking and now live 1.5 km from “Ibira”, can make a habit of going there. I continue to prefer USP, perhaps because of the spaciousness of the spaces, perhaps because of the sweet smell of the privet, perhaps because I have run there so many times in the last 20 years.
Having run there and also through the neighboring streets of Alto de Pinheiros, roads lined with tipuanas and sibipirunas, these trees that were so leafy, beneficial and very common in São Paulo’s afforestation seven or eight decades ago. And today, weakened by criminal pruning and collective disdain, they are being replaced by dwarf ipês and mixeduruca resedás.
The city’s violent transformation also takes place in its, let’s say, gray matter. After the densification of road axes and the consequent change of scenery in neighborhoods such as Pinheiros and Vila Mariana, many councilors who are friends with the construction sector still took great care in returning favors to their sponsors during the review of the Zoning Law.
And give him a wrecking ball.
It’s the dynamics of the city, someone will refute it. Yes, age.
All right, if that’s what we have, let’s take advantage of it. Running, this lovely activity, is even more lovely to me when it incorporates a touch of parkour, of radical use of the city’s spaces.
When, in the middle of the race, we enter Toca da Onça, in Lapa; go up and down a walkway and wait for the train to pass before crossing the old gate at CPTM’s Água Branca station; bypass the old factories and send a shout out to the mlks from Nacional’s camp – how long will the club survive the gentrification of Jardim das Perdizes?
Or attack the famous corner, then go around the Cathedral or Pátio do Colégio, the acrid smell of human excrement suggesting more speed, move away from the total chaos of Parque Dom Pedro 2º and take the bike path to cross, via some ugly bridge, the Tamanduateí. And, if it’s Saturday, decide to end the run at a feijoada at Joe, in Mooca, or at Jão, in Penha.
Anyway, each runner has their favorite circuit, and there are even those who use a ridiculously gasoline-powered car to arrive at the same park as always.
Even as a tribute to the crazy people who one day thought it was worth facing the impassable Serra do Mar to reach the Plateau and finally the river that runs away from the sea, try changing your running scenarios. Cacique Tibiriçá deserves this one.
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