Batu Caves...That Counts as a Hill, right?

Lord Murugan at the base of the steps to
Batu Caves.

Joy here...Over the weekend one of my workouts was supposed to be a hill repeat workout, 10 X up and down a hill that is around 200m in length.  But as I lamented in my last post, I'm having a really hard time fitting in my workouts lately.  I feel like I'm being pulled in many different directions and none of those directions include a focus on training.  I know I know and I know that it's all about priorities, and I need to readjust things and make running a priority.  But at the moment, I just need to get through the backlog of other things that need doing before I can get some equilibrium back in my life.

Once you reach the top and enter the first
temple section, there are still more stairs to go!

So instead of getting out there and running up and down hills, instead we took our Canadian guests out to see some of the sights of Kuala Lumpur, including Batu Caves, a stunning cave complex in the limestone and granite hills of the city, where 272 steps will lead you up to Hindu temples within the caves, and those steps are flanked by a giant statue of the Hindu god Murugan.  In addition to the temple caves, there is now a conservation cave portion opened to the public for tours that lead you through darkened and winding caves with the smell of guano heavy in the humid and stifling air, and the squeak and rustle of bats overhead the entire time.

The view up up up from the cave floor.

Both caves - the temple caves and the "dark cave" as the other is called - are well worth the steep climb up and the gauntlet of bag-stealing monkeys that dog your every step, hoping against hope that some foolish fellow will have brought along a bag of food that the monkeys are very adept at stealing.  I even saw one monkey swipe a carton of milk from one guy and a bag of bananas from an elderly lady.

We cleverly left our food in the car!

I will also admit that while I missed my run workout, all that walking up and down flights of steps left my legs shaking when I got back in the car to drive our tourists to the national zoo.  So despite missing my hill workout, clearly my climbing counted, right?  Right?  (Please say it counts...)

Over and out,
Joy

Walking all the way down...