In my thirties I took up running and then cycling and weight training...by my forties, I had gotten out of shape.
This blog charts my ups and downs with my newest adventure of sport, training, and fitness (with a few random musings on life thrown in to keep things interesting!).
It is my belief that one's sporting journey - its ups and downs - is a mirror of one's life.
My brief bio...
I used to co-write a blog, "East and West Running" at www.eastandwestrunning.blogspot.com...click on the various links to see some of the early entries from 2010 to 2012 when I first learned how to run and then first learned how to ride a bike as I was based in Canada and my co-blogger was based in Malaysia.
I fell off the blogging wagon since somewhere around 2014 or 2015, but I'm getting back on so that I can track my #fitoverforty journey back into fitness...
Joy here...While I've not been following the training plan meticulously laid out for me by Coach Woods, the fault is mine and not his. And despite my seemingly lax approach to training (i.e. my non-existent approach), I am still doing my best to head out the door and go for little runs whenever I can. My mantra these days seems to be that something is better than nothing.
The jungle where lurks hidden hazards.
And so as the late afternoon sun danced behind thick clouds that threatened but never delivered rain yesterday, I headed out for my little something-is-better-than-nothing run around my taman.
As I turn down one of the straights on my little neighbourhood loop the jungle rises up to my right, with green foliage blowing in the breeze and big banana leaves rustling like fans.
Wait! That's not the rustling of the wind. There's something in there!!!
I ran by the greenery and heard the distinct sound of something moving in that thick, lush jungle. I kept running, immediately fearing the worst. I know that dangerous animals can be found hereabouts, and as my heart rate rose, I envisioned being gored by a wild boar who would come tearing out of the trees to rip me to pieces. I couldn't help but picture a king cobra rising tall amidst the trees, hood flanking fangs and flicking tongue. I imagined escaped orang-utans who could have travelled through the uninterrupted jungle right into the city to rip me limb from limb. In my mind's eye I saw a python springing all unseen to coil me and slowly crush my last breath from me.
A wild boar averages around 200Ibs and could easily decide to gore me with his tusks.
A King Cobra grows to over 18ft and can stand up 1/3 of its overall length, so, yeah, that would be 6ft tall. If you're me, you'd be looking up into the face of a snake.
Orang-utans are native to Malaysia and possess 7 to 10 times the strength of the average human.
A python can grow to be one of the largest snakes on the planet. Oh, and it is native to Malaysia.
So as I looped around to run past that stretch of rustling jungle, my heart was in my throat, my flight or fight reflex was honed (I chose flight), and I was sure that certain and dramatic death lay right around the corner for me.
Joy here...When I was little, I curled up on the couch one weekend to watch the Chariots of Fire with my mom. I don't remember how old I was, but I remember being glued to the screen as the young men raced on far-away beaches and in awe-inspiring university settings.
I knew nothing of running then, and Cambridge was a fancy place in far-off England, a place of culture and learning that even at that early age I was drawn to. The music pulled me in and the era of sportsmanship excited me, just as the anti-semitism shocked and appalled me.
The first 100m, turn L at the palm tree!
Fast forward some 30 years, and I now have visited both Oxford and Cambridge; I hold a Ph.D. in English literature, and I have taken up running myself. But I have yet to rewatch Chariots of Fire.
Now that I've settled in far-off Malaysia, a place even more remote from the hallowed halls of Trinity College than even snow-bound Winnipeg where I was born and raised, I find myself running and thinking of those men from yesteryear running and running their hearts out around the great court. For here in my taman, I have my own, little court.
The internet informs me that the Great Court Run at Trinity College Cambridge is 341m, and my little loop around the taman is 475m. So as I ran yesterday, I heard that music playing in my head, pulsing out a rhythm for me to run with.
I started my 5km run (over 10 loops of the taman), and felt good and fast. The music was strong in my ears, and my feet felt light. I turned at the first 100m, with houses to my left and jungle to my right, I felt strong.
The turn at 200m, right by the abandoned house!
Then I reached the 200m turn and kept on going, faster and faster; at 300m there is a slight kick up and a false flat, which is really a slight incline. Whenever I hit this portion of the loop, I always feel fat and out of shape. It's simply unavoidable. Yesterday was no different. Flanked by houses on either side, dogs barking as I ran by, I slogged my way up the tiny incline, feeling like it was time to throw in the towel, only to reach the final turn in seemingly no time at all and be back to normal, fresh legs and music in my ears.
So again and I again I ran my little loop - turn right at the palm tree, left at the abandoned house, left at the guard house, up the slight hill for the finishing straight, and turn at the sign for the apartment, and then do it all over again - with each loop seeming easier and easier.
The final 100m, slightly uphill with the guard house behind me.
That is, until around the 4km mark. Just as I finished that finishing straight up the slight incline towards the apartment and heard my watch ping to mark the 4km mark, I felt like someone out there unplugged my batteries. I was deflated and wasn't sure that I could finish the final kilometre. And what always happens to me at this point of any run is that my little running demons show up. They appear and tell me that I've run enough and it's time to take it easy. They whisper in my ear that I don't need to finish the workout as planned. They drag at my legs and make me feel flatfooted. And most frightening of all, they begin a chorus of worries about the damage I may be doing to myself. My feet, ankles, joints, and internal organs are all picked out as being under fatal threat by these running demons, and so I began to worry. I felt slow and heavy as I battled not just my body, but my mind that is dead set on sabotage of the worst sort. "No!" I screamed inwardly to these voices urging me to throw in the towel. "Shut up!" I demanded of them, to no avail.
The start/finish line of my little loop.
Those voices are loud and insistent, and yesterday, all I could do was turn up the soundtrack in my mind from the Chariots of Fire to drown them out. The final loops of my run turned into the quadrant at far away Trinity College, and the jungle around me melted into stone and brick buildings, the leaves above nothing more than the imagined archways that countless runners have raced through in the hopes of beating the tolling of the bell. And as I built that great court, brick by brick, in my mind as I ran, I turned for the last time at the guard house and aimed down the finishing straight, heading slightly uphill and pumping my legs for all they were worth, and in my ear rang those defeatist voices, but over them, reaching a crescendo rose the magical music composed by Vangelis to score a 1981 movie about two 1924 runners that inspired a small child from Winnipeg who, decades later, finally learned to run and needed some help on a hot 5km run around her own Malaysian great court.
The great court at Trinity College.
And, you know what? It worked. I finished my final km and began my slow walk through the 'hood that recomposed itself into a tropical neighbourhood in a world-class city as the shadows and echoes of the song and the imagined setting faded into the background, along with those pesky voices of my running demons.
Over and out,
Joy
Run stats:
Ran 5.01km for 26:22 with an avg. pace of 5:16min/km.
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...)
Joy here...For the past few weeks I've been grappling with balancing everything on my plate, or rather with balancing a fully loaded plate, spinning wildly and dangerously, all the while juggling and doing a hula hoop, with everything continually threatening to topple and fall. I feel like if I stop moving and doing for just a moment, this delicate dance of juggling, wiggling, and jigging, then I will fail completely.
Of course in order to maintain this circus performer's show, some things just aren't getting done.
We've been hosting friends, so while I've been cooking, cleaning, tour guiding, chauffeuring, grocery shopping, and managing to do just enough work to not be considered negligent, I have had absolutely no time for anything non-essential.
Have I read a book lately? Nope. Have I slept lately? Not much. Have I worked on my many writing projects? Big, fat nope. And most importantly, have I kept up with my running workouts? Nope. Sadly, no.
The couple visiting us are good house-guests; they're easy-going and fun to be around. But nonetheless, they are guests. And we feel responsible for them as good hosts. So when The Man and the husband of the visiting couple group sneak out for a run, I stay behind to keep the wife company. You see, the husband is our tall running buddy, who has been mentioned before on this blog as a friend, fellow runner, and sometime ski instructor. He's a great athlete, and while The Man has held onto enough fitness since our arrival in Malaysia to be able to run with him and have a good time, I'm down to slow 5km runs and loops through the taman. So when they have headed out for their runs, I've opted to stay behind and play hostess with the mostest in part because I'm wired in such a way that I simply can't seem to leave someone alone and unattended on my watch, but also in part because I can't keep up.
Big shoes to fill!
This tall friend of ours is 6'4, wears a men's size 13 shoe, and has a 5km personal best time of 16:51. I, on the other hand am 5'7(ish), wear a men's size 7 shoe, and have a 5km personal best time of 23:49. This guy's an athlete, with big shoes for me to fill (literally and figuratively).
And so, I think, that while they are here visiting us, I will end up walking and sight seeing, and doing my ever-so-funky dance to balance and juggle all the things that need balancing and juggling when moving to a new country, setting up a new home, building an international business, and hosting international guests!
Joy here...A while back one of my more popular posts mused about how I felt a bit odd about living in Ottawa and felt like I didn't really fit. Part of that oddity was feeling like the modus operandi there was one shared by a majority of people, and it was one that seemed antithetical to the things I hold near and dear about what it means to live a good life. In Ottawa it seemed to me that many people love, search for, seek out, and embrace a good life based around security, safety, and quality time with family and friends.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with any of that.
But for me, I have always had ants in my pants and itchy feet and always been more interested in something challenging and hard rather than safe and comfortable. As a result, living in Ottawa sometimes felt socially weird. As much as we met some really wonderful people there and befriended a number of them, often I felt like admitting that I wanted something more, something different, something bigger, better, stranger, more exiting etc. marked me as an outsider.
So sometimes I felt lonely. I felt like I didn't belong, and I wouldn't necessarily develop the kinds of good friends that I have always been able to count on throughout my life so far.
But Kuala Lumpur is proving to be different. It seems like at every turn I'm not only reconnecting with our friends here who are really great, but I'm also meeting new people who seem to see the world in ways that tally with those I hold near and dear.
In that last blog post about Ottawa, I likened it to a relationship that just wasn't working, and to stretch that metaphor further, I know that now I'm in the flush of rose-tinted romance when it comes to Kuala Lumpur. I mean, what's not to love about a new relationship? There's the newness of it all, the excitement, and everyone is on their best behaviour.
And even though it might be fleeting, it might not be AND it sure is enjoyable while it lasts!
For instance, I finally dusted off my bike after nearly two months and took it for a spin around the neighbourhood for the first time. And while out riding, I met a number of the neighbours, interesting people who have either returned to Malaysia after living and working abroad (like The Man), or who have settled here as outsiders (like me). They seem interesting, worldly, and interested in chasing down opportunities. While it's early days, I think I may just have found the place for me.
First bike ride in Kuala Lumpur for me!
So while I'll continue to write about my ups and downs with running and training (mostly downs, lately), you can be sure that I'll also be writing about my ups and down with my new Kuala Lumpur love affair (mostly ups at the moment!).
Actually, not so fine. You see, I still have to find a place to do my running. Since we've been moving from my cousins' house to our new apartment I've been busy with setting up the new house, getting the internet sorted, buying furniture, inviting friends over, and generally doing many busy-work things and few athletic things. So now my problem is that I've taken a full week off running, and done nothing except eat and drink instead, and every time I try to convince myself to head out the door even for an easy run, I have mental images of Planet of the Apes scaring me into lethargy (not that I need any real help in that department).
Finally, yesterday, I put on my running shoes and headed out the door to run some loops in my new neighbourhood, or "taman" as it's called here. There is a running loop around the squared layout of the taman that is 475m. So out I went to run around and around and around and around and around for a total of around 3kms (the distance of the monkey loop).
Ready, set, GO!
I've got my work cut out for me to get back into the groove of running regularly, but something is better than nothing, right?
Joy here...When we first arrived in Kuala Lumpur, I resumed running around the 3km loop close to my cousins' house where we were staying, a loop where I have run before. Usually there are monkeys who come out mid-afternoon to be fed by passing motorists, and while they can be annoying, there is something charming to this Canadian about having to run around monkeys. I mean, c'mon, that's not really a hazard that I run into in Ottawa!
Tropical neighbourhood running route!
However, over time, these monkeys have become more and more of a pain in the butt.
Literally.
The other day, I was forcing myself out the door to run and knock off my run workout, when, lo and behold, what should appear? But a whole posse of monkeys. Like a gang of teenagers up to no good, oblivious to those around them, and oozing a kind of menace, these monkeys were lolling all over the road. I ran by most of them, dodging here and there, but, you see, because people are in the habit of feeding these monkeys, they tend to see people as sources of food. I, therefore, running by with my water bottle jiggling and sloshing, must have been to these monkeys like the siren call of an ice cream truck on a summer afternoon. Who can resist that?
It turns out that the monkeys can't.
Don't mess with this fella!
As I was weaving my way through a particularly large crew of the fellas, one of them reached out with his arm for a swipe at me (or my water bottle strapped to my waist). I did a little hop skip to avoid his sticky, clutching fingers, all too similar to some pervert groper's and carried on with my run, my heart in my throat and my adrenalin pumping through me in a burst. By the time I reached the bottom of the hill, my planned 5km time trial was blown, my heart rate stilled, and my anxiety levels returning to normal.
But I guess I have to find another running loop to avoid the dreaded gauntlet of the monkey loop.
