i dream easy but run hard (sometimes!)

Loonyrunner posts in his blog that easy runs are the best type of runs for burning up fat in your system. I turn around and tell Snuffy about this in a very matter of fact tone. “Easy runs are the best type for losing fat!”
Snuffy gives me a look. Actually, it’s not just a look it’s THE look! The look I get when he suspects I am up to something. So before he can even say anything, I quickly add “He’s fast! He knows what he is talking about!” Snuffy knows me enough not to comment about the lack of logical weight in my argument. And I rattle on hoping he will not notice that my tone is getting a bit desperate.
“The more fat I lose, the lighter I get…one day I may even just float to the finish line!”
Snuffy nods and finally looks sufficiently impressed. He simply asks, “So how does this affect your running program?”
I answer not without a slight hint of triumph in my voice. “From now on I only do easy runs!”
“And your marathon plans? No tempos? No intervals? No need for speed?” He adds. I ignore him and pretend not to hear. “Doodeedoodeedoo….”
Snuffy sighs and just nods. I watch him a bit warily as he silently walks across the room and then he looks at me and says, “You better turn that off… It’s making a hell of a racket now!”
I look at him, confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Your alarm clock, turn it off. You’ve pushed the snooze button 3 times!”
“Oh!” I manage to say and then I wake up!
I look at the clock. It reads 5:19 am!
Blast! I’m supposed to be doing speed runs this morning! And I’m late! My phone is already blinking non-stop. I jump out of bed…
Sigh… I’m already huffing and puffing and I’m not even out the door yet!

running HOME

A nimbus of gloom hovers in the dark sky above me. It is the wee hours of the morning long before the crack of dawn. The asphalt surface glistens with slick puddles left by the early morning downpour. And here, in the middle of this wet, dark and deserted street, I find myself standing irresolute and bewildered, wrestling with the idea of heading out for a run this early, this dark, alone.

It is three am and I have been tossing and turning in bed for hours. I am feeling trapped and a bit suffocated within the dark walls of my cold bedroom. With a sigh and a grunt I give up on my futile struggle with sleep, get out of bed and step outside for some of what passes for fresh air in Manila. I am grumpy, irritable, jett-lagged and slightly dehydrated. 

As soon as I step outside my balcony, my eye is immediately drawn to the village park that my unit overlooks. The park glimmers with amber points of light. Except for one or two cars that pass by, the streets surrounding it are quiet and empty. Without further conscious thought, I walk back into my bedroom and long before my jet-lagged brain could register a complaint, I am in my running gear and on my way out the door after already having pushed the elevator buttons to make the rapid descent to street level. I have no real plan except for a burning need to pound the dark streets hard and heavy with my iron shoes.

I had lost an entire day and then some flying back to Manila. The long route back from Europe had taken me through three cities… first Paris then Munich then Seoul. The last leg of this trip had been especially trying. Soon after I had taken my seat inside the crowded plane that would deliver me back to Manila, I scanned the seats around me and my eyes glazed in horror as I found myself sitting right smack in the middle of 60 extremely enthusiastic and hyper Korean school children! This, after an already 18 hour ordeal of airport-plane-airport-plane-airport plane transfers, was simply too much to bear! I am sure they had reason to be excited. After all they were at the beginning of their vacation. Unfortunately, I was at the tail end of mine and I was just tired. I started hearing brass cymbals crashing combined with the dissonant cries of shrieking furies inside my head! The flight attendant must have noticed my distress because she came rushing forward as soon as I raised my hand like a schoolgirl in a classroom. “Get me out of here…PLEASE!!” I begged. Thankfully, she found a seat closer to the bulkhead. I was slightly appeased. But, as is bound to be my luck, I ended up sitting right in front of the star kicker of the flight. A feisty 8 year old who understood no English and who seemed destined for a glowing career in football judging from all the direct hits my backrest was getting from his restless foot! 

Very soon after I walked out of the airplane’s door and felt the hot humid weather envelope me, a feeling of heaviness descended over me. A full day on and I am still unable to shake it. Sometimes, though not so often now, I find myself questioning my decision to come back to live once more in Manila. Living in this city has required me to make peace with a lot things. Not least of which is the seeming haphazard way life can sometimes unfold in this part of the world.  I know there are many good points about living here. I must have figured out what some of them are because I am still here. But Manila’s streets have a way of assailing and assaulting the senses. There are some things that don’t actually work as they are supposed to. And sometimes, even when they do, they don’t really work all that well. Mostly, I am simply not ready to be back. Not to the stress that I know the next few weeks will bring. I guess that is the problem with long vacations. You are just giving work more time to pile up! The brat in me simply refused to accept that I was already here. I wanted, no, still needed to be somewhere else!

As I venture out of our building’s door I am hounded by second thoughts about this run. The doorman of our building is clearly surprised to see me this early. He is also a little puzzled when I refuse the umbrella he is offering me as I walk out the door. It is drizzling outside now. Apparently, even the sky shares the dark mood I am in. My head is riddled with static and my feet feel heavy. I start off with hesitant strides and almost immediately, before I can even truly accelerate, I come to a grinding and abrupt halt as I stop to avoid crashing into a pile of garbage yet uncollected in the streets. Once again frustration sets in and I simply turn around in a huff and just start walking away from the rubble. I have no definite direction in mind. I am simply heading out. Away from my building towards a distant corner light. Every time I hear the rumble of an oncoming vehicle, I edge away from the asphalt surface and go deeper into the sidewalk afraid that the car would end up splashing me with the accumulated pools of water on the road. Eventually, I find myself in front of the small village park. It’s too short a circuit to run. Not even 300m.  I look around and there is still no one in sight. I decide to pound the streets. “Now or never,” I whisper as a gruff challenge to myself and even as I am feeling half-hearted about this whole thing I turn my polar watch on and start running away from the park. A taxi careens through the corner and although I give it a wide enough berth, it still honks its horn at me. I glare angrily at the cab driver through his car’s dew misted windshield. “What the hell?” I ask as I gesture expansively with my arms. “The streets are empty! It’s just you and me!” I am annoyed even more! This run certainly has not gotten off to a good start.

It takes me a while to find any sort of rhythm. There is neither lift nor lightness to my footfalls. I am simply going as fast as my legs will carry me over the uneven, slippery road. My head feels like it is suspended in some sort of fugue. It is both light and heavy at the same time.

I have started the run and have not even bothered to set a distance. I do not care to even check my pace. I am simply out to run. I am going to run myself ragged and tired. I have no illusions. This is in no way going to be a training run. I am not running towards something as much as I am running away from something. My shoulders are tight and hunched and my breathing is heavy and labored. And yet, because I was born with an excess of stubborn genes, I simply push myself forward and away. This is a run hatched with the single-minded purpose of outpacing my demons. Easy was never meant to define it.

I run a circuitous route around the village. I wake up a snoozing guard and startle a black cat. “Go home!” I shout after the cat as it scampers to hide under a parked car! Can’t you see it’s bad luck to cross my path?”  I run even as the drizzle starts threatening to become a full-fledged downpour. Before I know it I am once again in front of the village park and I barely give it a glance. I simply plod on with my head down. One heavy step after another. Pushing forward. Pushing on…

And then… It happens…

I am running and I feel the cool wind on my face and find myself breathing in air bursting with the promise of rain. Soon enough I look up and above the silhouette of the still dark buildings the sky now glows with a hushed pale light. The buildings lining my route prevent me from seeing the dawn’s first purple, then pink-red light that has started its slow spread in the horizon to the east. And yet, it does not matter. I know it is there and that is enough. I sense a growing hum in the distance and recognize the sound as the early cacophony of roaring, honking jeepneys starting to fill the streets. Dawn has finally broken through. A new day is now off to its full throttle start.  It is in this brief, elusive moment that I am somehow reminded of the reasons why I choose to live, work and play in this part of the world. For despite all its faults, it is that part of the world I still feel most comfortable in. As my iron shoes now lightly pound the pavement, i recognize my intimate familiarity with the street’s hum and bustle. Its noise, its traffic, its fumes,  its passions, its excesses, its people, its discords, its harmony,  its innate rhythm. Once again I accept that I belong to this city in as much as it belongs to me. I am part of this city’s tempo. I share its rhythm

There are places and sights outside these shores that I go to now and again to satisfy my wanderlust but none have ever enticed me enough to stay as much as the little idiosyncracies of living in this city does. The sounds, the sights, the smells, the whole scene around me are at once familiar and reassuring. Yes, today, I am running without the backdrop of the majestic Pyrenees Mountains. And yes, the serene sanctuary offered by the gritty sandstone lanes in Madrid’s Retiro park are a thousand miles away! Here there are no wide tree-lined paths to run in. There are only uneven sidewalks and haphazardly laid out lampposts and street signs in the stretch ahead of me.  Around the corner a peanut vendor is already claiming his part of the sidewalk.  I will have to share it with him on my next round. This no longer bothers me. I have not only made peace with my surroundings, I am content.  And pretty soon I find myself embracing the street’s tempo as it meshes with my own. 

Soon enough my breathing becomes less labored. The suffocating shell that has wrapped around me slowly melts away. My heart lifts. I slow down and look around  at a city that is now fully awake and I realize that  finally I am ready to go home. 

Sometimes it takes running a  long and circuitous route to finally find the short but magical path home…

going the distance

“Oh look!” I cry out excitedly as I point to a sign on the road! My brother hits the car brakes a bit too hard and the tailgating taxi honks its horn at us. “Ate!” My brother exclaims as he gives me an exasperated look. ” It’s just a road sign!” “I know,” I tell him. “But its not just like any other road sign. It’s got distance markers too!” He simply shakes his head and keeps driving.

My brother does not run. I do. Somehow in the past year, distance markers have become quite significant to me.

In a country where a 21K half marathon can sometimes turn out to be closer to 23K I consider road signs with distance markers as a sign of progress. The first race I ever needed to sign a waiver for was a 5K run for a cause. There were few civilians and a lot of military running with their full gears on. I was nervous and excited and quite terrified. I did not know what to expect! Which turned out to be a very good thing. Not only were there no water stations. The 5K race also turned out to be a 7K one. I ran, walked and almost felt like crawling my way back to the finish line. But I had my new running tights on and some of those men in uniform who passed me did look kind of cute. So I soldiered on. And when we finally did make it to the finish line, I remember turning around and telling the guy who was right behind me. “I didn’t realize 5K was that long!” And just then we hear the host announce on the microphone”…and by the way, did you guys notice that the race was actually a little longer than 5K! Did everyone have fun? ” Oh well, they did give us boiled bananas and pandesal after. And eggs! Hardboiled eggs. So, yes! I did have fun.

Once, while walking around the piazza in Venice a gorgeous German guy walked up to me to say…”Please, can you take my picture?” (Oh well, I’ll take what I can get!) After I say yes and he hands me his camera he proceeds with these instructions “Please stand 3 meters away from me.” I was the one taking the picture but my grin was bigger than his! I was actually chuckling in my head. I would have pulled out my tape measure if I had it with me.

It is only in the past year that I’ve actually become more in tune with distance measurements. I now have a general idea of what 100 meters is like. I remember my mom once giving me a driver’s handbook. It said, “100 meters away from the corner, you should turn your signal markers on.” Where’s 100 meters,” I asked my mom? My mom, schooled with 16 years of strict German Benedictine Education, looks at me and says, “I don’t know. You are the one driving!” I didn’t really have any idea what 100 meters was like. And at that time, I really didn’t care.

It’s a little different now. I now have these crazy numbers filed away inside my head. A friend asked me to run around village with him. He asked me how long my usual route was. I told him it was 3.32kms. He looked at me and said, “So 3.5KMs?” I said, “No. 3.32kms.” “So 3kms?” He says again. I say, “No. 3.32kms. If we are doing 10km, then we will do 3 full rounds and then we just need to run all the way to the door of my building instead of stopping at the corner. It’s 40 meters from the corner. That will make it 10 Kms. That’s how I worked it out…” He looked at me like I was crazy.

“So where is Le Berry?” I asked my French Algerian concierge. He tells me, “Make a left as you exit the hotel. It’s 2 blocks down. 600 meters. It’s the building with red windows. Four minutes walk. ” I smiled and had to ask, “Your legs or mine?” Four minutes walk to the best steak place in town? I can make that three…

postcard from pau, france 190708

…and i quote my sister Sam’s message to big brother Nomad:

what a great recommendation!! the hotel is in between two lovely parks!!! you have the picturesque pyrenees mountain on your right, and Gallerie Lafayette, H&M and Sephora to your left!!!! The best of both worlds!!

love,
SAM

p.s. i am soooo happy! finally! some shopping!!!

i look over her shoulder as she is writing this and tell her…”ok. you better stop less you finish off your exclamation points quota for the day!”

but yes, we had a fun day. it was hot. it was good. and we finally did get to do some shopping. the first one for this trip. the stores were on sale! woohoo! (more exclamation points please?)

running in pau’s boulevard des pyrenees

It was twilight by the time I made it to the boulevard des pyrenees in pau, france. The boulevard is a 1.8km stretch overlooking about 200kms of pyrenees mountains. The hotel concierge told me that the range is about 50kms away from the city. I will schedule a visit one of these years!  The side of the boulevard lining the  cliff has a  balustrade covering the entire stretch. The Gave (river from the pyrenees) can be seen below.  There are trees and wide green benches lining one side of the road.Here tourists and locals can sit and relax and enjoy a quiet moment. Further down the road are open air bars and restaurants.  On one end of the stretch you will find the chateau de pau (the castle) where King Henry the IV was born. It is now a museum.  At the other end is the palais beaumont and the parc beaumont (public park). These places are worth a visit. A pity I only had time to view them from the  outside this trip! Oh well, there will be other days…and with luck, a chance to visit again.

I did not have much time this run. We had come in later than originally planned from Lourdes. By design it had to be short and easy! I was also starting to get hungry. The setting sun cooled down the place a bit. I came back the next morning to take a few more picture and it was hot,hot.hot! The views offered by the mountains range on one side and the buildings, statues and bars;-)  on the other added an interesting dimension to this run.