I wrote previously about how I was trying to avoid becoming a statistic in the expat world. It is extremely common in the SE Asia expat community for most of the members to just end up being people that sit on their asses and drink beer all the time. I certainly have been an on-again off-again member of this not-so-awesome club at multiple points in my time in Asia, and when you have a chance to reflect on it, it is not a good club to be a part of.
I found out that I was over 100 kg because of a scale at a veterinarian office and it didn't make me very happy. That was the straw that broke the camel's back and it inspired me to do something about it.
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When I first started weeks ago, it was really tough to get started and even harder to keep going. I was clocking in around 7 and a half minutes per km, which considering my size I guess isn't that bad, but I wanted to improve. I made sure that I went and ran SOMETHING every day regardless of how I felt and lo' and behold, as time went by I started to get a lot better pretty fast.
I always run in the same place even though there is some wonderful scenery around here and this is because the heat and humidity is out of control this time of year and if I run this loop, which is almost exactly 400 meters per time around, I can keep a bottle of water and a towel sitting at the tables out side my condo. After the first 2 laps, I will normally stop, just for a moment, in order to dry off my head and face, and have a sip of water which is almost certainly necessary because I am sweating like mad.
Stopped early because of a thunderstorm
I am getting sub 6 minute km's now and this isn't impressive to a guy that weighs 50 lbs less than me and has been running for years but for me this is a great improvement. I took a full minute off my per km time in less than a month.
The best news is that I don't even look at my stats while i am doing them. I'm not chasing a clock, this is just what my body is doing naturally. I listen to my body when I am running, not a Garmin watch. Mostly this is because I don't have a Garmin watch and I am not going to spend $500 on one. Even if I did have one though, I think I would leave it at home because sometimes I will check my phone at one of my lap breaks to see how much further I have to go and most of the time it just kind of hurts your feelings. In all but one instance, I had much further left to go than I thought in my mind and that just kicks you in the nuts when that happens.
Other times I just went with the flow and then when my body was telling me that I am done I checked my phone only to discover that I had already gone further than I set out to do.
These days when I "hit the bricks" I tend to go 800 meters, then a quick cooldown walk for 50 meters then back to running. Towards the end I am sure I am moving slower than when I first began but the idea behind these runs is not to break any records, even my own, it is to keep my body moving and my heart rate up for more than 30 minutes.
I've been quite pleased with the results because these days when I get started I don't hate it and actually, don't even find it that difficult. The only thing that I really don't like is something that is beyond my control and that is the heat and humidity. I think that once the cool season rolls around that I will be able to absolutely kill it and can probably even step up to 10k's. At the moment the only reason why I quit is because I am totally soaked with my own sweat and this is even though I have chosen a path to run that is 90% in the shade. The heat here is just relentless.
I don't really have an end-goal in mind here. I am not training for anything in particular, I just didn't want to be a fat ass. I think I still have some fat to use but already people are telling me that they have noticed that I have slimmed down a bit. I'm going to keep going, not just for the accolades but also because I tend to feel better in almost all aspects of my life because of this small change to my lifestyle. With any luck and a bunch of perseverance, this will become a regular part of my life and something that I don't hate doing. Now if I just didn't live in the microwave of the world.
That's definitely an improvement, keep up the good work progressing.
Thanks buddy. It's been a long and sweaty road but now I am starting to feel as though it is just a part of my life now.
I wish, yesterdays 5k almost killed me. Aching like mad now.
well I hope you stick with it. I didn't really think that it was ever going to get easier for me but I stuck with it even if I had to walk most of the "run." These days I just stop because I am uncomfortably sweaty because I live somewhere that it is never cool outside.
I really miss my treadmill. I was never a runner, but I think I could maybe handle a little bit of it now. I don't really have a place outside to run and since the weather isn't always great in Michigan a treadmill would be awesome. Congrats on your achievement. I am glad that you have made it part of your routine. I have been slacking lately. I thought that getting up at 4 and exercising every morning would be come easier when it was a habit, but two years in now and it isn't any easier. I find myself skipping my workouts more than I used to.
yeah getting into the routine was tough for me but I was stubborn because people said I couldn't do it. I do NOT wake up at 4 though. I normally go running between sometime from 3pm to 6pm for only about 30 minutes or so. Now i've been doing it for long enough that I kind of feel guilty if I don't do it.
I miss living in town and having sidewalks to walk on. I might try and run more if that were the case. I have been doing some walk run lift routines, but you basically run in place, so I am not really sure how much it counts. I can run at least two minutes straight now, that wasn't the case when I started. I admire your commitment and dedication!
well i think as long as it gets your heart rate to an elevated state that it doesn't really matter what activity you are doing. I just do running because it doesn't require much of anything as far as equipment is concerned.
Good point. I have been doing routines that I find on YouTube. Mostly aerobic walking stuff with some jogging in place. Then we have the total gym too. My wife does kettle bell stuff upstairs.
Sounds a bit rough but I am in the same boat and need to be more active. It is just getting started and all the procrastination that we always seem to find a reason for starting another time. You do feel better after a week or so and you don't have to dodge the scales either.
I don't even own any scales but should probably get some. This was easy to accomplish in the last country I lived in because almost every minimart had a scale at the door that would play a tune and tell you how much you weighed for 1 Baht. I'm sure they were terribly accurate but since everyone has a ton of 1 Baht coins in a jar at home I figured what the hell.
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Most times when one leave exercise for s long time and return back to it, it is always hard to first of all get used to it
I need to get and do something like this each day. There is a trailhead near our house that leads to a mounain summit, a 3-day roundtrip, but there's no reason I can't walk/jog the first 30 minutes of it and return home. Luckily we don't have the heat problem like you here, just occasional sun problems because we're a bit high in altitude, but no clouds are very rare here.
I wonder what Nadi thinks happened when you return home from these exercise adventures, perhaps she thinks you've been assaulted or just fought for your life 🤔?
lol.. she does look at me from her perch when I open the door with a look on her face like "wtf happened to you?" She keeps her distance because a few times she has come to greet me and I dropped sweat all over her.
That mountain pass could be a nice thing to try but running on an elevated path, as you know, is probably a lot more difficult than the completely flat roads that I am doing this on. I bet you have to dodge less cars though.
We can only imagine goes through dogs' minds, but it sure is a fun thought experiment. It's almost as fun as making text-prompted AI images. By the way, anything you post is always welcome in ASEAN.
Adding denim to just about any prompt is a must, for you Nadi.....
I love your determination as obesity can lead to a lot of things of which one of them is depression, it can also lead to hypertension.
Cheers
For me it was just a question of the fact that I am at the age of if I don't do it, I will end up turning into what most of my friends look like and I promised myself when I was young that I wouldn't allow that to ever happen to me. Well, it started happening and this is the cure :)