What ever it takes!

Tried to run but the foot still hurts.

8 miles on the treadmill, longest run since Boston.  I actually felt pretty good.

8 miles in 1:02:44

8 Miles on Murdock trail

5 Jetlaged miles on the Elliptical.

Felt good to run again,  Foot still hurts but it's getting better.  18km in the Humid Gym in Macau in 1:30.

13km (8 miles) in 1:06

I've been in the Hotel Gym since I got to Macau 4 day's ago due to jetlag, injury, and monsoon weather.  This morning I woke up pretty over jet lag, feeling pretty good, and the rain had subsided so I decided to venture outside.  I saw a small mountain close to the hotel that I Google mapped that looked like a good place to go.  Turns out it was awesome, I started out just running on the paved road but about half way around the mountain I saw a trail head and decided to try it out, it was pretty amazing trail running through rain forest, water falls and nice dirt trails that felt good on my foot.  It was crazy humid, and I was totally soaked when I got done.  I was pretty excited to find such a great place to run, I was worried I'd be stuck on the treadmill for 2 weeks but Macau is a pretty awesome place.  They say its the Las Vegas of China but so far it's 100 times better than Vegas.

I've decided to come back to the Blog, mainly because of runs like today.  It seems a waste to travel as much as I do, find these amazing places to run in random places and have no one to tell about it.  Even if people don't read my blog I can feel like I'm telling someone, frankly my wife gets bored with it.

So, I guess, I'm back.  I'll just try and stay away from education, and political posts.

Have you ever heard the expression "Chased into the jungle by wild dogs"  me either until today.

I decided to explore the other end of the island today, on Google Maps it was very mountainous and looked like a good place to run.  Ran from the hotel towards a nice golf course at the base of the mountain then I headed up.  This place seems to have a farel dog problem, I'm a dog person and I've been to places with stray dogs (Istanbul) and usually they don't bother you.  I saw a few yesterday but the only one in my way only had 3 legs and didn't seem like much of a threat.   Today as I started up the hill 2 dogs that seemed to be just puppies came to investigate me, I stopped to negotiate with them by using the normal dog negotiating techniques "shoe, go home, bad dog"  it seemed to take longer than normal due to the language barrier I presume.  Eventually they let me pass and I continued up the hill.  It was very beautiful, and even though it was humid there was a nice breeze that felt good.  About 1 mile up there was a trail head with a map showing a bunch of hiking trails, up the road further it showed a 1500M loop around a lake which I decided to go to so I continued up the road, as I came around a bend all of a sudden about 50 Meters away 6 dogs came chasing me, and they didn't seem to be the negotiating type, so I turned around and started running back the other way, as fast as I could.  Luckily after about 1 minute I looked back and they had stopped, I'm sure if they would have kept coming I couldn't have out ran them.  So that was a bummer, now my plan of running the lake was shot, so I ran back to where the sign was and started on that trail.  It started out very nice but within about 10 minutes I realized I was pretty deep into the Jungle, no one had any idea where I was (myself included) I had no water, and realized there were probably snakes (I hate snakes).  I kept thinking about Steve bush wacking his way to the top of some jungle mountain in Costa Rica but then quickly realized I'll never be as cool as Steve.  I tried calling my wife to tell her to use Find My iPhone if I never came back but she didn't answer my call.  So I decided I'd had enough adventure for the day and headed back down.  Luckily I had no more dog encounters and went back to the safe cool hotel gym and lifted weights.

I actually had a fun run, I'm a little disappointed I can't get a solid long run in.  It seems you can't go more than 1 - 2miles on this island without either ending up in the Jungle or the Ocean.  So maybe tomorrow I'll stick to the treadmill.

Michelle L gave the impression that there is no place to do hill training in Hong Kong, which I hear Hong Kong is actually quite mountainous as well.  Maybe she meant you can't do hill training without being chased by wild dogs.

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P.M. 30 minutes on the elliptical followed by weights.

One more thing I wanted to mention.  RAD's husband is replacing my friend who just quit so he will doing the same job as me starting next Monday.  I hope he likes Chinese food.

13km in 1:05:00 on the safe, dog free hotel treadmill. 5 min avg pace (who am I to argue with the treadmill?)

 My local co-worker told me "maybe it's not safe for you to go running alone in Macau" I said "why", he said "maybe because this is a Gambling town, maybe there are bad guys" 

Well now you tell me :) 

Asians, say "maybe" a lot.

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PM.  30 minutes on the elliptical followed by weights.

I attempted to run outside again today, first off, it was like Mississippi humid out there, stale stagnant mucky air.  I ran about a mile from the hotel was feeling fairly miserable and realized I was in some warehouse district all alone with dogs barking at me so I just headed back to the hotel and finished my run on the treadmill.  I think that's most likely where I'll be the rest of my trip, which isn't too bad cause it has a nice view of the golf course.  I am so ready to be done with China, I come home on Friday and then a week later I have to come back to Bejing for 1 week.  Blah!  Hopefully I get a couple months break after that.

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PM. 30 minutes on the elliptical followed by a really pathetic attempt at weights, followed by a delicious apple.  I've lost about 5 lbs in the last week just because I can't even enjoy the food here, I'm happy about the weight loss but could really use a good pizza.

I was up at 3:00am doing work then at 4:30 decided to lay down for a bit and ended up sleeping in past the alarm so I had one of those panic moments where I didn't think I had enough time to get a run in.  Went down to the gym and cranked out a 10K hurried up and got changed, ran to my desk in the conference room and of course I'm the only one here.

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PM.   30 minutes on the elliptical, followed by weights.  I was going to run this evening instead but all the treadmills were taken.

19.3km (12 Miles) on the hotel treadmill in 1:35:00. It was really hard for some reason, I'm getting a little more used to the humidity but I looked like I just got out of the pool when I was done. I bet I stunk really bad too.

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PM. 6.5km (4 miles) on the hotel treadmill, followed by Situps and a delicious apple.

7 really slow miles on the treadmill, I'm not sure if it was more humid today, or if I just had a bad night sleep but my energy was just sucked dry.  The humidity makes you feel like you do at mile 24 of a marathon where you just can't seem to get a hold of your breathing, and you sweat profusely for no apparent reason. 

I am so ready to go home.  Today is the last day of conference, tomorrow I fly home.

Felt pretty good this morning so I decided to go a little longer than normal since I didn't have work and my flight isn't until this afternoon.  Now I get to go sit on boats and buses and planes for the next 24 hours.

I was planning on a long run yesterday but my trip home from China really wiped me out, I didn't get home until 11:00 Friday night and pretty much spent all day yesterday sleeping.  So this morning when jet lag woke me up at 3:00am and I was wide awake I decided to go run,  I took a long long time getting ready and didn't get out the door until 4:30 (not exactly sure what took me so long) but I was out of it.  Started running slow and realized it was a beautiful morning.  If I would have known how nice it was out I would have tried to get out earlier, ran out on the Murdock trail, at mile 6.77 it all of a sudden started pouring rain on me out of nowhere, I found shelter under a trail overpass for about 10 minutes until the rain passed.  On the way back my hamstring and heel really started bothering me, I'm pretty sure sitting around on planes and in bed for 2 days was the reason.  Anyway, I had a nice run but I think it ended up taking almost 2 hours with rain delays and bathroom breaks.

Took advantage of being back home for a week to use the Life Time pool, 32 laps in the pool followed by weights.

Went to the gym just for convenience sake.  12 miles on the treadmill in 1:27:04.  Validation that running in humidity is really hard cause this run was a piece of cake compared to my 12 milers in Macau last week, and about 15 minutes faster.

I was actually planning on riding my bike to work today but then at the last minute I got lazy. 

8 miles on the treadmill on a perfect morning to go running outside.  Yeah, I've got issues.

Today's workout was all uphill.  Started on the treadmill at 5% incline, after 1.5 miles I got really bored with that and decided to try something new so I went to the stair master (the kind with the actual stairs that go around and around) I wanted to see what all the rage was.  Being on my toes the whole time really helped with my heel pain but I can tell my calves are going to be screaming tomorrow.

200 floors in 35 minutes, followed by weights.  The tallest building in the World only has 163 floors, the Empire States Building has 102.  So I climbed the Empire state building twice according to the machine.

I was a bit zapped of energy this morning for some reason, I took it real easy but I have something really stupid planned for tomorrow morning so I decided to just call it quits at 4 miles, went to the elliptical for 20 minutes followed by weights.

Well, yesterday I said I was going to do something really stupid today, and I'm not one to disapoint. so I did something really stupid today.

Got out of bed at 3:30am, out the door by about 3:45 and just started ruunnin', really slow, spent most of the time thinking about what an absolutely perfect morning it was to be out running at 4 am.  Full moon, no wind, perfect temperature.  I couldn't have picked a better day to do something stupid.

I made plans to meet Ryan at his house at 5:00, originally I told him he had to go 20 miles with me, so he was happy when I told him I'd already gone 8 so he only had to go 18.  Lucky!!  We left from his house and just started up the highway to American Fork Canyon, stopped at the Timp trail head for a water break and then ran 3 more miles up the canyon, a ton of runners out today.  17 for me, and 9 for Ryan we turned around and started back down, Gravity was nice, but my foot really started hurting on the downhill.  Basically the rest of this story would be me complaining about how bad my foot hurt if I were to continue on.  When we got back to Ryan's house I was 1/2 tempted to let him give me a ride home but decided I wanted 30 miles dangit, and I was going to get it.  So I suffered through 4 more miles home.  Well actually 3, when I hit the hill 1 mile away from home I stopped for a short walk break and just never could get going again, it just hurt way to bad.  so yes, I walked, 1 mile and I logged it as running.  Sue me.

This run/walk was never about speed, it was all about spending a whole lot of time on my feet.  Mission accomplished.

30 miles in 4:35.  I'll have to go look but I'm pretty sure I did this run in closer to 4 last year, my last 17 minute mile didn't help.

Looked it up, 4:07 last year, not a good sign.

8 easy miles mostly on dirt trail.  I was still a little beat up from my 30 miler but not as bad as it could have been.  I wore my softest cushy arch support shoes which helped the foot a lot.  Quads were a little sore.

Somehow I woke up in China again this morning, I'm not sure how that keeps happening I don't really like it here.  I'm in Beijing again but I'm downtown right next to Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.  Problem with that is I don't know where to run, not even sure if there is any place to run around here, at least in the Olympic Village there is forest park.

Woke up this morning, well slept actually and went down to the gym, 30 minutes on the elliptical followed by weights.  I plan on running a fair amount this week happy the gym is a 24 hour one.

This seemed like a really good workout while I was doing it, not so great after I got back and converted it to miles from kilometers.

The treadmills at this hotel apparently don't ever need to reset, I was expecting to have to reset at 60 minutes but it kept going, then I thought it would reset at 100 minutes, nope just kept going.  So a stop-less 22.5 km progressive run.

It's not nearly as humid here as it was in Macau but that gym was really stuffy and I was sweating almost as bad towards the end.

14 miles in 1:47:21

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PM.  Actually planned on running this afternoon but I wasn't sure my body was quite ready for doubles so 40 minutes on the elliptical instead. 

I then went to Authentic Chinese dinner with authentic Chinese people.  I told them it couldn't have eyes still on it, it couldn't have bones still in it, and it couldn't slither when it moved.  That still wasn't safe enough.  Luckily one of the guys was Muslim and was opposed to eating turtle.

Wow, rough morning.  I didn't sleep good at all last night, woke up feeling like a cold is coming on and last nights dinner is really causing my stomach fits.  Hope it's nothing serious.

12 miles on the treadmill in 1:35:00.  Plan was 14 but I was done at 12.  If I'm feeling better tomorrow I may try for a long treadmill run, I really just have no desire to go run outside.  I've been told there is a park next to Forbidden City I could run in but I just don't feel like dealing with people.  At 5:00am I have the entire gym to myself.

I connected my cell phone to my company VPN over cellular data last night and forgot to turn it off.  When I got up this morning I noticed it and went to look at my usage.  Sure enough I'd eaten up almost a Gig worth of data on my 300MB international plan.  I went and bumped it up to 800MB the most possible but I'm still over.  Hope my bill isn't too outrageous.  I guess the rest of my trip will be in the dark ages.