Monday, January 8, 2007

Where I Run

Unfortunately my running routes are the worst possible.... I read with envy those bloggers who write about wonderful runs in the forests or off-the road tracks !!
During the working days I am stationed in a industrial area in China, where there are no tracks, no paths, no "small side roads". It is a endless succession of factories and heavily polluted main roads, beaten by trucks 24/7 !!
So my Monday to Friday runs are either:
- in the town center of my village, you can carve out a loop of 1.5k to repeat as much as possible. The only problem is that traffic rumps up suddently after dawn, so I need to run before 6.30 otherwise I will be squashed by some careless chinese driver (just kidding, but is not feasible to run anyway once the road gets used)
- I luckily found a school very close to my house that incredibly have a all-weather track of 300m !! I do not know why a primary school should have a track, but it works really well for me. The only inconvenient: it is closed during school holidays (3 months a year in total) and running on a 300m track is pretty boring, I mean, you have to do 30 laps to make up 10k !! It also place a lot of strain on ankles and calves, so I have many times sore muscles because of some fast workout. But is fine to go there, there are also some oldster walking around in the early morning and they always cheer me (I am by far the only foreigner running there)

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