No Pain No Gain

I'm trying to get in shape. The goal; to complete a marathon. I've never run more than 5 miles concurrently in my life, so training for this will be pretty tough. In my quest, you lucky readers are getting an insight into the training regiment of an amatuer.

Mile .43: Starting off easy and loving it. A slight upgrade but nothing too bad.

Mile 1.02: "Agility Market" is pretty tough to navigate. Lots of people walking all over the place not really paying attention. Definitely not the best place to be running.

Mile 1.43: A little after agility market comes this dark tunnel that runs under a major crossway. The smells are pretty bad, lots of urine and vomit, but gotta focus and get through it.

Mile 1.44: The guts of the tunnel. Not the cleanest place to be running, but it's pretty short and easy to get through.

Mile 2.11: About a half mile past the tunnel comes the turn-off to the countryside. Pretty impressive to find farms and greenhouses in the middle of the city!

Mile 2.38: If you click on the photo to enlarge, you can see I thought I would never see...the countryside dog market. Lots of dogs cramped up in small pens getting ready for feeding. I actually ate some, and it's not too bad...probably something I won't repeat in the future though.

Mile 2.389: Close up of the dogs in the dog market.

Mile 2.8: Some roads in the countryside area. Not the cleanest area and pretty scary to realize that this is where a lot of the vegetables I eat at lunch come from...good thing they ferment most of them.

Mile 3.2: After winding through some of the countryside roads, I get to a pretty tough hill. At the top of the hill there is a little tea/coffee rest stop and a guy that vends outdoor apparell. Not the greatest store of all time, but the owner is a great guy that serves up some savory beverages.

Mile 3.35: Right after the vendor, I fork off to the right and this is where the run gets tough. It's pretty much all uphill from here. It feels nice to get out of the city and out in some countryside, even if the hills here are pretty steep.

Mile 3.566: Some sign and welcomed flat ground on the trail. This run is almost like an evil fartlek, but almost done from here.

Mile 3.98: Finally, I have crested and am ready to go down a slight downhill area to the outdoor gym. Pretty insane place that is, but nothing like free weight lifting out doors.
GOOOOAAALLAASSSOOO!!: Here it is, the outdoor fitness club. Lots of weird things going on here. Lots of older ladies doing hula hoops, guys punching dumbbells to toughen their fists. But it's pretty impressive to see so many older people getting out and being active.

An Inside shot of the outdoor gym. They have plastic zips to close it off from the outside if the weather gets nasty.


I like lifting up here, except a lot of people come around and try and fix my technique. Of course most of them have no idea what they are doing, but they just want to be helpful, especially to a "weigook" or foreigner.
Some hula hoops for the women. Funny thing is I think I saw a video on youtube not too long ago touting this as the new fitness craze in the states.



A hula hooper in action. I have to admit, it makes me laugh a bit to see them doing this as I don't see how it gets a sweat on, but I tried it and it's actually a lot tougher than it looks.