Unwelcome Runaway

I hated running. It's tiring, it makes me all sweaty (and that would result in higher pile of laundry) among other things. I thought it's a thing that one do only to chase buses, when getting chased by penguins, and some other isolated cases. Anyway, my opinion was that as long as I can run at decent speed for decent time to occasionally chase buses all is well. I don't expect to be chased by a waddle of penguins anytime soon anyway.

Then, the year turned. I went back from holiday at home stuffed. You see, at home anything could be dessert. Some nights batagor was dessert (don't argue this), other nights pempek was (don't argue this too), and some other nights good ol' ice cream was. Wait, not just nights, day too! Also, always as dessert; I had a proper meal before as far as I can recall.

After all that, I was feeling ...unwieldy. I needed to move, burn things down, stuffs like that. Then idea struck: I always visit NTU every week, why not run while I'm there? The air's good, the scenery's okay, and again I always visit anyway. With the right preparation maybe running is not so bad; right preparation, but what's that?

Running with full gears on—phone, wallet, keys, pens, notepad, etc—would be horrible. Add bag to the picture and it would be doublerrible. It would be like chasing after a double-decker around the university (and never catching up). So the first step is to contact some friends who live in the dorms and try to get one to agree to harbor my equipments for a couple hours [Wowies, Ryan unequipped things: STR -10, DEF -10, AGI +30, call for help, penmanship ability disabled]. Actually, the first step is to patch that iron-burn hole on my old high school training pants, but let's not go into details. Next step is go for it. Good penguins, it's only two steps long!

I decided I would take a long route around the campus first, finish at the running track and do a few run-walk cycle there, closed with a short sprint (as if the bus is actually a race car and I'm waaay late for work). The whole thing would be in the evening, don't want to fall down early in hot weather. First thing I realised: I overlooked NTU's hilly terrain. Any route I take would involve some uphill and downhill. That's easy to cheat: walk uphill, run downhill; don't protest I did admit it's cheating. Second: my run to walk ratio is pretty disastrous. Any worse and I would be obliged to call the exercise "Walking and occasionally simulating a bus chase". Well, I'll see if there'd be improvement over time, but I'd have to have the resolve to do it regularly first. Third: regular glasses get in the way so I leave it with my other stuffs (Oh no, SIGHT -2), I'm a little myopic so places with very low traffic and plenty space for pedestrian is best. Well, NTU is one.

Tell you what, it felt great. It's a time for myself (which I most of the time happy to have). I can have that kind of time just by sitting on an empty bench somewhere, or by walking. The amazing thing is, by running my mind is occupied by keeping breath pace and putting one foot in front of the other, I don't worry about anything else, I can't. Even if anything would come to mind, pain and fatigue from my joints would distract me, it's in a way liberating (I remember being told that by someone, but only now I'm convinced). Simple running can actually be a real running away, cool.

The activity is two weeks old now, with one session a week. I should really wait for more data before saying this, but I can feel myself improving. The run to walk ratio in the second week is better (my feeling, I don't actually quantize it), and I can run around the running track twice before walking for one round. Still it could be environmental and not really an improvement at my side. This reminds me of my Karate training when I was a junior high student, the Senpai would make us run one cycle more each week, no excuse, no walking phase either.

Now for a little story. Most lights were turned off in the center by the time, on the second week I noticed that I could see quite some stars from the track, so I lied down on the side after running to get a closer look. It's a solemn moment, I might keep running so that I could do this after. No photographic evidence, try it out yourself.

In closing, good habits are frail; I don't know how long I can keep this up—hopefully long enough. If frailty is not enough problem, I tend to treat myself to some chocolate afterwards. If you just read the whole thing, it might not hurt to treat yourself to some too!