It's getting real

I’ve found a running coach (you can check out his website here), and I’ll be getting all the digital paperwork completed by the weekend. This will be a virtual coach, he's based in South Dakota.

I had a hour long video conference call with him on Sunday and felt very comfortable with him and his approach. He gave me a suggestion that he has his runners do, and honestly that tip was quite helpful. Basically, after a run he said to add in about 10-15 minutes of strength work to keep the heart rate up and get the body used to doing just a bit more. I did that this morning, and think that’s going to help a lot.

And yesterday, this came in the mail.

While I think it’s pretty hideous (does anyone look good in that lurid shade of orange sherbet?), and I won’t wear it until after the marathon, it did make the whole thing seem more real.

A final post from Manila

Or at least I hope it's the last one. If Taal acts up, then it won't be.

I thought I'd end with a few photos of the Chinese New Year's decorations at the hotel. This is outside the lounge on the 40th floor.

This one is at the desk for the residences at the hotel (I can only imagine how expensive it is to live here in one of those).

This is in the lobby and is very tall, much taller than I am.

A close up of the rats.

Another display in the lobby:

And one last sunset here tonight:

Kitties in Manila

I’ve seen a ton of kitties here, they’re all wild but highly socialized toward humans. They’re also incredibly tiny and thin, I’m sure they don’t live easy lives. I haven't tried to pet any of them because although they don't run away from people, they're clearly not house cats.

As you might imagine, I’ve taken a lot of photos (I can’t resist cute cats) so here they are:

I saw these two at the Bonifacio High Street Mall area on January 11.

I'm pretty sure these are the same kitties plus another one; I saw them January 19.

This tiny kitty was eating something, what you don't see are the couple of workers sitting on a short landscaping wall taking their break. I'm pretty sure they were feeding the kitty.

This is a different cat, although she looks very similar to the previous one.

This is yet another cat, but this one's sitting on the landscaping light. It wasn't a cool night by any stretch of the imagination but cats do run hotter than we do. So I'm sure the warmth felt good.

And as I came back by on the same walk, that little kitty decided to curl up on the light.

Saint Vincent De Paul and Fort Santiago

Last Sunday, we got to see St. Vincent De Paul, a very old if not the oldest Catholic church in Manila. You can read about it here.

I didn’t take a lot of photos there as a wedding was going on and that seemed disrespectful. I will say I was in the minority, lots of people took photos of the wedding!

Then we walked a short distance to Fort Santiago and toured the fort. The fort is also quite old and is considered to be one of the most important historical sites in Manila. I can’t do justice to a write up so take a look at this link.

See the kitty? And the rooster on the right?

Then we made a stop at the Mall of Asia. At one point, it was supposed to be the biggest mall in the world. I don't think it is any more, but it's definitely large. I took this photo facing west toward Manila Bay. I do love the ocean.

After that, we went to Okada Casino, which is further south from the fort and the cathedral. I’m not a gambler and I don’t care for cigarette smoke, but two of the folks on my team really wanted to see it so off we went. And one of them won nearly 1000 PHP! This photo is at the entrance; I think some of these decorations were up in advance of the Chinese New Year. It was pretty amazing to see.

We stuck around for the light show, which according to the Okada is bigger than the Belagio in Las Vegas. I don’t know either way but I will say it was really cool.

At the same time we were there, one of the Filipino people with us showed us real time videos of Taal, and we realized we could see the ash plume from the casino. Not only that, but what we thought were bug bites were actually tiny pieces of ash hitting us.

I’ll say I’ve never been in a situation where Facebook prompted me to mark myself safe or not safe, which was just nutty.

The Year of the Rat

I was born in the year of the rat, and it’s now the year of the rat as I approach a milestone birthday. As it turns out, Starbucks has cups and mugs for the year of the rat, at least in Asia.

I was at a client site Wednesday and we stopped at Starbucks for coffee and I saw one of the mugs. I thought about getting it, said no, but kept thinking about it as we were in line. I realized that if I didn’t get it, I would always be a little sad that I didn’t. So I bought it.

Then yesterday at work, one of our vendor partners showed me other year of the rat cups from Starbucks. In Singapore, they have two mugs: the one I got and a smaller one. Good thing I’m not there or I’d be trying to pack two breakable mugs into my suitcase.

Then I looked at the Starbucks website here in the Philippines and I think I might just ditch the Block cup I brought and get one of the tall rat water bottles ones instead. The one on the far right in this photo is actually called a zodiac CNY coin bank.

No more running in Manila most likely

You may have heard about Taal, the smaller volcano in the Philippines that’s been rumbling and belching ash into the sky. I’m about 40 miles north of it, and in fact saw the ash column Sunday night when my team and I were out. In this picture, look at the vertical cloud near the roof line—that’s the ash plume and the bigger clouds above it are also ash, just more dispersed.

Air quality has definitely plummeted so I’m no longer running while I’m here. The hotel slipped a letter under all our doors Sunday night, and on Monday we picked up our masks. Safety over fashion, right?

You can read more about Taal here and here. I found the first article very informative, this is an unusual volcano.

I’ll post more later about the fun excursion we did on Sunday but for now, know that I’m fine. I know the news got more notice in the States yesterday, but honestly nothing’s changed since Sunday. The danger and the threat of another eruption remain the same. I think it was a slow news day in the US.

Running in Manila

I’ve run twice here in Manila and both times, it’s been pretty frustrating.

First, I have to run in early evening (which is my morning).

As you might imagine, it’s still pretty hot and humid outside and the air quality isn’t great. Plus it’s also really crowded; according to some sources, Manila is the most densely populated city in the world and I believe it.

There’s a small running park not far from my hotel, although I do have to cross a couple of very busy streets—I wait for the walk light because to do otherwise would be taking an insane risk. The park itself has little twisty paths and people run but I’ve been running around the block on the sidewalk. That’s sort of less frustrating although on one side of the rectangle, the sidewalk is very narrow and I have to go into the street briefly.

But what’s more annoying is that my Garmin cannot keep a signal and keeps hopping to different satellites which makes my run look like a drunken toddler did it. And in turn, that makes the pace and distance tracking wildly inaccurate. Kent believes that the satellite issue is because I’m so far south in the northern hemisphere; most of the satellites are further north so my Garmin spazzes out.

The first day I ran, I set all kinds of “records,” only of course they weren’t. They were just equipment glitches. The second day I ran, I ignored pace and distance and ran for time (35 minutes) and still set more “records.”

I’m super glad I chose the later marathon instead of the one in April. Otherwise I would be absolutely freaking out because there is no way I can complete my training plan here, not with any accuracy.

A quick post

I'm in Manila for work; I got here Monday evening and leave January 23. What's weird and different is that the vendors I'm here to see work US CST hours so I work at night and sleep during the day. You'd think that would eliminate jet lag but ah you would be wrong.

I'm staying in Taguig, which is very upscale. My hotel, the Shangri-la at the Fort, takes hotel service to a completely different level. Case in point, I get a daily laundry allowance and so sent out some things on Tuesday. When they came back, in addition to the hanging clothes being essentially perfect, my socks and undies were wrapped up and tied with a bow and a tiny subtle sachet.

I've shared the rest of these on Facebook but wanted to put them here too. If you click one of the photos, you should be able to see a larger version and then click through them.

This one is a panoramic day shot I took on Tuesday.

Here's a night panoramic photo. It's a little blurry, sorry.

Here's another night photo. I used the night setting on my Pixel 3XL.

This is looking out the window from the restaurant this morning (my breakfast/dinner).

And this is another panoramic photo I took about an hour ago. The sky was so much clearer in this one that I can see the Pusig river to the north and west of me and also what look like mountains further west and also north/north east.

I'd hoped to take a quick trip to one of the other islands this weekend but in light of current world events, and our current dumpster fire of a president's actions, I think I'd better not. It's odd, the first time I was in China on business in 2003, the US had bombed well honestly I don't remember if it was Syria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, but yet again we bombed another country. That was not a good time to be an American in Asia. So I think it will be better if I don't leave Manila.

Some running stats and what’s next

I use Strava to track all my runs and workouts (Ben had suggested it to me, think of it as sort of Facebook for athletes). What I like about Strava is I can take a look at historical data to see how I’m doing and find any trends. Because of that historical data, I knew right away my heart rate spikes were so wildly out of normal for me last fall.

I took a look at my running totals since joining Strava in June 2017 and I was very surprised at what I found.

For 2017, the data only covers my runs since June, when I joined Strava.

Here's 2018. I ran fewer overall runs with longer mileage. And of course I broke my pelvis in May so I didn't run for several months after that:

But take a look at 2019. I would not have guessed I ran that much this year. For so much of the year, I felt as though I would never get back to my previous distances and times, or the overall total. And it’s true, I haven’t yet gotten there. But I sure ran more than I thought I did.

So what’s next? Well I did it. I signed up for a full marathon, my first ever. 

I had wanted to run the Garmin Marathon here in the Kansas City area. I liked the half marathon I did at that event in 2018 and I also like that it’s a local race. But the race date this year is April 18. I’m leaving the country on Saturday for most of January (a work trip) and that will no doubt crater my running. I’ll be in Manila, where it’s quite hot and humid and the air quality isn’t the best, not to mention I don’t know how safe it will be to run (thinking of traffic, not other kinds of safety as I’ll actually be in a really nice, safe part of the city). That was stressing me out, thinking of trying to somehow get the training miles in so I’d be prepared. 

So instead I’ve signed up for Grandma’s Marathon on June 20 in Duluth MN. This marathon has a great reputation for being very well organized and a whole lot of fun. I did crack up when registering because one of the questions asked if I were a grandma. Apparently the first grandma to cross the finish line gets a prize. Isn’t that hilarious?

I've got two training plans I'm evaluating for my training and ironically, the one I slightly prefer calls for a half marathon race on April 18. So I may end up running the Garmin Half Marathon this year!