I finally got off my ass and did a 5k run every day this week

After talking about it for a long time I finally decided to do something about the fact that I discovered I once again weight more than 100kg after going to the veterinarian (for my dog) and while I was waiting I asked if I could step on the scale. The max weight the thing could measure was 100kg and I sadly just got an "error" message when I stepped on it. That was kind of a serious wake up call.

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I've been bigger ever since I started casually lifting weights about 20 years ago. It's really too hot over here to do much other than go to a place with good ventilation or even better air conditioning and lift. I guess I kind of let things slip away from me though because weight gain doesn't happen overnight and I don't own a scale so I didn't really even see it coming. I've weighed this much before in the past and it happened to me for kind of the same reasons. I partied too much and exercised too little. Now I hope to be able to turn this curse around a second time.

My first run was rather pathetic and this was to be expected. I haven't run anywhere in many moons and I wasn't expecting excellence at all. I did a lot of walking during this run and had a bottle of water and a towel parked at the entrance of my condo on one of the corners. It was also painfully hot.

The next run was a little bit better and I tried to increase my pace but always still make it to 5km and preferably about 40 minutes of moving time. I'm just trying to get out there and do SOMETHING.

The 3rd run was a bit strange because even though I am in exactly the same place as the other runs, Strava decided that this was a "trail run" which if you could see all the parked cars and pavement, it definitely is not a trail.

Getting down to 6:19 per km made me happy but a lot of the time I feel as though it is GPS errors and the fact that my phone, which i refuse to upgrade, is 5 years old and wasn't a very good phone when I bought it. I've just never understood why anyone would spend 1000 dollars on a phone or toss out one that does all the things you need it to.

This last one is kind of weird because I was seriously hungover for this but I made a promise at the start of the week that I would run at least a mile every single day no matter what! Well, I stuck with my promise even though I really dreaded going out the door of my AC condo into the blistering heat of outside. The path got shortened on each "lap" because the buildings keep you in the shade for the most part. Don't get the wrong idea, it is still painfully hot but at least I am not going to get sunburned.

One thing I have noticed in this past week is something that I felt years ago when I decided to get healthier and lose some weight: The hardest part of the runs is leaving your apartment. Once I get moving it is painful, but a body in motion is much easier to keep in motion than it is for me to just get off the sofa. I return from all of these runs looking like I jumped in a pool and probably severely dehydrated. I normally spend the next hour or so sitting in the air con and drinking a ton of water and I guess this is good for me.

I haven't noticed any changes in my body but it's only been a week. It took me 2 years to put this weight on and I have come to the conclusion that Da Nang is not a great place for someone that likes to drink and eat as much as I do. It's just to accessible. Seriously, there are 24 hour pubs EVERYWHERE and while I realize that ultimately it is up to me to not participate in these things, I get my arm twisted pretty easily.

Let's hope that I can keep this tradition alive into the future. I really don't want to be a fat-ass foreigner like so many other people that are in the expat community.