running on empty

I can’t really figure out why running is so hard still. Today was such a struggle to push out 5km and yet it was an entirely flat stretch of path along the river. I ate a couple of hours before running so that I would have enough fuel, and I also drank a can of the delightfully named Pocari Sweat so that I would be sufficiently hydrated.

I forgot to bring earphones so couldn’t listen to music, but I never listen to music on the Hash so it doesn’t matter too much. However I never really got into my stride; I seem to be stuck at jogging. Sometimes I would push harder but I could hardly breathe (I do feel like my lungs are weaker here?).

I know that I should either chose to improve speed or distance, and that as I enjoy running longer distances I should stop making myself upset worrying about pace. I hate how running always becomes a numbers game for me (except on the Hash, which is why I love it so very very much). I get fixated on how long, how far, how fast, how often. I want so badly to improve when in fact I can’t improve if I’m not working with what I’ve got. I did try for more of a Fartleks kind of approach at times (run hard as I can to the next bend, jog to the bench etc) but I was winded within metres. How come I can do it on the hash but not here? It’s very intriguing.

Stats (cos numbers are numbers anyway):
Time 32 min
Distance 5.07km
Average pace 6:18min/km

so grand

Zhengda’s music societies obviously got the note yesterday regarding my feelings on zheng practice. Today I was trying to relax in corpse pose at the end of yoga class, and suddenly realised I could hear not only the crazy zheng players next door, but rising up through the floor, a freaking brass band was practicing a rousing tune called “Let’s Drive Rosie Round The Bend!”. Hah. It sounded great as a mash-up with the traditional zheng music.

After yoga and before heading back to the library for a long, wild Friday night of studying (I feel I must get it all out the way before the weekend can start), I went to get some much deserved dinner. For reasons which I’ve yet failed to identify, whenever I do a quick calorie count, I seem to be barely scraping 1500kcal a day, which considering how active I am is really not enough. But it’s just so difficult to find food I want to eat… that isn’t cong zhua bing (fried chive pancake with a fried egg and hot sriracha sauce). I want nice vegetarian food damn it!

However tonight I treated myself to lu wei, which is kind of like pic’n’mix only everything you pick gets plunged into a huge cauldron of black broth, boiled up, and served back to you in a bowl if you’re lucky, or in a plastic bag if you’re not. It’s one of the few foods I like that isn’t deep-fried (which is the main source of the calories I am consuming, but who can resist deep-fried ANYTHING?).

Lu wei stalls look like this, and for a whole year I was terrified-slash-revolted by them.

There’s generally a lot of vaguely identifiable raw meat/seafood/tofu going on without any real hygiene measures in place to prevent flies crawling over them or the cook from coughing over them. But then I was out late with my friend Alecs one night back in 2007 and he purchased a bag full of noodles and… stuff… and pursuaded me to give it a go. It was so delicious that I was able to overlook the generally unappetizing aspect of it, as well as the lack of hygiene (after all, this is Taiwan, I’m kidding myself if I think the hygiene is better in the kitchens I can’t see).

My lu wei tonight had green peppers, green beans, leafy greens, cauliflower, noodles, and the best food in the whole of Asia…

Tofu skin. LOVE IT. I crave it all the time. I could eat a huge plateful of it and come back for seconds. There’s just something about the texture! NOM.

zhengs and dolphins

When I first started yoga at Zhengda, I could barely think straight because of the absolute cacophony in the adjoining room. Whilst we wobble around doing yoga, next door a bunch of foolish students are attempting to master the Zheng. Simultaneously. With less than stellar results.

Imagine a large room full of university students strumming away on these… 

looking like this:

Just kidding. They don’t look like this either, but it might give you a better idea of the atmosphere nonetheless, so let’s pretend that this is the Zhengda Zheng Class:

It sounds like the soundtrack to every Chinese film ever, all played at once. Badly. Next to my FACE.

Ok, I’m getting a little repetitive here, but I really would like to make it clear how noisy and unharmonious the whole deal is. Really not ideal for someone like ME (Hi, my name is Rosie, and I’m addicted to ear-plugs), when doing something like YOGA.

But it turns out you can get used to anything. I hardly noticed the noise today, and was far more interested in seeing how long I could hold THIS (which is I gather related to the Dolphin pose):

(only this lady is leaning forwards too much and has her upper arms at a weird angle, I think they’re supposed to be perpendicular to the floor — plus it’s a tiny picture — but it was the only one I could find which looked like the pose we did)

When we did this pose last week, I could barely lift my forehead off the ground for a second. Today, I held my shoulders up and stared at my fists for the entire countdown. I love it when I can clearly see my progress. I want to be strong! I am fed up with being so weak. I miss my personal trainer (only I don’t miss him as he was a massive bogan) and my guns. Was that really two years ago? Where did time go??

102 Taiwanese kilometres

Yes! tonight’s run brought me to a total of 102km since I started running again on September 11th.

Tonight was only my second proper night-time hash run, as the others have been very much run on the road. Running in the dark, crashing down a steep path where roots and stones were doing their very best to trip me up, I believe I had about 5 different thoughts which alternated over and over. There was very little room for original thought after all as most of my brain was dedicated to keeping my body vaguely vertical.

1 — I wish my torch was brighter. I’m buying a new torch this weekend. In fact I’m buying two, so that if one dies or gets dropped I have a backup. God imagine if I ran out of batteries now? after all…

2 — …after all am I not terrified of the woods at night? Isn’t this kind of Blair Witch Projecty? Why am I not scared? I grew up so afraid of the nasty things that hide out in the woods and yet here I am, by myself, lit only by the increasingly feeble light of my torch, and the only thing I’m afraid of is losing time…

3 — …I can’t believe how much time I wasted on that check point! I must have dithered for at least 2 minutes, bellowing “ARE YOU” into the void with zero response, why didn’t I see the arrow? I should have just kept running! and right at the beginning of the run, why did I take that road off to the side with Lina? I should have just kept going straight ahead!…

4 — …OHMIGOD I ALMOST FELL OVER THERE GOT TO BE MORE CAREFUL THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN NASTY HOLYFUCK WHERE DID THE PATH GO…

5 — …you don’t have to be crazy to run hash, but why else would you do it?

Those five thoughts, or variations thereof, repeated over and over in no particular order, and then suddenly I was going through a deserted slippery temple, and then I was running over the Xindian bridge, weaving in and out of the crowd (which felt like being in a Jackie Chan movie, to be honest, as I dodged the Taiwanese who seemed to be even more determined than usual to stand in my way) and then the run was over. And I was first girl in, which gave me pleasure despite knowing full well that it was only because Gail was the Hare and Susan got lost. Still. First is first!

like a dog

There are lots of dogs that hang out on campus at Zhengda. They are a scruffy bunch of mostly yellow-haired mongrels, and they tend to congregate on the steps in front of the library, where they can soak up the sun. One of my favourite sights is that of a particularly smiley dog which tends to lay on its back with its paws drawn up, looking so adorable one wonders how he ever came to be homeless.

This evening it was dark and wet and the dogs were nowhere to be seen — except for this puppy. He stood just in front of the doors of the library, nose keenly pointing and eyes attentively watching the bright, dry lobby. I couldn’t resist him and had to give him a quick pat and touch his wet nose as I walked by…

He obviously knows better than to try and go inside any of the campus buildings. There are signs everywhere saying that stray dogs will be expelled but it seems they are tolerated as long as they know their place. There are also signs saying not to feed the dogs, cats or pigeons (which reminds me, there is an adorable ginger cat who I see at school most mornings, the kind with a really wide nose which gives him a bit of a "dude!" look — must take a picture of him one day!). It was in fact right below one of those signs that I stood one night, in the company of a couple of Taiwanese students, as we watched a yellow dog wearing a tatty bandana climb onto a bench, reach into the bin with one paw, pull out a discarded bento lunch, and rip the cardboard open before gulping down the leftover food. Watching a dog help itself to food is different from feeding a dog, right?

I am lei xiang gou yi yang (累像狗一樣 ﹣ tired as a dog) after a long day of studying, karaoke class, class-class, study, study, study, pompous email from James, study, yoga and then studying again until 11pm — I have discovered the 24 hour reading room and my student life will never be the same.

I am really getting quite fond of the Tuesday yoga teacher (the one who I loathed so much originally). In fact even outside of class, I think I am getting better at taking a breath and opening my mind to accepting people despite my initial prejudices… progress indeed.

c’est quand le bonheur

It’s right now, apparently. I had a fantastic weekend and even though today’s China Hash run was exhausting, I had a ball. It’s funny how you think you can’t move another metre — can’t take another step — but still you grind up to the top of this hill, and down it, and up the next…

This pic was taken at departure, but trust me, I looked just as happy when I arrived at the end of the trail (with a redder face, of course). I probably didn’t look quite this thrilled when faced with YET ANOTHER CLIMB but all that is behind us now. I wish my time in Taiwan would never end!

There were some incredible views on this run (there always are, but for once, I have actually got some snapshots to show), so here are few more pictures, as after all it’s not ALL about me and my cheesy grin:

Yes, that is Taipei 101 in the background. You don’t really grasp how tall it is in the City, because it’s just there hovering around you, but a lot of the runs take us outside Taipei and it’s always impressive to see the once-tallest tower in the world dominate the horizon.

I should probably clarify that Taiwanese houses don’t look this nice and orderly. This is a graveyard, with a huge, Inca-style staircase out there (which some brave souls ran up in their quest to find the trail). The graveyards often command the most spectacular views and agreeable environment. I have never seen a Taiwanese neighbourhood that looked like anything less than a shantytown — not to say that they don’t exist, but the homes of the living that I have seen are no where near as nice as the homes of the dead.

Ok well the other pictures are refusing to show up on Photobucket, so you will just have to take my word for it.

the curse of being a redhead

My poor red head after running! This is the face which causes so much concern amongst the Taiwanese as I pass them (with a classically painted Taiwan Power Station behind me):

I had planned to run track this morning and follow up with a swim, but in the end I went with a 5km run by the river in order to see how long it would actually take me. I was hoping to be a bit faster than I was, but in the end decided that I would take these figures as my “baseline” and work on improving them gradually. I know that I can do 5min/km as I have in the past, so that is my aim for the next few weeks.

So here are my stats:

Distance: 5.02km
Time: 30:49
Average Pace: 6:09min/km
Splits: (picture because it’s easier than typing)

The first kilometre is allowed to be a bit slow as I was warming up, but I was busting my arse between 2.5km and 3.5km, and ran a 5min/km before exhausting myself and reverting back to a very slow pace for the rest of the run. I think I’m ok with that, I will try and extend the “sprint” time gradually until there are fewer and fewer slow kilometres at the end.

sweaty mcsweatpants

At yoga tonight I was sweating rivers and torrents of sweat (yus, gross, but also fun). Occasionally I would feel huge great pearls go rushing down my back and arms and wonder if it was in fact a small gerbil crawling about on me. But I was hardly shaking at all. And (God you’re pathetic Rosie) not only did the teacher say “very good!” to me THREE TIMES (and I didn’t notice her saying anything to anyone else) she then came to speak to me at the end of the class to say that I had progressed since the last time (which was 2 weeks ago) and that I had very good form today.

Please excuse me whilst I pee myself with joy — not that it will be noticeable as I am already soaked in sweat anyway — because we all know that I live and thrive for one thing only: praise from my teachers. The other day in class we had to discuss whose approval we sought the most, and whilst everyone else mentioned their parents, I had to admit that my mother’s approval is unconditional and my father’s approval is inobtainable, but what really gets me going is my teacher’s smile… Laaaaaame. Ah well, that’s just the way I am.

I then sweated a whole lot more as I struggled to walk home with heavy books, backpack full of too many clothes, yoga mat and bags of bananas, bread and CARROTS, and now I’m hoping to peel myself off the couch and get some grating action on with Karine’s grater… Although my dinner of papaya, guava, apple, pear and cherry tomatoes (which is a fruit here) seems to have filled me up nicely already.

I have these really vague plans to go to uni on Saturday and run track for a couple of kilometres followed by a swim, but now that I have mentioned it on here it probably won’t happen. Still, I’m interested to see how fast I can be on the track, as Rebecca has suggested an all-girl team for a relay marathon (5km each) and seems to think that sub-5-minute kilometres are achievable (actually she mentioned 4-minute kms but I really can’t see that happening). This sounds outrageous to me, but I guess I won’t know unless I try!

long long day

So after accidentally getting up an hour too early (ie. 6am instead of 7am), I made the 1-hour bus trip to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs only to be told that I was correct and my school was wrong. It’s one of those things you can’t really run the risk of screwing up, but it wasted my morning and cost me NT$60 in bus fares for nothing… I will be going back there next week as per my original plan. Sigh.

After school and before my run, I went home and discovered a present in the mail! The lovely Karine has sent me the cutest, funkiest grater ever and I cannot wait to attack some carrots with it! Thanks so so much Karine for your generous gift. I think I will have to keep it forever, it’s really so cute! Check it out!

Deranged Ginger Armed with Grater: Be Very Afraid

My run was the basic Tucheng up-a-steep-steep-mountain-and-back — it's sort of a training run as we do it every couple of weeks (so there is no cryptic trail to follow) and it's quite hard work. It's also the very same first run I ever did with the Hash and I was reasonably impressed at how much faster and fitter I was, in that I could chat the whole time we ran with Rebecca and that I could actually run up the first half of that insanely steep path. Then it gets practically vertical, and I was so puffed there was no way I keep it up. But then again, that is what I said the first time I ran it about the entire hill, and yet today, I did so much better! I couldn’t say a word the whole time I ran the first time at Tucheng, as I had a stitch and was severely out of breath.

If that last paragraph doesn't make much sense then please forgive me. I am very tired… but happy.

Oh and I got my midterms results back. I was frustrated to see that although I scored 89 on the written and 88 on the oral, most of the mistakes I had made on the written exam were due to my usual sloppy handwriting. I tend to scribble my characters and drop strokes here and there — it's a bad habit of mine and I should be making a conscious effort to slow down and write more clearly. Truth be told, I like to pretend my characters are similar to grass script, which I have been in love with ever since I first discovered it, 9 years ago in my introduction to Classical Chinese classs… however my “script” probably looks more like it was written by a 5-year-old holding a pen between his toes.

fingers and toes crossed

I’m hoping that I’m right and they’re wrong, but according to my school I had to convert my landing visa to a tourist visa AT LEAST A MONTH BEFORE IT EXPIRES and it’s already 2 days past that deadline (for what it’s worth, we are debating the meaning of “should apply for an extension within 30 days prior to the expiration of their current 90-day landing visa” — I take that to mean I have to apply within those 30 days, but I guess the school knows best, right?). So tomorrow morning I have to slog over to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and pray that whichever bureaucrat takes me on will be so kind as to close their eyes to the fact that I am (supposedly!) late, and please please let me convert my visa.

This was annoying information to get, to say the least, especially as I normally do the bulk of my studying in the mornings. So this evening I had to cram ALL my study into the evening as well as yoga. I almost didn’t go to yoga, but I was struggling to concentrate on my work, and decided I might as well go. I’m glad I did, as even though it was a KILLER session with the sadistic teacher, after the class I sat down and pounded out all the homework I needed to finish, just in time to get kicked out at 10pm.

Ok now I just have to recycle a passport picture from a superfluous ID card and pray they accept it tomorrow morning. Please, ye gods of Taiwan. I love my life here too much and really want to stay (without it costing me any extra money)!