Category: Beautiful

Soapbox Alert

9/1/2014

An awesome run was had this morning, but I'll get to that shortly.

First, I have something that's been on my mind and bothering me since the other day, so I thought I would share it here to vent/rant/get it out of my system. I overheard somebody saying this to someone else the other day: "Women are just for f*&king. Oh and making some food, making your babies. They can be beautiful sure, but they are not intelligent like men." He was quite serious too. 'WTF?!' I hear you cry. Yes, that's right, there really are people out there who think like this! Firstly I was shocked and outraged, not only on behalf of women, but on behalf of men, and well, all decent human beings, who may be similarly offended having heard something so disgustingly ignorant and wrong. But since then, I have started to feel sorry and sad for this particular dude, with his clearly messed up, backwards view of the world. Then again, there must be plenty of others who may echo his particular sentiment? Be it that we have a host of stupid (mostly male), power-hungry, psychopaths running the world?? It almost makes me want to pack up and move HERE, to this utopian sounding (albeit for the lack of decent, intelligent men there, as per the article) society in a small town in Brazil: http://www.dailyedge.ie/noiva-do-cordeiro-women-1643505-Aug2014/ . It also makes me SO glad and thankful that Husband (and all my other beloved male friends and family out there) are intelligent and beautiful people who would never hold such a strange view of women and the world, but the fact that there are people out there who genuinely still think this way is quite disturbing.

What are your thoughts?? Do you know men who think like this? To the male readers out there, what would you say if someone came out with such a statement? I am genuinely curious.

Aaannddd on with the running business: This morning's run was a coolish, refreshing, slightly drizzly 12kms run through the beautiful riverside, flower-filled park, one of my favourite new routes. It had been raining for most of the night but stopped for long enough this morning for me to get my run in. Yessss! Great way to start the day, and my legs felt really fresh and good. There might just be something in this cross-training malarkey, haha...

Now it's off to work I go, teaching two classes this morning and who knows what's on for this arvo. Have a wonderful day everyone!

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Cycle Tour of Tongliao

8/29/2014

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Oops, no blog post yesterday as I was tied up spending the day cycling around this beautiful, new (for us) city: exploring in the sunshine. No photos were taken yesterday, and apparently this is a 'blogger fail' hey. Oh well, here's a couple from a couple of weeks ago, doing kind of the same thing anyway:

Do you like our shiny new bikes?? We do, but they are somewhat painful on the arse after many hours of peddling around town. But, despite that, it was a successful day: we found copious motorbike shops (we're going to get an e-bike next week we think. So, cue LOTS more exploring further afield), a swimming pool, coffee shops, restaurants, a big market, food streets, and wide, wide open roads.

Today's run was a 12km ish run mostly through newly tarmacked woodland riverside parks nearby: the only vehicles around (once I got into the woodland area and off the main drag) were a couple of trucks and motorbikes from the construction team who are still working on these parks. My legs felt great and fresh having had a couple of days with no running and by replacing run-days with cycling and cross-training. Win.

On for my weekend is probably: some more exploring, writing, reading and maybe some more cycling. Kind of loving the cycling now I've got wheels again. What's on for yours??

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Time for Tongliao

8/25/2014

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We've been in our new 'hometown' for a little over two weeks now, so I thought I'd finally share some pictures and thoughts on my new town and local running route.

Everyone is very friendly and welcoming in this little city, and there are even lots of other foreigners to chat with, courtesy of there being lots of medical students from Pakistan and a few African countries here, as well as a few other English teachers too. Kind of refreshing, although I am still keen to improve my very sketchy Chinese while I'm here, oh yeah, and pick up a reasonable amount of Mongolian too.

One of the best things about Tongliao so far (other than the wonderful people, and amazing food), has been the BLUE sky. Sooo blue that some days we feel like we're back in Australia, and it seems to be a regular thing too, not just a freak occurrence. We've been having beautiful days of bright blue skies and hot, hot sunshine. Kind of hard to imagine it getting down to the -25 to -35 that other residents say its gets to in the not too distant future (they reckon it starts to get cold in October! Eek...). So, I've been enjoying some runs through this new city (love exploring a new place by running through it), and I've found beautiful riverside parks, boardwalk walkways over sections of river, and wide, long freshly tarmacked roads through newly created riverside woodland where there are no cars, bikes and foot only. It's actually reminded me of my time in Perth and Mandurah, Western Australia, due to the sandy riverside walkways and paths and beautiful views across the water.

Check it out, I actually took my camera on a run for a change and tried to snap along the way of all the beautiful sights I see. Thought I better record it posterity now before the weather changes and all the flowers are gone. Here are a few:

No, your eyes did not deceive you - there are two riverside beaches in this park too! Lots of people paddling in the water on Sunday arvo when I was there, but not sure if people full on swim there.

This usual route is a 12km run, and it is shared with many other runners, cyclists, basketball player, tennis players, football players, fishermen, and walkers, although I've just realised no one else is in these pictures (this was at about half 6 am when I usually go about half 5 am, so think I missed the peak/rush hour on this particular day). This is one active town and I like it.

In other news, we started teaching yesterday, and it seems I haven't forgotten how to do it. Phew... It had been a while.

Does it get very cold in the winter where you are? (This will be a whole new level of cold for both of us.)

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Inner Mongolia (AKA 'the money shots')

8/24/2014

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There is one word to sum up my runs through Inner Mongolia (nei menggu): 'nature'. Probably my favourite runs of the whole trip, and an oft used mantra from my 50km trail race in the mountains courtesy of Husband/coach came back to me: 'one with nature'.

I had plenty of company on some of these runs, including cows, sheep, birds, hares, WILD HORSES (yeah, just try getting that song out of your head now. Yep, you're welcome!), and a puppy, to name a few. No human was encountered on any of my runs however (bar a couple of cowboys on motorbikes speeding off to herd his cows in the distance), and I truly felt 'one with nature', as per the mantra.

SO beautiful, and so peaceful.

The first run was during our stay in a farmer's traditional yurt / ger (a monglian tent). I'd asked one of the guys there, where was good to go for a run. To which he spread out his arms, indicating the vast choice of open running routes, i.e. the grasslands, d'oh... So, off I went bright and early the next morning about half 5 (although could have been even earlier - felt like it was light from about 3 in the morning out there!). I couldn't see where I was placing my feet on each step and sort of had to run with high knees, due to all the long grass. There was thousands of rocks and roots too, was actually pretty treacherously going, and I was worried about putting my foot down awkwardly and twisting my ankle. However, all was good, and I made it back to the campsite unscathed. Later that day, another of the guys there showed me some pictures of him holding up a fairly huge snake that is common to the land all around us. I asked was it poisonous/venomous to which he'd said of course. Hmmm, lucky I didn't know about that before my run!

The next three runs also took place in the grasslands of Xilingol, but further along, and from our own campsite (i.e. just the caravan and us) at the edge of a lake. We stayed here for four nights total, and it was the most peaceful tranquil place to camp. The farmers who owned the land would come and say hello on their motorbikes before they set off for some cow herding, but apart from that it was just Husband, puppy, myself, and bliss.

The runs I had from here were far less daunting and I had a sandy motorbike track to follow for most of the way, until the road opened up to a gravelly road, which later joined on to a 'proper' (although still small) road. Yep, we were 'out there' and felt respectably off the beaten track. It was exactly 4kms to reach the road, and once on the side of the road (still the grasslands, which covers a HUGE area) you could run left or right to various yurt campsites and streams. My 'usual' run out here was a gentle 11kms run across grass, sand, gravel, and swampy muddy land. The first one was an early one and I kid you not, I ran up to a group of wild horses (what's the proper name for a group of horses?? Do you know?) who swiftly galloped away upon seeing me. Two days later, I ran up to the same group of horses, who this time, did not move. I slowed to a walk and looked at them, trying to tell them 'hey, hello there, it's ok, I'm a friend!' What looked like the main dude, a fairly large white stallion with a long white main and tail walked directly towards me. Shit! Were horses aggressive? Or did he remember me from the other day and had come to check me out? Or, was he hungry and used to humans feeding them perhaps? He got really close (about a metre or so) and we just looked at each other for a while. I then started to carry on walking, and had to walk through the group (as they were all over the path) who seemed to be curious and calm this time, each one moving slightly and looking at me, but not running off like before. So beautiful and amazing to see up close, and I'm not a particularly 'horsy' girl.

We took so many photos of the grasslands, it was hard to choose which to upload here; have a look at the serenity and beautiful countryside that is 'nei menggu':

Ok folks, what is the correct name for a group of horses?? (I.e. a gaggle of geese, a flock of birds, etc...) First one to answer correctly wins a virtual prize. :)

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Shanxi (one a) Shizzle

8/22/2014

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We continued on from Shaanxi province into its neighbouring Shanxi province (yes, a little confusing there) and headed to the only fully intact ancient walled city in China: Pingyao, of course, with Whitney singing out mercilessly and repetitively.

"I'm saving all my love, yes I'm saving all my love, I'm saving all my love for you!"

Pingyao was an awesome place to visit, and I'd love to go back someday. It was a very friendly, very felaxed, very beautiful little city, and reminded me of the awesomeness that is Bali, so you know it's gotta be good. My run (about a whole week after the Hua Shan visit due to just how smashed my legs were after all those steps) through Pingyao involved running out into the beautiful, but dusty, countryside for a few kilometres before running completely around the outside walls of the city, in the beautiful first light of the day and vast orange orb of sun.

"I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows! If I fail, if I succeed, at least I'll have my dig-ni-ty!"

Here are a few shots from beautiful Pingyao (which I've renamed 'Ping-WOW!' as it's such a cool place to visit) to give you an idea. You can't tell in the photos how dusty/muddy things were though, but you get that I suppose with a walled city where mud is a major component of its construction. Didn't seem to bother the relaxed and happy local residents though.

"and IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII e IIIII, will always love youuuuuuuuuuu!"

We also visited the amazing Yungang Caves up near Datong at the very top of the province. AMAZING huge, intricately carved and patterned Buddha sculptures set into a rock wall. No running took place here, just some slow shuffling between each fantastic cave with massive gaping looks of awe plastered on our surprised faces. Unfortunately they didn't let us take photos of the really, absolutely, out of this world, amazeballs caves and statues, however here are a few of the ones we could capture:

"Bittersweet memories, that is all I'm taking with me!"

Aaaannnd, that's it for Shanxi province. Next up will be our final province, the very large, very beautiful Inner Mongolia, where I managed to get 5 awesome runs in. More on that in the next post.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone! I'll leave you with this, courtesy of my recent Whitney education/indoctrination:

"Learning to love yourself, is the greatest, looovve, of all!"
,

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Phew... Where to begin?!?

8/18/2014

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Well hello there! We're back from our long trip around China. We arrived at the uni (our new home) just over a week ago, however, getting the internet (amongst a few other things in the apartment) has been slow going and we only just connected today. But now, I'm ba-ack!! And I've had a BLAST. There have been many 'ups' on our trip of course, but also a fair few stressful times, and 'downs', mainly due to one of our drivers, but more on that later perhaps... Basically: we made it! And saw some amazing sights, ate some sooo fricken tasty food, and met some wonderful people.

I ran less than usual, as I knew I would, but I still managed to get a couple of runs in in each province (and even managed FOUR in the last week, all in beautiful Inner Mongolia, our new province for the next year).

I thought, for the purpose of this primarily being a running blog and whatnot, that I'd try to focus on mainly the running aspect of my trip (for the rest, you'll have to buy our forthcoming travel book haha - we are going to write a book about our adventure! Lol, watch this space). So, I will write about a different province's running environment and my experience on each day's blog post, starting with today's tale of, dum-de-de-dum, drum roll please.....: Anhui province.

Anhui was our first province after leaving our home-province of two years, Zhejiang. There is truly only one word for Anhui province (or the parts we saw anyway) - fecund. Everywhere was so beautiful, lush, green, and there were abundant veggie patches everywhere. I had two runs through Anhui province: the first through a quaint and beautiful mountainside village near the very famous Huangshan, which was slightly undulating owing to the mountain nearby. The second was a flat run but at the foot of another famous mountain, Jiuhuashan, with the most beautiful backdrop of jagged peaks of said mountain and similarly lush, fecund fields of veggies and rice paddies too. This second location reminded me a lot of running through the Balinese countryside. Gorgeous.

I have no photos of the actual running routes but here are a few shots from Anhui province anyway. Your imagination can fill in the rest. Picture running past gorgeous green, verdant, lush fields and mountains, fresh water streams, with a fair few traditional village houses and the odd ye olde bridge or two chucked in for good measure.

Short and sweet for my return then! Still have much to sort out here in the new apartment and things on campus. So, tune back in tomorrow for Henan Province's instalment.

I hope you've all had a wonderful month and I'll now be able to catch up with everything I've missed since being offline (pretty much, got on our personal emails and fb a few times when we had wifi in places, but it was sketchy to say the least - kind of nice not having the computer though, I must say!).

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A Goldilocks Kind of Run

4/14/2014

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After a somewhat (unexpected) busy Monday (we only have one lesson but a lot of the day entailed marking and putting smiley faces and ticks on some stories we've asked the students to write, as part of a short story competition), Husband and I got out in the beautiful sunshine and blue sky (no, I'm not kidding) and took Puppy for a walk, on a newish route that cuts off the shop where the non-incident took place (in her head). As soon as we got closer to my usual running route, I said my adieus and set off, Garminless and fancy-free. It was a beautiful afternoon, and perfect weather for a run! Not too hot, and not too cold but just right, (so, a Goldilocks kind of run? Sounds better than a porridge run hey),with an occasional light breeze chucked in for good measure. Awesome stuff. I ran one of my usual routes which takes me approximately 10kms through some parks, along some busy roads (unavoidable though) and then down along the riverside for a beautiful loop over one of the many bridges and then more riverside action, before heading back along the busy roads to the parks and then home.

As I was running today, a guy on a bike (with a helmet and everything! Not something you often see here hey) asked me if I was a runner and if I run marathons? (In Chinese, and a little English). My Chinese running speech has finally come in very handy! Haha. Had a brief conversation (In Chinese mainly, some English too though) about running and compared races we had been in here in China, and apparently there was one about 400kms away yesterday, d'oh! Missed it. But hey, maybe I have found a running buddy (or running group? As he showed me pics of him and a running friend at the race) in this city, just before we leave, oh well... I have not often run with other people, am very mush a solo runner, but when I have gone running with other people, it's been great, and I've loved it. Maybe it's the worrying beforehand, re: talking while running, having different paces, potentially annoying the other runner etc, that puts me off running with people, rather than the actual main event, which has always been awesome. However, I wasn't expecting to find a running buddy or group in our little city here in China, so watch this space! Maybe if I run with someone else here in China my Chinese will drastically improve too?

Do you prefer running alone or with another person, or do you run with a group at all?

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Feeling Hot Hot Hot

4/10/2014

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As the famous Nelly (I think) once sang: “It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes”, was the next line “and then put on your running gear and go for a run in the hot, sweaty afternoon”? It should be I reckon. For that was the tune of my afternoon after a difficult-ish day at work (Thursday kids are hard work!). I had a 10km easy/recovery pace run scheduled but my morning did not seem to start early enough to get that in before work, so I postponed it to later in the day. Note to self: stop postponing scheduled training runs. It is getting too hot to do this much longer!

Had to do it though. It served a dual purpose of a supermarket trip to get some much needed delicious wine (how eerily right my picture from the day before was), so, felt pretty good, you know, two birds one stone etc…

Now this morning, the birds and chirping and a large, orange orb is gently rising on my horizon – a beautiful morning for a run, and I won’t be missing it today. Shortly will be out on an easy 8km run by the riverside, before I begin my last workday of the week, yew!

Can’t believe how quickly these weeks are going, but that’s more than ok with me. As I’m now one week closer to going back to the Lucky Country, to seeing family and friends, and to running the Gold Coast half too. Here’s a quick pic to whet your appetite for this race to come (July 6th), yep, soon I’ll be here (coincidentally, this is exactly where our new apartment is! Can't wait.):

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Back to Track

3/24/2014

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Ahh, speedwork. I love it and I hate it. (Hate it when I’m in the middle of it and pushing myself so much that am well and truly out of puff and feeling a bit sick at times / Love it when it’s over and I feel amazing and badass at having done it and showing myself that yes, I can do that.)

This morning’s training saw me back at the track doing this: 1.6km warm-up, then SIX times: 1.6km at VO2Max pace with 3 mins rest, then finish with another 1.6km cool-down. According to a pace calculator (where you plug in the time you are aiming for and the length of the race), my VO2Max pace should be between 3:46 – 3:56. This was tough hey, not going to lie. So, most of the time (according to Garmin) my pace crept back up to about 4:05 and sometimes 4:10 (even though it felt like I was running at the same speed). Garmin told me at the end that my fastest km took 3:55, so I guess I kept it pretty close to the target pace. It was tough but I feel AWESOME now. J

Yesterday’s run was a nice 10 km (I think – Garmin reckons it is 10, but mapmyrun.com had it at almost 12km?! wtf??) run on a usual route down by the river. Spring has definitely sprung and the beautiful pink, purple, and white flowers adorning trees all around town = a beautiful, early morning run.

So, we’ve got the usual four lessons today, but quite frankly, I kind of just feel like staying in our flat and organizing and having a massive spring-clean instead. Better snap out of it, as Tuesdays are great lesson-wise and student-wise.

Husband is busy studying and preparing for his Chinese driving test (theory) tomorrow. Wish him luck! He will ace it I’m sure. The only trouble being that most of the questions do not make any sense (very bad translations) and some are completely wrong but you have to put the answer that they say IS correct (even when it’s clearly not). Hey-ho. Positive thoughts he will pass first time, and then we can get one of these babies to tour around China in and to drive up to Inner Mongolia with our puppy:

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PB, pumpkin pie, and chilled sav blanc

12/1/2013

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Well, am back from Shanghai now, tired and stiff, but extremely happy. It's been a weekend of firsts hey: first time I have run a half at the time I got (which I think was 1 hour and 32 minutes but the official results are not out yet, and you know me, watchless and running fancy-free), first taste of pumpkin pie at an American restaurant yesterday, and first well deserved chilled sav blanc after 32 days of booze-free tee-totalism (in preparation for the race).

So, let's start with the race, as that was the reason behind our trip to groovy Shanghai, and yes, two of my three readers (hello you two!) have said that you are looking forward to the race recap! So I hope you haven't forgotten me - we had very poor internet connection where we were staying, hence my disappearance from here for a few days. Well, it started off pretty much how I'd thought and remembered from last year's race. However with the awesome added bonus of NO rain! Result. Thousands of other runners packed in and queue-jumping to get as close as possible to the starting line actually made it not quite so freezing cold, and they had a warm-up/aerobic session too, which was fun to watch, although I didn't participate with the aim of conserving my energy for the race:

The first 10 or so kilometres were spent dodging thrown away plastic ponchos that were strewn around and trying pass as many people while not tripping up. I was at the 10km mark at 45 minutes. Something went a little wrong around 14km, when for some reason I thought I was at 18km (must have zoned out completely) and I started to pick up the pace a lot (i.e. ran too fast too early). Not sure if this affected my overall result as the end couple of kms were amazingly hard and painful, and the phrase 'running my guts out' kept circulating hey. Kept telling myself the following: "C'mon, what have you been training for?!", "just 2 little kilometres more then you can stop, keep going", and "we can do these hard things!". I saw Husband at the finish line and attempted a wave, which is why I look a little bit strange here:

Almost vomited when I stopped, but luckily managed not to. And, D'OH! Didn't even look at the clock when I passed the finish line, so confident was I that it'd be just like last year where as soon as you hand your timing chip back in they print off your certificate there and then, showing your chip time and overall race time (last year's was two minutes difference, I guess from where you're stumbling/half running/half walking just to get started and over the line). But, I THINK (and Husband thinks too) it was one hour and 32 minutes! Woohoo! PB for me - a whole 12 minutes faster than last year! Initially was actually a bit disheartened and had this thought: "How the f*&k do people run faster/get faster - ran my guts out and still didn't get under an hour and a half". Pretty stupid yeah? Seeing as I've ran the fastest that I've ever ran, so beat myself hey. Last year I got a prize for coming in at 42nd place, however this year, have no idea of my position yet (I keep checking the website in hope the results are up yet), and no prize, boo, haha... We think they may have spent the money this year on extra security instead, as that was pretty full on pre-race, with these fellas blocking the way and stopping you from getting to certain parts of the Bund (by the river in Shanghai):

So, once I'd warmed back up (and perked back up realising that I've achieved my goal of running faster than last year, and of getting a brand spanking new PB), we got ready and headed out to have some fun (i.e. food and drink) in Shanghai. We ended up eating in an American restaurant where we ate the biggest quesadilla/wrap ever (HUGE - ordered one and shared it and it was still a sh*&tload of food!), called 'the fat bitch' - what an awesome idea: it looked like it was a pizza base, covered in chips, chicken, beans, cheese and salad and then rolled up to be a huge wrap/roll/quesadilla thing. We shared a bottle of chilled sauvignon blanc, which was beautiful, and then ordered our first ever taste of pumpkin pie too. This was also soooo tasty. Not usually one for food/drink pictures, but here you go (minus a pic of the 'fat bitch', we were too busy stuffing it into our faces):

All in all, a GREAT weekend! The air was a bit of a downer, as it was pretty polluted (lungs and chest felt very strange immediately afterward the race), but that's what you get when you run in China I guess. Here is me, mercilessly flaunting my medal and race bib, just coz I can: