This morning I got up early and made a series of unpredictable decisions that ended up with me running through the jungle along with a group of 100 trail runners. Of all types – serious trail runners with running vests and radios and GPS smartwatches, women in hijabs and tennis shoes, a few children, smokers, me the only gringo, in pants and boots, running clubs of 20+ athletes… it was a quite an assortment. And I had no idea when I left at 6am that I would come upon this train run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I woke up early (sometime around 2:30am, I think), forced myself to fall back asleep, then woke up again before 6am and read for a while. Around 6am I got dressed to go walking, and then decided I preferred to do a morning ride to a nearby jungle road that my coworker, James, had shown me. An evening moto ride along this road is his way of relaxing and destressing. And, of loving the country where he’s been placed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So since I only have this moped lent to me for a few more days, I decided to ride the mountain road. I was only three minutes into it when I saw a huge gathering of people at a trailhead I had seen earlier. I blew past it, because I wasn’t prepared to stop, but then did a U turn and parked, intending to watch for a few minutes and learn what was going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A runner named Andi came up and started chatting with me. Asking me questions, telling me about the trail run. He seemed very excited; his English was awesome. He was one of the serious runners – in uniform, with a running vest, water, GPS watch, all the get-up. Bit by bit he enticed me to join – first by walking about 100m into the jungle where the race was beginning. Then he said there was some 2km route that I think everyone was doing together – even the bystanders and watchers. I *thought* he said that the whole route was 20km. But maybe I misunderstood. Anyway, I got 1km into the steep muddy route, and had to cut back because of time. I was worried about not returning in time for church, and Emely being worried. The run organizer showed me a shortcut back, and I was back by 7:30 or so. Plenty of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was fun! I hope to do it again. And understand more of what I’m doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<Later notes> He recorded us walking together and posted it on the running group’s Instagram page. And also a photo of me posing in front of the Fun Hike backdrop with the song American Idiot by Green Day playing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This morning I got up early and made a series of unpredictable decisions that ended up with me running through the jungle along with a group of 100 trail runners. Of all types – serious trail runners with running vests and radios and GPS smartwatches, women in hijabs and tennis shoes, a few children, smokers,… Read More »Morning run<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-hike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":277,"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions\/277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalwanderer.net\/bdlfam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}