The Not So Boring Treadmill Running

With my lower legs rested for 10 days, and in between icing and massages, I'm back to running! I'm may not be particularly happy having to rest in the middle of my training for Camsur Marathon but injuries a year ago made me wiser not to be bull headed again when it comes to needed rest. Too much love for trail and hill running had injured my left calf which never healed because I never stop running and compensating for the pain by changing my running stance just led to more problems in the form of shin splints. Today for the 2nd day, I'm running pain free. Not on road, but on a treadmill.


Warning: Don't follow him, its the wrong way to run on the treadmill.

I haven't run in the treadmill for a long time. Its boring even when the TV is on. Its boring even when the girls do the aerobic dance in front of you. Tic tac, tic tac, the time goes and you go ballistic with boredom that you want to stop anytime. The longest I have run so far on a treadmill is 10K. Try beating my PR, its not easy.

But today as like yesterday, I have to embraced it, like it. Two words: NO CHOICE! Its part of my rehabilitation. I'm not taking chances this time in my training. I have to strategized like an engineer that I am. My plan: Run on treadmills on base runs of 5-9 kilometers on weekdays and run on the road for the long runs which is staring at me like an August monster. The long runs how dreadful many would like to think it is is not so. Its enjoyable. Fatigue might set in but its part of the deal.

But the treadmill, Oh this one boring machine test your mental strength which is good because running a marathon is more mental than physical. I have to admire people who run the whole 42k on it. I believe they could run any marathon there is in the list. Then it gets you to run on even pacing which gives me the needed consistency in my run and which you don't get on the road with all the potholes. One of the best things about it is its all weather, which is a heaven when the rains fall too hard or when you are pressed for time to hit the road. Right now it suits me well. I have difficulty running early mornings due to newborn care duties and can't run at night either because of it. Lastly, its forgiving on the knees and goes well with rehab when you want to have an injury in check like me.

There are cons too. You Pay. Either you enroll your way in the gym or for the affluent one, buy one. Either way it hurts your wallet. Another is that you don't get the specificity of the run you want. It doesn't have wind resistance, which you have to adjust on road and lastly its BORING. Nothing still beats running outside. That is why I have to have that long runs on the road.

Tomorrow I'm running again on them and in the next coming month. I hope I can get off that hump and say I love treadmills. It might take a while.

Here's an interesting story you might want to hear. Can you imagine a series of photo negatives to be worth like a Picasso? Only few photographers would be near that, one of which and is certainly an uncontested right belongs to Ansel Adams, the father of American photography, probably of the globe's pre modern era photography.

Experts: Ansel Adams photos found at garage sale worth $200 million



Here's the full link. www.edition.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/07/27/ansel.adams.discovery/index


Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Rick Norsigian's hobby of picking through piles of unwanted items at garage sales in search of antiques has paid off for the Fresno, California, painter.

Two small boxes he bought 10 years ago for $45 -- negotiated down from $70 -- is now estimated to be worth at least $200 million dollars, according to a Beverly Hills art appraiser.

Those boxes contained 65 glass negatives created by famed nature photographer Ansel Adams in the early period of his career. Experts believed the negatives were destroyed in a 1937 darkroom fire that destroyed 5,000 plates.

"It truly is a missing link of Ansel Adams and history and his career," said David W. Streets, the appraiser and art dealer who is hosting an unveiling of the photographs at his Beverly Hills, California, gallery Tuesday.

The photographs apparently were taken between 1919 and the early 1930s, well before Adams -- who is known as the father of American photography -- became nationally recognized in the 1940s, Streets said.

Now, when will my photographs sell like Ansel's? He must be laughing right now.

See You!
Camsur Marathon 2010
September 26, 2010
Naga City, Camarines Sur

Three Marathons and a Baby

I must be crazy for doing this one. I am currently drowning in drowsiness from the lack of sleep, and the need to hit the sack seems to be more and more urgent affair than following my training schedule for a marathon. My second child just got home last week from the hospital, a rather easy birthing than I've previously anticipated. If it was a race, it should have been up there as a PR! Now I'm hitting the wall and it has just started.

Rewind back 6 months ago, I've finish my first marathon in Cebu while my wife was still carrying my 2nd child. It was a tremendous effort for the team to achieve a goal. My adrenalin after the race must have been cranked up and stoked up that despite several injuries, I manage to pull it off that I've decided to embark on a tight rope adventure, that is to run another two marathons before the year end while maintaining my fatherhood duties to little Noah. A few months back, to keep myself from dilly dallying, I've booked myself and my brother in the Camsur Marathon in September and Singapore Marathon in December. From an investment point of view their is no turning back. All the hotel accommodation and air fares have been booked and there's no erasing the words which clearly says "No Refund Policy". It would seem that I'm regretting it. I'm not. It might have made my life more complicated that it usually is but life would not have been more colorful, more interesting and more challenging if it were not.

I'm currently in the middle of the long runs in my schedule, too long sometimes that it keeps you cursing yourself for taking the load nobody forces you. And then there's the sleep deprivation which magnifies the fatigue long enough that it lingers through your body after a day or two. I'm not going to say 'No Mas'. I have never been a quitter, bull strong traits my wife knows too well. I'm not going to quit on the running for diaper either, everyone knows that newborn care is just a phase and I just have to adjust. Besides, running can take a breather here and there, it not going anywhere while fatherhood is a special ritual for me that I truly appreciate.

At the end of the day, I'm not going to be measured on when I have done it, but how I did it. Like running, Its life's real beauty that when at the end of the race, you feel good not only because you have done something your proud of, but because your more prouder when you look back at the road you've run and say that every step was worth making.

Run my friend, as a way of life.

Coming Home

My body feels tired today. It feels like I have been bump by a moving train. Its has been a few days since we brought Noah home and it has been five years since I felt the need to doing newborn care again. Even how much you prepare yourself for the meaningful event, it still gives you the surprise that you were not expecting or perhaps I was expecting it and just wasn't prepared for it mentally. But unlike the other triumphs that comes with the pain and the physical stress, this one is something special. The life of a child, like any child would always be something special for parents. The stresses of parenting that I have come understand are beautiful reminders how I would have nurtured them to be good citizens someday. They come in numbers and they come hard sometimes, a challenge but nevertheless a challenge that is worth taking for.

Many say that any child is worth dying for, much so for your own. I can truly understand that but I believe in much more; that a child is worth living for, that providing them with unconditional love and guiding them each way to become phenomenal individuals on their own merits is what parent should do. I hope just as I hope before when Sofia came along that I can be a good parent and a father to my kids. To be blessed again with another child, a boy to compliment his sister is a wonderful gift. Whatever the circumstances may lead us as a family, I truly believe the future of my kids is secured comes high waters. As we welcome Noah into our home, may he bring as much joy as the first, inspire me more and bring beautiful chaos to our place. It has just began except its getting better.

Noah, welcome!

Day One,P-Noy: Bright and Sunny

I woke early today to run on one of the usual routes I usually take. Between screeching of motorcycles, everything was unusually quiet that day. Would have it been because I just ran too early before most people even pop their hated alarm clocks or perhaps because it was a holiday. Your guess is as good as mine. Nevertheless the eerie quietness works well with me, having been used to loving it while huffing and puffing over the next hill to another. As the sun rose up a few minutes after engulfing the nearby mountains with its magnanimosity, green from all the rains that poured the previous last two days, it was the clear blue and the vibrant light that caught my attention. It was going to be a beautiful day I said to myself, bright and sunny.

Where to spend the holiday was farthest from my mind. I was going to stay home for a good reason. My family is here and roasted pig (lechon) is in our lunch menu plus some ice cream on the side. Beside, I want to watch some of the highlights of the inauguration of the our new president, Benigno Aquino III. Yes, the yellow army have won giving him the biggest mandate in the country's political history. Many questions have been left unanswered and will be answered in the next six years. Was I right in voting for him? Did I make a mistake in campaigning for him? You and I is going to find out not sooner than everyone thinks whether the sick man of Asia would be given the miracle pill and easy as you say it, "Your discharged!".

Glued to the tube for an hour, I got bored with all the formalities that I took upon myself and my daughter to buy ourselves our lunch treat for the day in the next town. Needless to say, the roads were deserted, which only happens on good friday or if Manny Paquiao fights. When we got back, I was just in time for inaugural speech. When it was over, thoughts of "wang wang", "Kayo ang Boss ko" kept echoing in my mind. That speech was greatly written, more a rally speech more than anything else but it was perfect. It was simple yet so straightforward it stuns you sometimes.

More than with that speech, I truly hope genuine change have come. I have come to believe in it even before PNoy got elected. That decency that I have longed for years would finally come. Would he be able to solve corruption? He just might. Would he be able to move our country forward through leadership by example? He just might. Like the weather, the future in bright and sunny. Lets celebrate for now, lechon and ice cream on the house, for once we might have chosen well.