Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Trying Outdoor

I've been doing my little runs since June 2010. So far, I've done one outdoor brisk walking session last year and yesterday I decided to run along the roads near my house.

I brisk walked for about 200 meters before started running. Firstly, it was a totally different experience than running on the treadmill in a comfortable, air conditioned gym with encouraging music and TV screens showing ASTRO programmes. I noticed that there was more stress on both of my knees, perhaps whenever I run on the treadmill it helped to lower the impact. Running against the wind was also another challenge. Usually it was not too windy in my area but yesterday, when I ran I could feel that extra effort was needed to bring my body forward. Having these extra kg on my body was another big factor. Big body, bigger friction against the wind? Haha.

I also had to be extra careful on the grassy areas as I could see piles of dog poo left there by the dog owners. Too bad our Majlis Perbandaran never thought about enforcing these people to pick whatever gold their dogs produce. I'm not racist, but somehow this made me feel that the Muslim and Malay sensitivity is being ignored by some quarters.

My runs Sep 2010 - Feb 2011: Not as frequent as I wanted
Besides that, I also realized that there were way too many cars in the neighbourhood. There were also Mat Rempits and children riding bicycles to the nearest playground. These two categories of riders were quite dangerous as they treated the road like their own. They're young, immature (and stupid), yes I knew that. But why can't their parents spend some time educating them on road safety? They're even hazardous to some people who were trying to jog in this area (like me!).

So, it was not a really pleasant experience running in my neighbourhood. I decided to go back to the treadmills at the gym where there's no Mat Rempit and dog poo.