This is part 2 in a two part post about my road to the 2018 Boston Marathon.  Part one can be found here and is about my journey from the beginning of my running career up until I boarded the plane to Vietnam.  The second post is about my experiences training in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

I landed into Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam on February 6^th just before 2:00am and rolled into my hostel at around 3:00am.  After a pretty crappy sleep, I decided to just wake up at 6am and go for my first run.  First impression was that Saigon was busy, smoggy, hot and full of intersections.  I had checked a map and tried to find a route that looked like it might follow the river and miss lot’s of intersections and so I set out.  This first run was consistent with many runs that I had in city type environments.

The sidewalks were riddled with random holes, lifted uneven bricks and tree stumps as well as lots of parked motorbikes and tables and chairs.  This made it very difficult to run on the sidewalk and I very quickly learned to just run on the road and just hug the curb.  In general, motorbikes rule the road and it is very easy for them to avoid you.  Cars typically use the left portion of the road, so they only become dangerous on some of the narrower roads. I also quickly began running on the left side of the road, so I could see what was coming at me and would know to jump to the side if someone was approaching too closely.  The first run was pretty bad since I didn’t know the lay of the land and I had just finished over 26 hours of traveling, but at least it got the legs under me.

I quickly established that in big cities, it may not be easy to do the exploration runs I was hoping to do if I wanted to establish any sort of pace.  So in most cases I would try and find a park or large area in the city that would allow me to run laps without having to worry to much about traffic.  In Ho Chi Minh, there was a park outside of the hostel area, DaLat had a beautiful lake, Natrang and Quy Nohn had coastline beaches and hue had an walled imperial city.  In general, I still ended up maneuvering around pot holes, tree roots and other obstacles throughout the run no matter what type of area I was in.  This brings me to my next point.

Pacing has been VERY difficult and I have really struggled to get fast runs into my schedule.  I established a 6:45am-midnight sleep schedule which worked out pretty well for beating the heat and still being able to experience nightlife as well as being able to get up with the other travelers if an activity was planned for the day.  I was typically done my run by the time others were waking up.  The conditions of the roads and obstacles presented on the roads was just one of the struggles that caused me to struggle with pace.  I also found that while in Vietnam, the day after a long bike riding day was a struggle with great feeling legs.  Since we drove 2400km and ended up on the road a lot, this made getting in pace runs a struggle.  My nutrition could also be much better, which affects recovery which would probably help with the legs.  In general my legs are constantly feeling tired and although I am trying my best to incorporate rest days and recovery runs, they still always seem to be heavier than they should.  I think I will be able to successfully complete boston, but if my training has any indication, it will be a slow race for me.

The other struggle I have been having is long runs.  There is so much going on all the time while traveling that it is actually pretty easy to sneak out for an hour or so to run, but anything longer can start to become a struggle.  Pair that with the leg issues above and you end up with a shortage of long runs.   I have managed to do a 20km, 19km, 25km and a 30km and plan on doing one more 21km faster run in the next few days.  Looking back at my training for other marathons I was kind of in the same boat, so will probably be fine, but one of these days I would love to be able to feel fully prepared for a marathon (I guess in order for that to happen, I would have to turn my focus to training full time).

As I travel further and further south through Laos and into Cambodia, it is getting hotter and more humid even in the mornings and afternoons.  I am struggling with the heat even at 7am and a 10km run has become a sweat filled struggle.  I am writing this post on March 19^th which means there is less than a month to go until Boston.  I am actually kind of looking forward to the two week taper as I will probably be in the hottest part of my trip during this time.  In general I have not had many issues with the heat in Laos, but Cambodia has been hot so far.

Training schedule aside, I have been managing to get up and run 6 days a week on average and these runs have really given me a slightly different perspective of some of the places I visit.  I often run out of town into the countryside which provides a brief glimpse into some of the small villages and slightly more rural places (I’m not going that far out of town, so I guess some of these places don’t count as rural, but the cities end pretty abruptly so even 2-3km out of town is pretty rural feeling.

I have played soccer with some children, was joined by a group of teenagers who tried to keep up for about a kilometer before finally giving up, waved hundreds of times and been given just as many strange looks (“Why is this guy running and why has he passed me 3-5 times?”).  I’ve joined in on some jazzercise type classes being taken by some of the ladies of the community and observed many sorts of park games being played while I run by, including a hackie sack type game, badminton, soccer, public exercise machines, canoeing, kayaking, and many many seniors walking while swinging their arms.  It appears that Asian seniors love to swing their arms as exercise!

There have been many lakes to run around and some of them are pretty small so require quiet a few laps to get any sort of millage.  Exploring has for sure hurt my pace on many of these runs, but in these cases I would much rather see something cool than get a slightly better pace on Strava.

As for clothing and dealing with the fact that I get pretty sweaty after each run and have been moving a decent ammount.  I have two full sets of running clothes with me which i rotate day to day.  When i finish a run I jump in the shower with all of my clothes on and do a quick washing of the clothes before having my own shower.  On days where I don’t have a bus to take, I hang up the wet clothes to dry and they are usually dry by the end of the day.

If i am travelling that day, I do my best to get as much of the water out of the clothes as possible and then I have a mesh bag which I put the wet stuff in and then strap it to the outside of my bag.  That way, they clothes aren’t wet in my bag all day and usually have an opportunity to dry a bit during the day.  I usually bring the mesh bag on the bus with me and just hang it up somewhere in my seat area.  Fairly early on, I lost one of my running socks, so the other pair has been playing double duty and are starting to show major signs of wear.  Hopefully they will hold out for another few weeks. My shoes have also gotten pretty dirty having taken me across so many dirt roads, so they get put into a plastic bag within my pack.  They typically aren’t as wet as the clothes, so i am not as concerned keeping them in my bag for a day.   So far I have put 257 miles on my Brookes Ghost 10 shoes and they seem to be holding up very well.  Aside from running, I also use them when doing any strenuous activities like hiking or long excursions.

As you all know I love tracking everything so all of my runs have been recorded on Strava. (My Strava Profile).  Based on this data, here is my running numbers while I have been traveling.