my fourth visit

my flight arrived in bali late at night...rather than pay for a prepaid taxi (ridiculously high rates) into kuta just to find a place to sleep, i spent the night at the airport...morning rolled around, the flies became more active, and it began to be warm...i hopped into a taxi that had just dropped someone off, so i got a metered ride into kuta, for less than half the price of a prepaid taxi...i stayed at the same place i had stayed in july, so that was convenient...

during this trip to bali, i started running...i've done a lot of running in my past, but i haven't done ANY running in the past year or so...after my first half hour of jogging, i slowed down to a walk, and realized that my legs felt like jello...no pain, but they were awfully wiggly...i sped up a few more times for a total of an hour or so of running...the next morning, when i started jogging again, it wasn't very easy...and didn't get any easier as i kept going...later, during that second day, i had problems everytime i wanted to go down...that is, step off a curb, sit down, walk down a hill, etc...my legs would pretty much give out at the very last second...NOT GOOD...so i took off the third day...

while starting again, pretty much entirely from scratch, i realized that it really does involve your entire body!!! who knew your oblique muscles actually are used while running? back in high school when my cross country team did so many ab exercises i always thought it was silly...now i know there was actually a purpose!! and i realized that even though i can walk all day long, it doesn't translate much at all to being fit, and being able to run...i don't think i'd ever been that completely out of shape...embarassing...

my days were all pretty much the same...get up early, go running, go check email, lay out on the beach...eat dinner, read a bit, go to sleep early...

as i was walking from the beach back to my room one day i walked past a little stand set up to register people for a charity run taking place that weekend...the next day i went back with money, and signed myself up...the organizing company was hard rock, but it was sponsored by a number of other companies...the charity being benefited helped kids with cleft palates...the run was supposed to be a 5K...

by taking off that third day from running, i made sure i would be okay for the run on the 4th...and i was...it was just a loop around a really busy block of kuta...but it wasn't so busy at 0730 on a sunday morning:)...after everyone finished, (about 700 people had entered, they said it was the biggest run they'd had, and this was the 9th annual run) they handed out all the raffle prizes, as well as the auction prizes...all in all, it was a well organized event...perhaps one of the nicest parts was the free 10 minute foot massage i got at one of the sponsor tents...so nice:)...sadly, it wasn't a 5K, it was only a 4K...according to the organizers, the police who were doing traffic control turned everyone a little early, so that's why we had all had such fast times...hee hee...oh well...

the rest of my days followed the same pattern i mentioned before...i was tan as all get out when i left bali this time:)...