Thursday, January 28, 2010

Just Another Day Running Past Luka's Paradise


In the past I would use the treadmills at the university club, but, sometimes the machines would loose power in the middle of my run, or would not start at all. One of the most unpleasant things that you can experience is to have your workout come to a halt when your blood is up. These things happened so many times that I stopped running for five months and only swam. Though swimming 60metres is more tiring than running a 5K I was still not getting the best workout possible since I usually get bored with swimming after thirty minutes, and a better workout would involve 30 minutes swimming/ 30 minutes running, with me increasing the distance covered each week.

Anyway, after thinking about it this week I decided to run around Yola every morning to greet the sun, for added bonus points I would sing My Blue Sky continously, and reminisce about my favourite software commercials. This would be a difficult task since I do not know the lyrics to the aforementioned songs and tend to dislike software commercials. As a result of these problems I decided to make the task easy and only sing SwordFishTrombones during my half hour jog. So far it has been going well though the hamarttan dust, odour of burning plastic, smell of decomposing shit, partially burned petrol, get my allergies going at the rate of drunken cyclist who is pedalling on a foggy night. The actual running is not so hard, though I am trying to achieve a five minute mile, normally I run at a relaxed pace so I can do a 5K in 30 minutes, but to push myself and reach that higher level I am trying to do speed work each week.

At 6:30 am the water sellers are loading uo their carts and pushing them along. The wandering lunatics are psyching themselves up for a day full of rambling and ranting, The ackara lady is heating her wok full of oil while the little boy mixes the bean paste one last time. The early risers are on their way home from the mosque, street dogs are getting ready for a day of sleeping in the dusty, eroded road, and meanwhile the sun's shines on me. At seven I jog home with my lungs aching, my legs aching, my nose running and eyes bloodshot, like the day Steppin' Razor yelled "bumbaclot!".

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