sillynomad

[sillynomad]

I’m in Delhi. I arrived last night and was chatting with one of the backpackers in the hostel I was staying at. She told me she is a graphic designer for Christmas wrapping paper at biggest Christmas wrapping paper company out there. In Wales. It’s a thing. 

[sillynomad]

The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen.

I rolled up to the bike store with my patched up bike. My Queen K. The lady who has taken me through three and a half races in three different countries, who has flown with me for hundreds of miles in training or in competition throughout Tokyo, Hong Kong, Miyakojima, Kenting… The one who seemed to survive not one but two crashes back to back on that blustery April day in southern Okinawa, only to die at the shore of the 100th km at one minute past one.

The details are described elsewhere, but the tl;dr is that the bike took some significant damage the second time I crashed. The mechanics, once I finally found them, did a great job of patching her up, giving a quick fix to what I thought was the main problem: the rear gear cable had some undone and tangled with the chainset. I knew there were other problems with the Queen, like a slightly twisted handlebar, the seat, and other problems with the chainset. Problems that could be solved.

When I walked into the store the man looked at me and said “What have you done this time?” In fairness, I have spent a lot of time, and money, in that store, but it’s still kind of embarrassing that that’s how he remembers me. I briefly explained to him what had happened. After a quick look, he sentenced: “I think this time you are really going to need a new bike.” I gave him the look. The look that says “come on, man. Don’t do this to me.” It had worked the last time. He had originally said no and then he managed to work some magic. So he started asking the different mechanics in the mechanics. Each one gave her a look before shaking their head gravely. The man came back, pushing my Queen back to me. The problem was with the frame. Some of the carbon had been broken during the crash. At some point the frame would just give and I would have an even worse accident. “You cannot ride this bike anymore.”

I had a feeling he was right this time. He didn’t try to sell me a new frame – in fact, he didn’t have any for me. I dragged the bike home, thinking that maybe I could go to another guy and “get a second opinion.” Ha.

The very next day I went spinning, and I saw a guy with an Ironman backpack, so I started a little chit chat. I moped to him about the diagnosis and he confirmed what the man at the shop had said. “If a carbon frame is a little broken, or cracks, it loses all structural integrity. It’s like a can. You can push it down all you want but as long as it’s whole it’s strong. The moment you pierce the side, even with a small hole, it becomes weak.”

So there it is. My Queen’s short reign… come to an end hiatus(?) 

[sillynomad]

Strongman revisited

I wake up, and immediately I feel like something is off. I feel tired. Not like I just woke up tired but more of a deeply tired. I got seven hours of sleep last night, so that can really only mean one thing, fatigue, but I won’t figure that out till later. I’m also grumpy, which is not a great feeling to have, especially in a happy place like this.

Breakfast is delicious, but I kind of sleepwalk through it. It’s started to rain outside, and it is windy. Quite windy. There is a possibility that the Strongman organizers will decide to cancel the swim and replace it with a short run instead: a duathlon. In my sleepy state I’m hoping that’s not the case. Jin tells me that if it’s a duathlon we’ll need two pairs of running shoes: one for the first part, and one for the marathon. Naturally, I only brought one pair, so I’m imagining taping my goddamn running shoes to the bike and schlepping them for 157 kilometers until I marathon. Jin is in a similar situation, it seems. He plans to tie the shoes to his handlebars.

Nakasone-san takes us to the start area. It’s still rainy and windy and miserable and I just kinda wanna sleep, really. I check in, get my chip, and hide under a tent with Kiichi, my Megu-neighbour.

After a few minutes, the word gets out: Duathlon. I groan inwardly, and try to find a place where I can sit and close my eyes.

I feel like this changes everything, and I start faffing around with the bags, changing things, making last minute arrangements. My brain is not really working yet, so I don’t really know what I’m doing. This is really the last thing I wanted.

The silver lining to all this is that I don’t really feel any pressure to beat my old time, since the two races aren’t really comparable anymore. I know this is a good thing. I’m historically terrible at trying to beat the clock.

That said, as a result of the duathlon, we are starting one hour later, but they are not pushing back any of the checkpoints or the finish time, meaning that we now have a maximum of twelve hours and thirty minutes to complete the entire race. For reference, last year it almost took me twelve hours, and that still put me in the top half of racers. I’m not worried though. I should be able to manage that.

It’s 8:00 and the race starts. Jin and I give each other a VAMOS! – our old cri de guerre - and we start trotting forward. He speeds off and I kind of lurch forward taking zombie steps. I feel tired. I could push it, but I don’t wanna kill myself so early in the race.

Clearly we weren’t the only ones with a shortage of running shoes. I see people running in dress shoes. There’s a guy running in flipflops: I can hear him coming a mile away. Another guy simply holds the flip flops in his hands while he runs barefoot.

6.5km later, we get to the bike area. I change into my bike gear, waddle over to my bike, and wedge my running shoes in my handlebars. The tape idea didn’t seem so good in the end.

And I’m off. Everyone is doing that thing where they are passing me, but I am not going slow at all. I’m averaging over 32km/h for over an hour. It’s a fast course, and it feels like the rain is making it faster. I also have my new awesome wheels.

The wind is something else too. As we turn towards the newly built bridge we meet the wind head on and it is seriously slowing us down.

We reach the bridge, which is 3.5km in length, was just finished this January, and cost a bijillion yen. You can tell there’s a bit of fiscal guilt about this bridge because they try to shoehorn it into all activities and pamphlets related to Miyako. The bridge leads to this smaller island called Irabujima, which is home to approx 5,000 people, has its own school(s), and, inexplicably, an airport. I guess that was the way to move around before the days of the great bridge.

The bridge is a bitch because it slopes up and down a couple of times, but that is nothing compared to the brute wind that is hitting us in a perpendicular direction. I have to lean into the wind a little so I don’t get blown away. It’s scary.

We enter the island. Everyone is still passing me and I’m just kind of on auto mode, not really there.

I suddenly get the urge to pee. I’m really happy with the pace I am going at, so I don’t really want to stop. I’ve read that many people do it on the go. This is my chance to show what a pro I am.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. I for one find it impossible to pee while I’m cycling my legs, so I wait for the next downhill to stop pedalling and then I… push with my bladder.

This was not a very well thought out plan. I had kind of expected the pee to fly back off my body because, again, I am zipping through this course at 32km/h. Instead, the pee starts running down the side of my leg, which is attached to the pedal, so I can’t even shake my leg or anything. So, my pee slowly collects inside of my left shoe.

Out of decorum, I feel like I should wash my leg a little bit. I take out a plastic bottle but the top wont come off. I struggle with it, with only one hand on the handlebars. I use my teeth and, as I succeed, my head rears back with the momentum.

I lose my balance, the wheels slip, and I fall on my side, my bike and I skidding for a couple meters. That fucking bottle. Luckily there’s no one directly behind me so I don’t get run over. I limp over to the side and out of the way while a volunteer picks up my bottle and my effing  running shoes (which had gone flying off somewhere) and gives them to me.

Needless to say, I am wide awake now.

Feeling a little stunned, I check myself for broken things and then the bike. Everything seems to be more or less in order, except for a few scratches.

I’m hoping for a little sympathy from the volunteer, and I feel like Miyakojima would be the best place for that. Wrong. She urges me to get back on my bike, to keep trying. “I’ll be waiting for you at the finish line.” Goddamnit. Now I gotta do it. For her.

I start off, and my running shoes go flying again. I stop.

I start off again. I’m still feeling pretty cool and under control. Most importantly, I’m not feeling scared of the bike.

I cross the bridge back to Miyako and speed towards the first aid station. Even with the fall, my average speed is something ridiculously high for me.

40km – the first aid station. I feel like that’s far for a first aid station. It’s at the bottom of a downhill, so I’m going fast. The guy in front of me stops quite suddenly. My wheels are too wet to fully stop, so I crash into him and fall on the same side as before.

He is not a happy camper, and I am just lying there, amazed at how I’ve managed to pull off two crashes in the space of thirty minutes. The guy angrily checks his bike and when he sees that everything is okay takes off. I feel fine, the bike looks alright, but just when I’m about to hop back on I realize that the rear gear cable has been pulled off and has gotten caught up in the chain. Not good.

As it so happens, there is a mechanic just two kilometers down the road, a volunteer tells me, though he doubts that they’ll be able to fix it. Luckily, I still have my running shoes, so I change into those and start pushing the bike.

A kilometer and a half into my impromptu run, a race official stops me and tells me that the mechanic is in the other direction. I am just not having a good day.

I finally get to the mechanic and they get to work. They seem confident that they can fix it.

Kanda-san of all people rolls up. He got a flat back on the bridge and he thinks there’s something wrong with his front wheel, but the mechanic dismisses it. Kanda-san tells me that we are running out of time. We need to finish the bike leg by 3:30, which is 4 and a half hours away. I attempt math and realize that I’m gonna have to really ganbaru, and even then count on a fair portion of luck.

The mechanics finally fix the cable and I set off. I am now dead last in the race. I’ve probably lost an entire hour while I was busy falling and getting back up.

I am gunning it. I’ve got to make it to the end. I fly past Kanda-san, past a few old people, and it’s back on the fast course. I am doing 38km/h on average. I will slow down later, I know, but I feel like pacing myself right now isn’t really an option.

I’m passing people, and the people of Miyakojima cheer me on. As I turn around the island I meet the wind head on, and I slow down. It has picked up again, and it switches from being extremely frustrating to extremely scary.

I fly past aid stations. They’re out of sports drink, which is annoying, so I just take water and bananas. I curse at the wind and urge my legs to keep going. My butt has taken a bit of a beating with the falls so it’s hard for me to use those muscles, which would have been ideal. It’s all leg action here.

I am screaming past other racers and catching up. I’m killing myself and I don’t know what I will do once I start the run, but this is the only way.

If I pull this off, this will make one hell of a story.

Damn you, wind.

I make it to the second lighthouse. At the 100km mark I see someone just up ahead is stopping. Maybe there’s an accident.

 No, no accident. It’s a checkpoint that we had to cross by 1pm. The time, the woman in front of me tells me, is 1.01pm. In front of us we can see the bikers who were on the right side of the clock stumble on. My race is over.

K-san pulls up behind me. He has the same look on his face. Zannen. He asks me about Kanda-san. We wait for him. It takes a while. We slowly wheel back to the nearest bini for a cold beer. The wounds are starting to smart, and I am grimy. My new yellow maillot looks like leopard print. I go pick up my stuff and I run in to Renny, the organizer of IM Taiwan. He gave up after the biking part.

I feel a little shocked, but I’m neither furious nor sad. I know I will have to do it again, and kick this thing’s butt. Next year will also be K-san’s last year, since they don’t allow people over the age of 65 to compete. So we have to go back and make sure he makes it. He has to make it. And so do I.

[sillynomad]

Notes on the return to Miyako

It’s a long series of flights to Miyako, but the closer I got the more at ease I feel. In Naha I go pee and I run into Jin. It’s a very casual “hello” but it’s not really part of the gentleman’s code to play out the reunion scene in the men’s room. He is going to Miyako via Ishigaki, so we agree to meet at Miyako airport with our bags. My nihongo cogs start creaking into action.

We taxi over to Yuni no Hama, the same hotel I went to last time. The Mama is there to greet us. When I step out of the car I give her a good ole Gaijin hug. She comments on it. “Oh! A hug!”

She tells us that they have saved the same room as last year. It’s a nice touch. As we roll our gear in people come out to say hello, and wouldn’t you know it it’s the same people as year. I’m blurry on the names, but it’s the doctor from Hokkaido, the guy from Yokohama… Yuni no Hama is not convenient but it is lovely, and we have all chosen to come back. We are all happy to see each other again.

We catch up as we set up our bikes. Jin is the guy responsible for my first Miyako experience. He convinced me to sign up for the lottery, which I won and he lost, so last year I came by myself. This is Jin’s first long distance and he is very excited.

We head over to registration and I get a mechanic to fix the funny noise my chain was making. We have the opening party – the waido party – and I say hello to familiar faces. My neighbor from Meguro is here, and I see on an athlete list that Kikuchi is also here. Someone who remembers me comes up to say hello. There’s a reunion feel to the whole thing. Everyone has come back to this race and is joking over beer and lots of food.

We catch up with Kanda-san, who is limping badly. He says that it only hurts when he walks, but it’s fine when he runs or bikes. He seems resigned to his fate though. K-san is also here. He’s racing this year, though of course whether he finishes or not doesn’t seem to bother him that much. The guy apparently got so loose the night before that the police had to intervene. This is a 64 year old man we are talking about.

The party ends before long and Jin and I wheel back to the hotel, not without first getting lost. Nakasone-san has invited us to go drinking and eating somewhere in town, so we get in his car and drive over. My Japanese is in (relative) full gear and I am staying afloat their mercilessly fast and casual conversation.

We go to this seafood izakaya, which as far as I understand belongs to Nakasone-san’s mother. We start going through cold namas and crazy fresh seafood as we shoot the shit. Among other things, Jin is thinking of proposing to his girlfriend. He already tried but was less than successful. We suggest that he tries again during the race. Like he should get a piece of paper and write “marry me” and then take it out when the professionals are snapping pictures, or at the finish line, or something.

Sharing this hotel room with another person can get cozy. At one point I am in the bathroom and Jin asks me something about the race through the door. Unsatisfied with my short answer, he opens the door and presses me for details, unfazed. I just sit there, a rock, trying not to break eye contact or lose my poker face until I have answered his goddamn question, which takes me a good twenty seconds. If there was anything odd about this exchange neither of us show it.

We wake up on Saturday and head to the beach to get a feel for the water. There is talk that the wind is going to be too strong for swimming. We go back to the hotel for breakfast. We take a nap. We go for lunch at an izakaya and drop off our bikes and buy groceries. It’s all the same as last year, really.

We pore over the map and strategize. I tell him where the tricky points of the bike are.

We go on a walk down to the beach. We start climbing on the rocks and I fall and slice my hand open. I am in pain but more than anything I feel like an idiot. Like why the hell would I even put myself in this situation? 

We cook dinner, a collection of pasta and tomatoes and vegetables, and settle down for bed. I feel relaxed, at ease. It’s just another race, and I know exactly how it goes. It’s gonna be great.

[sillynomad]

Ironman Taiwan

The race started with the usual flurry of activity and nervous laughter.

I saw Eric getting ready. He gave me a slap on the back and said something about how he was going to beat his nemesis, Guillaume.

I took my time and headed over to the beach. The sun was starting to rise over the hill on our left.

They let the swimmers in six at a time, with five or ten seconds in between each wave.

The swim was a fantastic experience. Once we were a couple hundred meters out from the shore we started being surrounded by very small points of glistening blue light. It was as if tiny blue lightning bugs were cheering us on during the swim. Absolutely beautiful. I would learn later that they were actually tiny little jellyfish, which explained the tiny electrical shocks I would occasionally feel. Worth it – every second.

The swim was two laps of 1.9km each. It was over before I even knew it. I jogged over to my bike, and started the second leg of the thing.

I fell behind a Taiwanese woman who was wearing a lot more layers than I really thought necessary. She was a pretty solid biker, and she had a very steady pace. She was also very cheerful. Every time someone passed her she would let out a “yeah! Jai o! ganbatte!” or whatever. I thought that was totally the right spirit to have. It would be great to be able to follow her all the way to the run.

On the uphill before The Big One I met a girl called Josephine. Heeding Eric’s advice, I was in no hurry to make it to the top, so I chatted with her for a while. After some good banter, I left her and the Taiwanese girl and enjoyed an amazing downhill which seemed to stretch forever. Hugging the coast via a steep switchback, I descended for a long time at a pretty hairy speed of around 50km/h, overlooking the ocean. This was the closest thing to flying over the ocean.

Eventually I reached it. The Big Daddy. A change in altitude of hundreds of meters stretched out over 10km. I just kept saying Eric’s mantra over and over. It was no problem. Then I really got to use my wheels as a 40km long descent ensued. I was loving my wheels. No one could pass me on the downhills, I was going so fast. I was making a very good time, and having a great time traversing the Taiwanese forest and mountains.

My training for Ironman had been lax to say the least, but my practice for the bike leg had been especially atrocious. The most I had managed to get done was an 80km ride the week before the race. From experience my critical number is 100km. After this number funny things start to happen and the mental aspect of racing becomes more important. This time I made it to about 120km. I still had 60km to go, meaning I was looking at over 2 more hours of pedaling, and to top it off it was during the least interesting bit of the leg. It felt like I was crawling my way to the end. Kudos to the fearless volunteer girl, who 6 hours of cheering later she was still dancing and jumping and waving her floaties and jai yo-ing us forward.  

My overall impression of the bike part was that I had a great experience, but it is also undeniable that I have never wanted to start running a marathon more, or do anything else, just as long as it wasn’t having to pedal anymore.

Sadly the running part wasn’t great. It was a three loop affair along a stretch of road that had a lot of traffic, and other than the cars and trucks there wasn’t really anything to look at. Josephine and I found each other and we ran together for a while, chatting and keeping our mind off things. I was tired, but I felt fresh, and the pictures show it. She let me go ten km later. Finishing the second loop some of the people cheering saw the Spanish flag on my race number and shouted out “Vamos! No hay dolor!” No pain. That’s right. Keep going. A little after Tom caught up to me. A strong runner, it was only a matter of time. He pulled me through most of the last loop just as the sun was beginning to set. I saw Renny, the brains of the IM Taiwan operation, barking orders and making sure people were safe. We had raced together the year before in Okinawa, and its seemed like we would be meeting again the following week. He liked my red gear.

Tom and I wanted to cross before the 14 hour time mark, and it was coming down to the wire a little bit. We decided to push it and really run the last 5km, going all out on the last 1km.

Finishing an Ironman is quite the experience. They’ve really set up so that you feel like a total champ as you run down the raised platform they’ve set up to the finish line, with volunteers and other supporters sticking out their hands on the side. It felt like I had scored the winning goal at the world cup final. It felt deeply good. Ironman.

[sillynomad]

Notes from Kenting

Touchdown is a strange experience. The last few days were a bit of a rush and I packed a little on the blind side. What this amounts is not really knowing how I was going to get from the airport to my hotel 150 kilometers away. I also had 500 taiwanese dollars to my name, and that was basically all my cash. I knew there was a bus somewhere I could take which would kinda sorta leave me in the middle of Kenting and then I would have to figure it out some more. When I left the airport there were half a dozen IM volunteers there. I meet another racer, an older man. He is limping. I make a quip about it. He says that he hasn’t trained in six months. He responds to my raised eyebrow with I’ve got years of experience, son. Later I would find out he’s the chief design strategist for IBM, which reminds me that everyone in the triathlon world has cooler jobs than me. Meanwhile, the volunteers were super kind, and they let me get on their special shuttle even after the ATM swallowed the one card that has always worked abroad. The volunteers were super friendly. Seriously A+ effort. 

The bus could sit about 50 people. Currently it sits 6, including the driver. There’s one other foreigner, who looks to be about my age. He’s super stoked to be here. He’s been doing Ironman since he was 19, but this is his first one outside America. He eventually tells me that he’s basically in it to win it. Only first place in our age group will get you a place in Kona, and that’s his goal. But he’s a bro, and his enthusiasm is contagious. Someone else on the bus gets a phone call. He turns around and hands me the phone. It’s one of the volunteers from the airport, would I like him to try and get my card back? I get images of that guy tearing the machine to pieces in search of my BOFA. Not worth it, but it feels so good to know that he would try.

I quickly learn that Kenting is *rural*- The village is built along the main road, hugging it for a stretch of a couple kilometers. Every other building is a small hotel. The receptionist at my hotel tells me that there are only 500 families that actually live in Kenting. I’m not sure what a Taiwanese family looks like, but they can’t be that big.

My hotel is a ten-minute walk along that main road from the official IM resort. It’s small, but nice enough, and away from the noise of the street. There is, however, a dog that wails throughout the night as if someone is kicking it over and over. It is distracting.

I spend most of Friday in and around the resort, using their wifi to get some work done, and nosing around, browsing. The resort is actually huge, and has a large basement with a large arcade, a driving range, a shopping center, and restaurants. Looks like their heyday was 20 years ago. Even though there are thousands of people it still feels really empty and gives me The Shining creeps.

The opening party is a nice affair, with lots of “ethnic drumming” and giving away of goodies. I hang out with the American guy, Eric, and he imparts some of his champion wisdom onto me. On my way back to my hotel I fall in stride with another guy, Thomas, who is an old hand at long distance racing but still feels somewhat grounded to the earth. We part ways and I admire all the little stands selling foods and drinks all the way to my room. This will be really fun after the race.

I go swimming early next morning and I feel good about it. I pick a random place for breakfast, and when Thomas walks past he sits down with me and we chew the fat for a while. I later hook up with Eric for a bit of a bike ride. This is the first time I am trying out my new wheels. I am very obsessed with my new wheels because they cost me a lot of money and they are supposed to make me go much faster. I am aware that trying out new equipment for the first time the day before my first Ironman is probably not the wisest move, but this goes to show how I feel about my training up until this point. It’s like I’m pulling a hail mary on a 180km ride. Eric’s enthusiasm is rubbing off, though, and slowly starting to bury my apprehension.

We don’t explore the bike course but looking at the map we know that there is a 400m incline over the course of 5km. This is the Big Daddy. We hear from some Americans that it’s really quite treacherous bit of road, especially on the downhill. Eric tells me to slow down and use my butt on this hill. “Don’t kill yourself here. Let them pass you. You will see them again on the downhill.”

I go on a walk, relax, and head over to the resort for the briefing. There are volunteers everywhere, being amazing. At the bike check-in they’re lined up and cheering for us  on either side as we walk. A small round of selfies ensues. It makes me feel good and popular and like a bit of a champion. The volunteers are all at least bilingual, and I practice a bit of Spanish and Japanese with them. Incredible, I don’t know where they find these people.

The main reason everyone is at the briefing is because they want to know if wetsuits are allowed or not. The water temperature might just be too warm. In the end, the give the green light for it. Collective sigh of relief.

 go with Thomas to a Thai place and load up on all kinds of food. There are hardcore-athlete rules about what you should have the meal before a race in order to boost your performance but we both agree that the best thing really is to just have a good meal we enjoy. We walk past all the food stands that sell different things. One of them is a deep fried oreo. There’s probably a line somewhere that separates enjoyable food from bad idea food and the oreo is probably on the other side. At least tonight.

 I go to sleep. Everything is ready, everything is set. Tomorrow, I will become an Ironman.

[sillynomad]

True things that exist - A wetsuit in the shape of a business suit, so you can go directly from home to the beach to the office, and sneak in a few waves before your first meeting. The shirt and tie are naturally part of the outfit. Also available in Casual Friday version as well as a tux.

Amazing. Can we use for tri, too? (HT: spoon tamago)

[sillynomad]

My attempts at learning Cantonese thus far are succinctly summarized by the time I tried to say rain cloud but ended up saying areola.

[sillynomad]

In January I ran the Hong Kong Standard Chartered Marathon dressed as the Flash. It should be unsurprising by now that I had been battling shin splints for a week or two and that the day before I went out to play not one but two soccer matches. On top of that work had been especially tough that week, working till 3 or 4 on a couple of occasions. Despite all that, I felt pretty confident that I could finish the race and put in a good time. This is primarily due to that 40km run I went on with Jin this time last year after a night out, but I think I underestimate the amount of abuse my body had endured that week. 

Things until race day had been so crazy for the last few weeks that I got the start time wrong. Luckily, it just meant that I got there really, really early, and not the other way round. I was there in my Flash uniform stretching, and stretching, and stretching… At one point the Occupy folks rolled up to make themselves heard and they had yellow balloons and banners and umbrellas and they decided to make their scene right around me, and the camera was right on my face and it was kind of uncomfortable, especially since I was completely surrounded and couldn’t get out. 

Eventually my designated wave got going and I started waddling forward. There were over 5600 runners in my wave, so I was kind of surrounded and for once I was actually very okay with this. My plan was to get to a 5ish minute pace for the first half of the race, which is more than comfortable, and then start digging for a faster pace for the second half. The reality is that by the third kilometer I was already worrying about different leg parts holding on long enough till the end of the race. 

And then Superman came to the rescue. He didn’t know I had messed up my race start time, so he was just as surprised to see me as I was grateful. Being the hero that he is, he stuck with me for thirty kilometers. We also talked to a guy from Guangzhou called Jerry who kept up with us (and by us I mean the Man of Steel) until we reached 20 and then he said “I’m a little bit tired” and that was the last we ever saw of Jerry.

The course itself wasn’t terrible, but that’s also because my expectations were low. There are occasionally some pretty good views, though you run on highways, it’s crowded 100% of the time with other runners, and you go through three very boring tunnels (each one longer than a kilometer which is crazy). Also, since you are mostly on highways, there are no people to cheer you on. 

This is where the costumes were actually very useful, because other runners would turn and cheer and give a thumbs up or say “Go Superman!” and I cannot stress how useful that is. Unfortunately I was wearing a second-tier superhero, while I ran with him people only cheered Superman on. During those thirty kilometers I got two shout-outs to his two hundred and something. But no matter. I was with my man of steel, plodding along. 

It was my first time wearing compression gear. I normally quasi-poopoo this stuff: what do you need to run besides a comfortable pair of shoes? The truth is my right shin was killing me before the race. During the race the gear seemed to hold everything in place, even if I wasn’t able to run very fast. No regrets. 

At 33km Superman said “see ya” and sped off towards the finish line. That was tough for me. I had 9km to go, and that is usually an easy run for me, but there was nothing easy about this. The crowd was looking more and more like a mobbish obstacle, as numbers swelled and the road narrowed. We took the tunnel to cross over to Hong Kong island. In fairness, I was surprised that the distance between Sheung Wan and Victoria Park was less than 8km. There were people cheering here, along the final stretch, and people here started giving the Flash some shoutouts, infusing me with a little more strength to make it to the end. 

 The final time was well over what I had expected, but I considered myself lucky to have finished at all. More strength needed for the next one, and I gotta remember to keep that smile on. Thank you Superman!   

[sillynomad]

I don’t quite remember how it happened, but a few months ago I decided that I would run the Hong Kong Standard Chartered marathon dressed as the Flash.

For those of you not familiar with this superhero, he dresses in red and his superpower is superspeed so I thought that was super appropriate for this event.

Not long after making this decision I ended up in a conversation with EJ and then he decided he would run as Captain America. A few weeks later we recruited a Superman.

Well aware of our skills as runners (modest), we wanted to make sure that our costumes were running-friendly, so instead of going full-body latex suit, I made some modifications:

-          Headgear: plain red cap with yellow lightning Shwings sewed on the sides, red/orange tinted shades.

-          Upper Body: Red UnderArmor Flash t-shirt, yellow sports wristbands, and yellow duct tape belt on top of racing belt.

-          Lower Body: Red compression shorts, red compression sleeves, red New Balance running shoes with yellow laces.

Captain America and Superman made similar decisions for their outfits, and on the Saturday before the race we united at the AIA European Festival for a test drive of the costumes. I’d say the pictures speak for themselves…

[sillynomad]

And then it was 3am and they started giving out #slippers for the ladies. I did not given any. #mexico #monterrey #wedding #vivanlosnovios #lucyandpato (at Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico)

[sillynomad]

I could tell he was about to say something important and he opened with “you’d better sit down for this.” We were already sitting down on the sand, so that made no sense, and that’s how I knew what he was about to say. And then it was a torrent of emotions that rocked me from side to side with every word he spoke. Grief. Anger. Terror. Violence. Although the sea was a few yards in front of us, for that brief, infinite moment, I was drowning.

Excerpts from unsent emails to nobody

[sillynomad]

That time we took our marathon super costumes for a test drive in the visiting fair...

[sillynomad]

3 Japanese movies from last year that thoroughly impressed me

Hanzawa Naoki

This one is neither a movie nor from 2014, but it’s short enough and fresh enough to qualify. A bold reflection of Japanese corporate culture, this show is not to be missed. From the *always* engaging JSmyth:

“Hanzawa is a brilliant, hardworking, charismatic, successful banker with a loving, beautiful, and sacrificially supportive wife and cute kid. He does due diligence and then gives both his support and friendship to the small businesses he deems promising (this alone makes him a kind of unicorn in Japanese banking). No amount of overtime is too much for him. And he’s out for revenge.

His top target is the banker who years ago induced his father to commit suicide by denying his small business a loan extension. He wants to overcome this man and reform the bank for which he works. By the end of the first episode, however, Hanzawa is fighting for his career, as corrupt superiors who have cheated the company for personal gain frame him and put him on the chopping block.”

The story is very well written, jumping from one cliffhanger to the next. It also describes a very dark but very real side of what it can be like to work for a Japanese company. For me, watching this show was like sitting through a ten-episode cultural debriefing session of my time in corporate Japan. I would either slap my thighs and say “yeah! That totally happened to me too” or sigh in relief “phew, thank god I didn’t have it that bad.” This amazing show, which as Smyth says is probably a little too Eastern to ever make it to Europe, is as much entertaining as it is ethnographic. Watch it.

 2. Tokyo Tribe 

I walked into the theater without really knowing anything about Tokyo Tribe. I was suddenly put through a 2 hour-long hihopera set in a GTA-style Tokyo setting where each ku区 has its own gang with its own badass name (my favorite: the nerimotherfuckers from Nerimaku). The story centers around the Musashino Sarus, the hippie, peace-loving tribe who are dragged into a gang war when another gang calls on external powers to try and take over Tokyo.

The movie is fantastic. As critic Sam Woolf says, there’s so much to love about Tokyo Tribe: there’s a baseball bat-wielding shogun, who drives a CG tank. There’s this ten year-old kid in a polo who does most of the ass-kicking through the film, and this one waitress girl who’s a hilarious beat-boxing master. At one point, the bad guy reveals he has a hidden wall-sized garburator inside his lair, and one dude has a cell phone that looks like a jewel-encrusted Desert Eagle.

The medium itself was also very interesting. The whole movie is in rap form, which for me really worked when the Musashino gang did it, because it felt Japanese (some of the rhymes are excellent), but really grinded me when they upped the bling factor with some of the other gangs and made it look like a direct US import. I think that was intentional.

You need an open mind with this film, and you need to keep up with the pace of ridiculousness (and less than subtle cultural), and accept things like the grandma DJ, the all-powerful foreigners, the outrageous sexism, and that ultimately *spoiler alert* it all comes down to penis size. Watch it.

 3. Lupin the Third

Last year Ryuhei Kitamura directed the live-action remake of the classic (vintage?) manga/anime by Monkey Punch. It’s an origins story of sorts, covering how the main characters in the series meet for the first time. It’s as dark and serious as someone like Lupin would ever allow it to be. It’s an entertaining enough film, but what I thought was really interesting was just how much of the dialogue was spoken in English. You can tell the actors are by no means fluent – in fact, they often put the emphasis on the wrong syllable – but it just feels so modern, like someone has finally heard of globalization. More like these to come?

[sillynomad]

The Standard Chartered Marathon Shirt

Earlier this week I went for a run around my usual horse track and I noticed a high number of people running around in the Standard Chartered race shirts from previous years. With the SCHK race coming up in two weeks, I get that it puts people in the mood, but as someone who likes to run in rags (except for my super flashy lightning bolts) I find it a little bit flaunty.

Not long ago I read an interesting post by a Singaporean event photographer who had noticed that not-so-fit people were crossing the 35km line looking surprisingly genki and making a suprising time at the SC Singapore marathon. He attributed it to cheating, saying that people must have either cut across somewhere. Why would anyone do that? “They just want the finisher tee, medal and the bragging rights that come along with it.”

The writer’s allegations ended up not being true (see below), but it reaffirms my idea that the shirt is somewhat of a status symbol. The shirt, in my humble opinion, is also extremely ugly, and something that I would have no real interest in wearing. So provided I cross the finish line on January 25th, why don’t I just sell my tshirt? I reckon for something as limited edition as this I could probably scrape at least 300HKD, which would actually cover the cost of the race. On the surface it sounds a little bit dirty to even consider this, but I think of it as a win-win-win situation. First, my buyer would get the finisher tee without having to sweat for it, and if they are even interested in buying my shirt chances are they are not so interested in running races. Second, I get my race (or future races) subsidized, giving me more incentives to run more races, and I get value for something that would have had no value at the bottom of my closet. Third, I would argue it keeps the race cleaner and more honest. Even if there’s only one cheater in the entire race that’s one person I may dissuade from participating if they can get what they want another way. To be continued…

It turns out that SCMS had actually asked runners who failed to meet certain unspecified times at unannounced designated points to be diverted to run a shorter distance, which is what the writer in the article didn’t know when he penned the article. Those runners nevertheless were still entitled to a t-shirt and a medal upon crossing the finish line. I think that’s a load of crap. No finish, no prize. That’s the risk we all take when we sign up for these events. It’s supposed to be hard.

[sillynomad]

You know you've been in Asia too long when...

The other day I posted on facebook a clever little comment that went a little like this:

“That little feeling you've spent too much time in Asia when you realize you know all the Kpop songs playing at that ramen shop in Hong Kong”

I wrote that while eating my ramen, and there was a slightly embarrassing epilogue to that story, which occurred when the cash-only bill came and I ineffectively attacked it with my arsenal of cards, which was the only thing I had on hand. You’d think after 3 and a half years here I would have learned that by now.

[sillynomad]

Whenever I walk on the crowded Hong Kong streets.