A little incentive....

I recently decided that it'd be a good idea to get fit. I was feeling rather sluggish and substantially overweight and was simply waiting for inspiration to get moving. I went out for dinner and a friend of a friend mentioned that they have started training for the Bangkok mini marathon in November. Where as most people murmured words like 'crazy', 'fool' and 'smog, heat, pollution' I thought it was quite a good idea.

I have undertaken to get properly fit on a few occasions in my life and each time it has resulted in a somewhat 'obsessive' approach to exercise. It seems that I can't motivate myself to do it unless I do it everyday. Then it seems that when I don't do it I don't feel right so I'm more able to keep going.

Over the last month I have been running on the treadmill a lot, doing yoga, interval training and other such energetic things. This all takes place in the small and meagerly furnished gym in our apartment. Here the treadmill is so old that you have to make sure you foot hits it with backward propulsion or it stops dead and you fall off. It took me about 3 sessions to master the technique. I had managed to get up to about 5 kilometres a session within 2 weeks. However I am very aware that running on a treadmill is nothing like proper outdoor running so I started to look for somewhere nearby to go running outside. I live about 3 kilometres from the biggest park in Bangkok that is a sea of exercise enthusiasts morning and night, but I don't fancy the ride there and back on the back of a motorbike through rush hour traffic, especially not the way back when I'm all sweaty, and I'm certainly not such an enthusiast to run 5-10k and then walk 3k home.

One of my colleagues mentioned that he goes running right behind my apartment. Much to my surprise, one of the most popular exercise spots in the area is the largest Chinese Cemetery in Bangkok. I went down there last week for the first time and found that not only does the cemetery have a marked running track, but it also has areas for basketball, Taikwando, badminton, Thai-chi, aerobics, learning the 'Cha-Cha' and a huge weight park all surrounded by the thousands of traditional grass covered, waist high mounds of the Chinese tombs. Not only are there hundreds of people who choose to go there to get fit, there are those who go there to join one of the many games of chequers, to relax, eat and watch TV, or just to sit on the grass and watch everybody else get fit. Yesterday I even saw runners taking a break to sing karaoke. It's hard to know who there's more of; those above ground or those below.

I never thought that what is technically a graveyard could be such a social place. Everybody is really friendly and seems to know everyone else. The number of people old and young who are there getting fit is a big encouragement, but there is no better incentive than the surroundings themselves to make you want to get fit. I am now up to running 8k!!

The pic above is not one of the cemetery I go to but I've not been brave enough to take me camera.