Fitness from the Road: Cartagena Running

Cartagena, Colombia is a vibrant place -- from the food to the brightly painted buildings. Founded 480 years ago, this coastal city includes both a colonial historic center surrounded by walls that took two hundred years to build and long stretches of beach with Miami-style skyscrapers. The city also produces some delicious fare! In two days, we consumed various tropical fruit juices, whole red snappers, coconut rice, intricate soups, and the grilled or fried "arepas" (corn flour biscuits with cheese or egg or meat or everything inside) found throughout Colombia. And the people enjoy socializing on the streets -- a few locals even shared shots of their Medellin rum with us.

I ran two days in Cartagena. One day, I ran along the walled city and throughout the action of the city. And the other day, I ran along the beach. The day that I ran in the city of Cartagena felt emblematic of running in South America -- stopping frequently for people, cars, and vendor carts, avoiding sleeping or barking stray dogs, and ignoring people gawking. In the midst of the chaos, I ran pretty slow as I took in the scenery of the vibrant city.

The next day, running along the beach, I also ran slow in the mid-afternoon heat. Running on the beach was pretty ideal running conditions - uninterrupted and hard-packed flat sand. The beach run was an hour long but was a slow plodding run. This slow pace is most likely a natural result of the troubles that I have had running in South America. Often, the annoyances of the city coupled with thoughts and effects of air pollution have stymied my motivation. The beach didn't have these problems as I breathed in the fresh sea air but the bottom line is, even after starting my points plan, my running does not seem to improved.

In an earlier blog post, I wrote about a series of fitness tests: core, upperbody strength, and running. I never took the running fitness test. I will take the test for the first time when I re-take the other two tests next week. So running data will have to wait for another cycle of the plan. But overall, I am not running too fast these days. I mostly blame my running travails on a cold turned bronchitis that I caught almost a month ago and still provides some phlegm. (This has been my least successful bout with fighting infiltrators in our traveling year). Also, the variable running conditions in South America, like the variable running conditions during the Cartagena city run day, haven't motivated too many high tempo runs.

Cartagena running was illustrative of both why running improvement is hard while traveling, as well as, how I am running these days. I am looking forward to stateside running of clean air, running buddies, designated running paths, and predictability about running conditions so that I can get in those runs that will improve my running as well as change my genes in beneficial ways.

 

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