The people at the track are very friendly and even though some of them dont speak massively great English, they all smile and say hi. They have been very welcoming of me into their particular groups and it just goes to show the power of running the world over.
An initial comment about the weather - it has not been below 30c this week (even at midnight) and the humidity is at about 90% and above each day.
To put it bluntly, this makes last year's Sydney Marathon seem like child's play.
I admit that the running here seems to be of a much higher and more serious standard than in Sydney. They don't muck about and when they run they run hard and fast until some fall over or vomit. One of the chaps translated the coaches comments as such - 'just run as hard as you can until you fall over'. I guess it does not come much simpler than that really in terms of understanding what is being said and implementing it. Simple but seemingly very effective at producing results.
Now I may not understand all that she yells at us about, but I do know from translations and also just through figuring it all out from body language that she means business. They listen and again this hard long fartleking favoured by the Asian countries seems to deliver for them and as the saying goes. 'If it ain't broke don't try mend it'.
I am going to try and bring some of this learning back to my own teaching and running in Sydney. I figure though that it may be a little hard as we seem very reluctant to take the hard road in the west and want everything very easily in life.
Running together (Hong Kong style) - stride for stride on a life changing ride! -- Sean Muller
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