RunDeeZone.com

The Taiwan Strait with China pictured on the left and Taiwan as the island. I live in Taipei, a city on the Northern tip of Taiwan.

My days in Vancouver had treated me to a lot of wandering while running. It was rare that I followed the same route from run to run. I attribute this to having such a large number of choices, each with it’s own special magic. Running the sea wall around Stanley Park or on the opposite side of the bay of the shore of Kitsilano, ultimately ending with a naked swim at Wrech Beach. Each of these running areas provided a wide range of variations, I was simply in heaven. This doesn’t even include my weekends on the Sunshine Coast and trail running which I’ll save for another entry.

In Taipei I’m left to discover a whole new set of running locations. The last month has my focus on the Danshui or Tamsui River and the green space the city has thankfully built around it. My impression was that Taipei was to be a big, dirty, industrial centre. In reality, the city has taken care to provide an extensive network of green space that primarily lines the banks of the network of rivers that run through the city and ultimately pour into the Taiwan Strait / China Sea.

I suspect due to the overwhelming experience of uprooting the familiarity of Canada and moving to Taipei I’ve become very regimented in my running routes. The path is the same with 10, 14 and 18 kilometre  segments. Each follows the same path, the longer ones simply extending the route a little further along the river.

The structure of following the same route has revealed an interesting new development in my training. I have clear split distances and a log of my times for each run at each split. It’s been very motivating to see my progress as I run each segment a little faster as well as get clear feedback when things are not going well. Being focused on time over a repeated fix distance has encouraged me to run faster, effectively having me do “tempo” (see Your Perfect Tempo at Runner’s World)  runs on a regular basis. I would have never dreamed that I would have made such clear progress over a period of only one month.

My goal of 1:40:00 for the half marathon distance is becoming a reality and I’m confident I’ll run under 4:00:00 for my next and second ever marathon at the Prague International Marathon.