9Km in Luanda - Angola

After a very long 13 hour day I had very little energy left in me but made the effort to get out of the house and get some sweat out of the system.  To be honest, I did not want to do anything other than shower and hit the bed sheets, but I got home and saw my sister training to her Insanity Workouts DVD and that pumped me up to get out of my suit, put my shorts and sneakers on and hit the road.

I was a bit worried about running with my iPhone strapped to my arm but I figured people would be more curious as to why I was running that late at night than figuring out a way to rob me.   I forgot my Garmin Forerunner 310XT at home in the UK so I had to figure a way of counting my Kms and, most importantly, my time.  Time would not be an issue as the wonderful designers at Apple in California found a way of putting in multiple timers on the phone.  I used the stopwatch to count my time as even if I wanted to use any of the multiple running and GPS tracking aps available for the iPhone, unfortunately,  my mobile carrier (3 UK) does not have roaming here in Angola so they would not work anyway.

I get out of the house and hit the road, and immediately I start feeling pain all over... it was my left hip, right shin, and left knee! I was not going to last long if this pain were to last for long! Fortunately t didn't and I managed to actually go the longest I've ever gone in Angola.  Went down to the bay then to the island where I was able to, for the first time, jog on the "Calçadão" made specially for leisure in the Island of Luanda.  It was nice to see the young and the"not so young" jogging, running or walking on the beach on what was a very pleasant  evening.  I even saw a couple of newly weds taking photos by the beach with their families, which is not uncommon here in Luanda.  All in all it was not a bad jog taking into account my long ass day before that.  According to www.Dailymile.com I ran 9.24Kms, and according to my iPhone's stopwatch I did it in 52m:33s, giving me a pace of 5:34/Km which is pretty crap for a normal day, but considering my 13h day I'll keep my mouth shut and won't complain too much.

Today was the first day of our event in Luanda and, again, it has been a long day. I'll see how I feel when I get home and hope to do about the same distance tonight....if my body allows me to.