I like to think that I’m one of the best teachers in Taiwan. I work hard, I keep up-to-date, and I have the personality necessary to be a good teacher. But that is just “one of the best.” However there is one way that I am the absolute best at something in Taiwan. I am the fastest human in the country. It may sound absurd, but there really isn’t much competition in Taiwan. Sprinting is not really a sport here as it’s one of the areas where Taiwan is not allowed to participate on the international stage (because China only allows them to compete in certain events). Also while schools do have running tracks, most events that they have are usually long distance races.
And really while I know logically that there must be many many many people who are faster than me, I still do have the belief that I am the fastest person in Taiwan. But this is not a thing of pride or arrogance. Being fast is not something I ever worked on and it wasn’t the result of anything I did, so it’s hard to feel pride about. It’s like a tall person doesn’t feel proud that they are tall, cause it’s not the result of anything they did, it’s just the luck of the draw. I’ve always been extremely fast and honestly I squandered that because I always felt kind of guilty that other people would train so hard and I wouldn’t train at all but I would still always win. Even in Taiwan I’ve begrudgingly raced some trained sprinters and when I win I always feel embarrassed cause I know they worked really hard at it and they lose to some old foreigner in bare feet (cause I’m not so fast that I could win in my flip-flops).
But the real reason I’m embarrassed by it is because I know while I’m excellent at the 100 meters, I’m absolutely terrible at anything above that. I guess my body is just made for sprinting because 400m might as well be a mile to me. This is the way it has been all my life, I could go to the state championship in the 100m, but I would be dead last in my own school in the mile. And not to mince words, but hey it was America, there were some pretty large kids in my school.
Well I have always thought about trying to change this. About three years ago I started running about a mile (with my dog) at the riverside park near where I was living at the time. This quickly stopped as it soon became thunderstorm season, then it was too hot so I’d have to wait until very late at night to go running. This is actually what started my years of daily aerobics, yoga, and weightlifting at home. I could always find an excuse not to go running, so I changed to an exercise regime that I couldn’t avoid. The one problem with this kind of exercise is that it’s hard to measure improvement. Yes my muscles got bigger, but since I only have one set of weights (weights are expensive here) I have no idea just how strong I am. Yes I have more stamina, but exactly how much? Fast forward to a few months ago when I start using a bike and I was surprised to see how in less than a week 20 mile rides turned into rides of 50 miles and sometimes even above 70 miles. But this is on a bicycle, I was always curious of how I would do at long distance running.
Enter the shoes. They were a gift for my birthday. Shoes are actually quite expensive in Taiwan, with the exception of Chinese brands and Italian (sporting) brands. When I do get shoes I normally get “Combat” a Chinese brand, I previously had some of their basketball shoes, and a pair of their knockoff Merrell hiking shoes. Both of which actually lasted a long time. So I was thinking of getting some Combat running shoes, but then I saw this pair of Diadora, I just had to have them. Yellow shoes have that wonderful balance of being both absurd and awesome at the same time.
So now I had some shoes, but I was still a bit hesitant of going running, so what finally got me over the hump to go for a run? Tune in tomorrow.
