3 GLORIOUS miles!

No, really.

So the treadmill is growing on me (I know, who IS this person?), but to get rid of some stress and clear my head, there’s nothing like an outdoor run.

I had to go to the diving shop to look at wetsuits (I was unsuccessful in my search), so figured if I’m going to go, might as well run there.  And run I did.  It was 86 degrees, sunny and muggy.  But it was one of those runs that the more I ran, the better I felt.  You know how sometimes you have runs where everything just *clicks*?  Today, it clicked.

Maybe because my mom’s box finally arrived and I was fueled by this…

Hmmmm…  Strong Brazilian coffee…

Or maybe it was all the head-clearing “make me sane and loving life again” sweat. 

But it wasn’t even a very scenic run, except when I passed by a couple of parks…

And don’t let the shade fool you, I was actually in the sun most of the time.  (Oh, see the sign behind me?  Another park that doesn’t allow pets.  SUCH A STUPID MANILA RULE!!!  Enforce people to clean up after their pets, instead of enforcing for pets to stay away, and you solve the problem!)

But, I digress…   The run was tough, my heart rate was high, but at no point did I think “I can’t do this” or “I need to walk.”  Heck, my Garmin didn’t even pick up a signal for the first mile of the run, and I didn’t let that get me down. 

By the end of the run, the sun had disappeared and the air was gloomy…  I even extended my run to make sure I got 3 miles in (turns out once I mapped it at home that it worked out perfectly, as I finished just short of a 5k).

And I was a sweaty drippy red mess…

But this was by far the best run I’ve had since landing in Manila.  It made me believe that I can run outside again.  Maybe all that treadmill work is helping out!

I got home, drank a banana protein powder + fresh papaya + chia seeds smoothie (crap, I may even have chia seeds stuck on my teeth in the picture below…) and got my dreams of laying by the pool shattered by a storm outside.

But even a storm in Manila sometimes brings out the rainbows!  So by the time we were ready to start our scuba diving class, we were faced with this:

It was the first day we actually did stuff in our diving class and spent 4 hours on a pool.  I can’t wait to get to the FUN part of diving…

Karl did look like a super hero, however, so it was all worth it at the end 🙂

This weekend?  Off to Batangas for our first dive.  The weather better hold up!  It will also be our first car trip outside of Manila.  Let’s hope we don’t get lost!