#7 (15) Exercise is Pumping Death Out Of The Body

Terry Fox pictured above.

Before the run I'd intended to go out on a 150 heart rate. Well, very soon I was at 160.
There was a middle aged dude ina Colombia cap, and also wearing LIVESTRONG on his wrist.
We chased each other and I finally caught him with 1.5km to go. We had a short, breathless conversation, then I pulled away.

Time: 39:30 (last year: 44:00)
Distance: 8km
Heart rate: 165avg (highest 178) (last year 169 avg heart rate)
Kcal: 660

While I was running I had a kind of literary epiphany. I just felt a lot of lactic acid burning my legs, and my lungs very heavy, and burning for air. It felt like my body was just squeezing pollution out of it, and that poisons were being forced out of the pores of my body, all the smoke and junk and preservatives consumed over months and months, were, in these moments of running hard, being forced out of crevasses in tissues and adipose. I thought:

Exercise is purposefully pumping death out of your body.

Am quite impressed that I appear to be fitter at now than at the same time last year. Last year though I was suffering from exhaustion and some kind of sickness which started after the sunstroke and dehydration of a very long and hot ride.

Also really enjoyed this run. It winds along the Han River, under Korea's tallest cigarette smoke colored building, and there's a great atmosphere. While I was running I watched a speedboat pass beside me pulling a girl skier behind it. Rollerbladers and cyclists glide past. Dogs run amuck and frisbees float in the end of summer air.
And you see so many fresh faces, and some old friends.

When I woke up at 6:20am I didn't feel like going into Seoul this morning. I thought I might as well run 10km in the park. Then I remembered that this is a Terry Fox run. Terry Fox was a Canadian who lost one leg to bone marrow cancer, and later his life. Before he died he tried to run across the width of Canada, running one marathon, every day, on one real leg and one artificial leg.
He kept this up for over 3000 kilometres, and a few months, before the cancer caught up with him. He didn't cross the breadth of Canada, but his legacy has come full circle.

I wonder if there is a Terry Fox Run in South Africa.
If there isn't, and as far as I know, there's ins't, someone (maybe me), should get an organisation going to that there will be. It's just a cause that resonates with so many.

Have run 4 times out 4 this week. Happy with that.