Hey hey, long time no see!
My past 8 weeks have been absolutely jam packed and wonderfully wild ones.
Throughout most of March, I spent my time at Sitjemam’s Muay Thai training camp where I ended up doing 52 hours of training. During that time I decided to squeeze in one of my Project 30 runs.
Usually I write about my runs as soon as I can after them in order for the experience to be as fresh as possible, but for these past three runs I found it very difficult to sit down for long enough stretches of time to get my thoughts to pape in a narrative and concise way. So, here I find myself writing at a yoga inspired hostel in Bali, Indonesia over a month later writing about my past runs.
This post is about the first of those runs. The run I did in the northern town of Pai, Thailand.
The Run
Pai is a beautiful mountain town situated in the far northern reaches of Thailand. It’s very easy to call this a hippie town as the main street, that also doubles as a highly walking street, is lined with shops that cater to hippie tourists that love a slower paced lifestyle and are search of spiritual rocks, trinkets or even for taking a mushroom trip alongside one of the many Buddhist temples.
But the town is much more than just a place for tourist to vacation at a slower pace than they would in Bangkok. Pai is also a major farming and agricultural town. At one point of my during my ultra I found myself on top of a large hill overlooking hundreds of farmers picking the season’s harvest. The farming comes with a major downside however, in Thailand, farmers are still using the slash and burn technique to farm. Slash and burn is what it sounds like, farmers will cut down a particular plot of land and then set fire to the remaining foliage, using the ashes as nutrients for planting crops. Luckily for me though, I planned to do my run day after a long night of rain, so any burning the night prior was relatively minimal and so was the smoke in the air.
Anyways, about my run…
First of all this run, was tough, I mean really tough! But it didn’t start off that way. I started my run at 6:30 am in order to have some light from day break, since the Sitjemam’s Muay Thai camp is located deep in a residential area with little to no light posts on the roads.
Besides the residual taste of smoke, I actually felt pretty good starting this run. It was one of those runs where I felt like I would be unstoppable. Everything seemed to be going right, my heart rate was perfectly situated in zone 2, the weather was relatively cool and crisp, and I had the chance to see the sun rise giving way to a sun drenched view of the mountains and lush fields. Just as I thought it couldn’t get better, as I crested a small winding hill, I saw a beautiful brownish elephant and her rider. After smiling and waving at them both, I felt a surge of happiness and motivation to continue my run. Many miles flew by as I periodically would get lost in between listing to the story of Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard on Audible or simply get lost in the serene beauty of Pai.
During this stretch of the run I ran through these noteworthy locations:
The entrance to the White Buddha of Pai: a beautiful mountain side temple that overlooks all of Pai
The Pai Memorial Bridge: It was still early by the time I crossed the bridge so I was the only one there and the trinket shacks were still just opening up
Pai Canyon, which I detoured to in order to catch a quick glimpse of the immense canyon
The Wat Nam Hu temple: a neighborhood temple that offered great shade for me to take a quick break at during my run
Eventually the time warping portion of my run came to a halt. From mile 17 onward I felt every step I was taking especially with each of the rolling hills. The thing about hills is that they suck to run up no matter their height especially when you’ve ran double digit miles. Each ascent and descent required more and more of my attention and grit to get through.
Then came the heat. As if on an appointed time the sun beating down hard by 10:30 am. The heat took its toll on me and it was time for me to take my first full stop in order to replenish my water and take a quick rest.
Resting
I took 4 long stops on this run, I was getting close to being dehydrated and very tired. The sun exposure and heat were a lot more intense than I was expecting them to be. To be honest it was a bit demoralizing having to take stops. I have taken breaks before in my runs but those were in order to be able to grab more water and usually not more than a minute or two. This time around I needed to completely stop and properly rest. It wasn’t that I was out of breath, it’s that I felt completely exhausted and wiped out. The combination of rolling hills and the intensity of the sun’s heat was more than enough reason for me to take these much needed rests. At the 25 mile mark, I took one last 5 minute rest at the bank of the Pai river where I splashed cool refreshing water over my body to give my self a revitalizing jolt of energy.
Finishing the Run
With only 5 miles left to go, I turned to my ‘marathon’ playlist on Spotify and dug in. As I have with the previous P30 runs, I broke down the run into one mile chunks and I gave myself an internal celebration with each mile that I conquered. Eventually, all I truly had left was that last mile. That last glorious mile! Then it came, the buzz on my Apple Watch that indicated that the 30 gloriously painful miles was over! An overwhelming surge overcame me as I screamed out a “Fuck yeah!” It felt so good to get this run completed. The heat nearly reached 90 degrees Fareinheit (~32 Celsius) so I was very excited to be out of the sun and to get a proper cool down in.
Post Run
As soon as I finished the run, I threw down a liter of protein milk and a couple juice boxes to replenish the sugar and caloric loss I had during the run. For recovery I spent nearly an hour using my Theragun and stretching out. I then of course had a massive Thai dinner complete with an order of Pad Thai, pineapple fried rice and mango sticky rice!
Gratitude & Feedback
Thank you for reading up into this point. Please share with me any thoughts or recommendations that you may have. I appreciate all of you that are continuing to follow me on this wild project as I try to live an uncharted and non-traditional life.
Keep pushing & much love!
-Dylan