Exercising in MIQ

Posted on May 13, 2021 by thewildcreanberries

When you’re in MIQ (Managed isolation & Quarantine) the plan is to stay in your room as much as possible. Facilities have different rules, for some you can be out for only 30 minutes a day, for others, an hour.

At the Ibis Ellerslie, we can be out for an hour but you have to book it in. You can’t just wander out of your room whenever you want. If another bus from the airport is coming in, there will be an announcement over the PA saying when there’s a total lockdown of the exercise area.

Only one ‘bubble’ is permitted in the elevator at a time. You then walk on the lefthand side of the yellow dotted line at the entrance (don’t dare walk on the right). A member of the Defense Force checks you have the blue wristband on (says you don’t have Covid) and records your room number.

This is where you join a number of people at 2 metres apart walking around a specific carpark. There’s security guards onsite to make sure your mask is up and you keep separated. They take their job very seriously. It does get very monotonous going around and around the same circuit. The first day we went it was raining so that meant foggy glasses and it just wasn’t fun.

I’ve got into the habit of listening to podcasts. Pete’s given up going outside because he kept getting told to put his mask over his nose. He almost had a stand up argument with a police officer about it.

Instead he does a few exercises in our room (see video). I do a bit of exercise in our room but I do like getting out in the fresh air every couple of days.

Why I Don’t Run Anymore

Posted on July 12, 2017 by thewildcreanberries

I have been running pretty much my whole life. I remember my dad kicking all 4 of us kids out the door to go running with him. He died when I was 14 and I think it was part of the grieving process that I just kept it up.

Throughout high school I entered races on sports day but I was never THAT good, especially the sprints. Doesn’t help when you have the New Zealand champion at the same school.

shoes

I think I like running because it’s just me and my headphones out there. It’s a great way to shake things off, especially if you’re in a grump or trying to work things through in your head.

I took a break when my husband and kids came along. We were youth workers and threw ourselves into that 110%. New Zealand winters are wickedly cold and there is no incentive to go skating on black ice when you’re running. That’s the bonus of living in Kenya, you never get great highs and lows in the weather.

When we moved to Sydney, Australia, we lived close to the beach. There is nothing like the smell of salt water mixed with fresh air. It’s quite magical down by the ocean. You can have a really crappy day but head down to the beach and it all melts away. Most mornings I would get out for a run and then a quick walk on the beach.

I also like running because I like food. I’m not a piggy, I just appreciate food. However, as you get older, shedding the weight becomes a major challenge. Running on sand as well as up and down stairs gives you great thigh muscles. But, nothing ever came off the waist. Science tells us that something like 80% of weight loss is from the food we eat and only 20% from exercise. I’m not disciplined enough to go super healthy.

We’ve been living in Kenya for 5 years now. For the last couple of years it feels like I’ve been more out than in because of international travel. Mostly it’s for family stuff but also fundraising. Overall this year I’m 6 months in Kenya and 6 months overseas, with me being away for 6 weeks at a time.

If only the place I went running was as good as this.

So I’ve decided for the rest of the year that I won’t go running. I’ve found it pretty impossible to go running when I’m on the road. Most of my friends who travel for work stay at hotels that have a gym. Me, I stay on people’s sofas or spare room. While I do find that going out for a run is a good way to get a lay of the land, I am the worst when it comes to directions. Also, because I move from one town to another after a few days and spend at least the first week trying to get over jetlag it’s near impossible to get into a routine.

Instead of running which I can’t sustain when I’m on the road, I’m power walking. It’s easier on the knees and it looks just as good as my ‘granny shuffle’. It doesn’t build as much muscle but I’m compensating by doing some exercises like situps and squats. So my ‘plan’ when I’m travelling is to at least walk three times a week for 30 minutes, which is what I do when I’m at home. At least that way I’m getting some form of exercise.

Will I ever go back to running? I hope so. I’ve finally found a better route that has less people walking on it and less potholes or a footpath. There’s no sewerage filled streams to run over and lots of trees. My running shoes are more than 5 years old so will pick up a spare pair I have in New Zealand and hopefully get back into it. I can’t see myself entering into any 15km ‘funruns’ but I can see myself enjoying the great outdoors.

My typical running gear. This was in NZ when I tried walking on the beach as my exercise.

I’ll be 49 in a few months but I’m not going to let that nor my environment dictate my health to me. I hope to get back to running, I really do like it and at the same time I hate it because it’s such hard work. But then, I do like eating a lot!

The Challenge of Exercising in Nairobi

Posted on February 5, 2016 by thewildcreanberries

Nairobi is not the easiest place to keep fit. There are lots of gyms popping up but there are very few places you can get out in the fresh air. We have Karura Forest which you can walk or run through, for us it’s a 30 minute drive away. If you’re into tennis there’s a number of courts to hire. Some people risk their lives biking. I think Nairobi has one actually hockey field but it’s under construction. We have the only ice skating rink in East Africa and costs $10 for a one hour session.

My faithful runners have kept me going for 5 years

So there’s not a lack of variety of things to do, you just need to have the budget and time to drive to where you need to go. Liz plays soccer (we call it football here) on Saturday mornings and she’s just discovered volleyball on Friday nights.

For me I like to run.

I like getting out there as soon as the sun rises and it’s safe to be out there by myself. This means the earliest I can go is 7am. Because we’re close to the Equator the sun starts rising at 6.30am, every day and it’s pitch dark by 7pm.

Normal 7am traffic

I’ve never been a fast runner, in fact it’s probably more jogging than running. I’ve dubbed it my ‘granny shuffle’.

It’s not exactly easy to run here though. Hundreds of people are walking on the side of the road to get to work. 85% of Nairobians rely on public transport. That means they walk as far as possible to reach a bus to take them to work. The average person spends 1 – 2 hours each way to work. That means I have to run in between people, and most don’t move over.

There are very little footpaths in our area. You simply walk on a dirt track on the side of the road. More footpaths are being built which is great, but not around us. I try and run on the road when it’s clear but with the condensed traffic it doesn’t happen much. Some idiot on a local building site decided to put the broken tiles and bricks into a shallow ditch that suffices as a path. It’s really dangerous whether you are walking or running. It’s easy to twist an ankle.

The ‘footpath’

Buses are my biggest annoyance. The other morning there were 3 school buses outside our compound picking up school kids. The blocked the whole road and don’t care about pedestrians. Just up the road a bus pulled up in front of me and parked up on the only footpath we have. There’s plenty of private schools in the area and kids are picked up from 6am onwards. It’s sad to see the little preschoolers being picked up super early and then they get dropped off at 5pm.

Between the traffic, dirt tracks and people it’s a real challenge to even want to get out there.

However, I’ve found a secret place.

A 5 minute walk from our house is a gated community full of huge houses hidden behind large fences and security guards. Pete tells me there are a few politicians living there which explains the niceness of it all. Only residents can drive in there, there’s painted lines on the road and there are no potholes at all. In fact you don’t feel like you’re in Nairobi at all.

Running along there with the beautiful green trees, no noise (except the guard dogs) is just serene.

The entrance into the gated community

Over the last couple of months of exercising there I’ve seen the regulars and spotted the new ones out there either walking or pounding the pavement. There’s even a small fitness group with a personal trainer that meets a few times a week.

A little slice of heaven

We move out of our place at the end of the month and I often wonder if we will get an apartment in the same area when I return in September. If not, then I’m going to have to start finding a safe running area all over again. This one took me 2 years to find this one, I wonder how long it will take to find the next one.

How red I get at the end of it all

Keeping Fit In Kenya

Posted on April 23, 2015 by thewildcreanberries

There’s a group of us that get together at our place each Wednesday night. We have a meal and then one person leads a discussion from the Bible. It’s a low key but important night where we can connect with each other and God.

A few of us have decided we want to get healthier and fitter than in the past. We’ve also made ourselves accountable to getting out and exercising.

But, like everything else in Kenya, it’s complicated.

Sure, you can join a gym but it’s anywhere from $80 a month for a small room with little equipment up to $150 a month for something decent. You can do a Zumba class for around $11.

There seems to be lots of gyms in various sizes around town. I’ve visited a gym in the city where our lawyer goes and it was packed during mid morning. We have one about a 10 minute drive away but it’s fairly expensive. The biggest issue is actually physically getting to one. To say traffic is busy is a slight understatement. Unless you’ve driven in Italy, Indonesia or Mexico you don’t have a clue of how packed things get here.

Security is a huge issue here. I know of someone who was ambushed on her way to a boxing class at 6am, just outside the gym.

When it comes down to it though, it’s easy to make excuses wherever you are for not getting healthy. I’ve a friend who tells me there just isn’t time in 24 hours to look after herself. Another one says there’s too much work to be done. And I’ve told myself ‘it might rain’ and avoid what could’ve been a good 45 minutes of my day.

So here’s Sharon’s solution to keeping healthy in Kenya (or wherever you live):

1. Commit yourself to a healthier lifestyle

It’s easy to say you want to lose some weight or feel better about yourself, but it doesn’t happen by doing nothing. I believe a lot of the battle is in our minds. I know when I’m running as soon as I start thinking about walking, it’s not long before it happens. Commitment means paying some sort of cost. However, be realistic. Start small. I started by doing 20 situps and then added 10 each week until I got up to 100. I did the same with other exercises like squats and pushups (okay I do the girly ones).

Too many people start with a bang and then end up fizzing out.

Don’t fizz out like a sparkler

Liz plays soccer on Saturdays so she focuses on becoming healthier because she wants to enjoy it more.

2. Get to bed earlier

Whether you consider yourself a morning or night person, you CAN change your behavior. We used to be youth workers and it wasn’t unusual to be still working at 11pm most nights. When we moved to Australia Pete started in construction work and he would be up at 5am. He still operates better at night time but you can’t burn the candle at bother ends. If you’re a later night person just start by going to bed 30 minutes earlier for a week. The next week try going another 30 minutes earlier. That way your body can adjust.

Here in Kenya it gets dark at 7pm and light at about 6.45am, the beauty of being close to the Equator. While we don’t have to worry about daylight savings or long/short days, you can make the most of these, even if it’s an evening walk.

3. Get out of bed earlier

We all like that extra 30 minutes in the mornings to snooze some more, but we are the first to claim that there aren’t enough hours in the day. Like I said, it doesn’t get really light until just before 7am, which is a bummer because I wake up between 5.30 and 6am. I have to wait until at least 7 before I can go for a run. It eats into my day and sometimes I can’t do any exercise for a few days. On Tuesdays I Skype our daughter Hannah who lives in New Zealand at 7am. It normally lasts for an hour so after that it’s a mad rush to get as much done, downloaded or sent before the power goes off for it’s normal shutdown on Tuesdays.

4. Make it part of your lifestyle

I don’t go for a run because I’m a running freak. I do it because I enjoy pushing my body, it makes me drink water (which I don’t do enough) and it gets me off my butt. I run/walk three times a week first thing in the morning. I like putting on my headphones, have some good music going and hit the pavement (which we don’t have many of). I know of others who get out in the afternoons and I pass a neighbor who is going for a walk as I get into the compound. You have to make whatever works for you, but you have to start.

When we got back from Australia a few months ago we made the decision not to have any sodas unless we go out. When we have visitors and they bring it, we drink it. We’re not super religious about it, we just made a decision that we thought we could live with. Every now and then we might get a bottle of Coke with something like takeout chicken and chips but most of the time we get fruit juice. I’m not totally convinced that the juice in Kenya isn’t laden with sugar, but at least it tastes better.

5. Add variety

I haven’t done it for a while, but when we were living in our other apartment I set up a little workout area in my lounge. It was a simple yoga mat and a large gym ball. I had a routine of exercises I could do as I wasn’t running at that stage. Now that I’m hitting the pavement (or dirt) I plan to do a gym workout when I can’t get outside.

Instead of having a Coke when you go out for a meal, try water or a juice. I’m a routine driven person but even I have learned that you’ve got to challenge the way you do things.

The reason I started running again after 2 years was because I had set in my mind why I couldn’t do it:

The fumes from the trucks are disgusting
I could trip over where there’s no footpath
Maybe one day we could find the funds for a gym
I don’t have time

It didn’t matter how many excuses I put up, the fact is I just had to get on and do it.

Even with my running I am forced to have some variety. Because of security issues I choose to run at 7 in the morning because there are hundreds of people walking to work. It’s highly unlikely I’ll be mugged. I don’t take my apartment keys but I do take my phone which is in an arm band under my tee shirt.

I don’t follow the same route, I go different ways on different days. I also tell Pete which way I’m going. He knows I should be back within the hour, so if I’m not and he can’t contact me – then he can panic.

6. Enjoy your life

Liz and I were held up at gunpoint at our house around 6 weeks ago. Although it was horrible and traumatic we’ve decided not to let it define who we are and what we will do. We chose to live here and will make the most of it. We work with some great people, have made some lifelong friends and generally enjoy life here. We are super blessed in Nairobi because local fruit and veges are really cheap to buy, so we could have fresh fruit juice and smoothies every day if we wanted to. We could have a maid for all of $180 a month if we had the budget. We can choose around 10 national game parks within a 4 hour drive. It’s a 5 hour drive to Tanzania, a 60 minute flight to about 5 other countries. There are lots of sport and cultural events within Nairobi – every weekend. If we were the clubbing type we could go to a different spot every night.

We all know that a healthier lifestyle and exercise a few times a week has psychological benefits. The problem is we want it all without the pain, commitment and cost involved.

But, if I can do it in Kenya, so can you – anywhere in the world.

Run, run as fast as you can

Posted on February 16, 2015 by thewildcreanberries

One of the few things my father left as a legacy was the love of running. I can’t remember what age we were made to start running but I remember being in middle school. I never entered competitions except for the Round The Bays in 1983, just after my father died.

I’m not a fast runner, now I do what I call a ‘granny shuffle’.

But I do like to run. At 46 though, the body doesn’t quite bounce back like it used to.

We’ve lived in Kenya since 2012 and I pretty much decided that running would go on the back burner. While we lived in Sydney I could jog along the streets and then the beach, it was great. I entered the City to Surf, the biggest funrun in the world where 80,000 people run the 14km trek up Heartbreak Hill to Bondi Beach. I ran it years ago.

My finish wasn’t so enthusiastic.

Nairobi is a little (okay a lot) different to run in. I can’t go for a run before 6.45am as it’s just getting light. At that time of the morning there are footpaths full of people making their way to work. There’s no ‘keeping to the left’ you just have to squeeze in between the crowds. I actually like to go later when there’s less people but it’s way too hot.

One of the biggest obstacles for safely running here is the footpaths, or lack of them. Around where we live there are a few footpaths but they have holes in them or are broken up in places. When you’re running you kind of feel like you’re in a cross country event. About 200 metres from our place you turn a corner to go down and up a hill. You would have to be insane to try and even run over that spot. A few times I’ve nearly twisted my ankle on loose rocks.

And then there are the trucks.

I don’t know what it is about trucks here but they are way overloaded and go slower than a snail up hill. They puff out this thick, dark smoke that doesn’t go in the air but out at face level. It’s gross.

This photo doesn’t even show how bad the smoke from the trucks are.

So for the first few years I didn’t bother running. I set up a home gym area but once you get up to 100 squats, situps, pushups and the like, what’s next?

We returned back from our overseas trip a month ago and I decided ‘what the heck, why not give running another go’. So I have.

I’m only a couple of weeks into it, and amping up the anti to see if my foot can handle a run three times a week. I’ve a Morton’s Neuroma under my right foot which plays up whenever it feels like it. It’s like having a hot, sharp poker up through your foot. In 2011 and 2012 I climbed Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. In 2012 the last day was excruciating because my foot played up so much. I just couldn’t wait to get down.

My faithful runners.

On March 8^th, Lizzie and I will be running 10km’s in ‘The First Lady’s Half Marathon’ around Nairobi. I really want to get up to a half marathon status but not sure if my foot would make it. One of my dreams is to run in the Lewa Marathon through an animal conservancy. Here’s hoping I can do it by next year.

So why do I run?

I run because I like getting out there with my headphones on and not worry about all of the world’s problems. I need to run to keep myself fit. When I run I drink a lot more water than if I sit in front of a computer all day. I run because I can’t afford to go to a gym.

And I run because I like it.

thewildcreanberries

Our Adventures In Kenya & Beyond

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