Day 793-- Sleep of the Dead

I got back home at 1 a.m., Monday morning. On little to no sleep for the past 36-hours, I unpacked my bags and ate dinner with my wife.

I did not get up until after 4 p.m., still groggy, not wanting to move, I thought about one thing: I still need to run. 

So, I slowly got out of bed and got on my running clothes: green shorts, singlet-style white shirt, and my green Bikila Vibrams. I thought my ankle might continue to act up, but I was pleasantly surprised when it barley bothered me. I thought it might be because of all the time sitting, or the different environment in St. Louis i.e., no pollution, flat smooth surface, no over crowded problem. In Jakarta and Gili Air there was a huge over crowded problem. Almost everywhere I ran, there was so many people. In theory the too many people problem would seem mostly arbitrary, but in reality it is overwhelming. The mental exhaustion caused by running in public, surrounded by seemingly interminable hordes of people, makes each minute feel like an hour because I am making so many decisions in that minute. 

In Jakarta there was an endless stop and go with so many faces and things to look at. In contrast Saint Louis is relatively bleak with only an occasional reckless driver in my neighborhood as opposed to a continuous horde of people, people in cars, people  on bikes, people in motorcycles, people on foot, people in three-wheeled-small-taxi-cars that would drive into the alleyways, people in minivans, people in jeeps, and people on horses. There was people on top of people on top of chickens running in the street. 

In Saint Louis I was able to simply think about things and not fixate on the terrain and my environment constantly. The reflection made me appreciate the clean air in Saint Louis. I thought as I was running: it is good to be home. 

*Full disclose. It was difficult to find time to run everyday on my travels, but I want to be clear how I accomplished the time change difficulties. I always ran a consecutive day in that time zone because that seemed the most legitimate way to accomplish this difficult task. On the way to Indonesia I lost fourteen-hours when we got to Japan, so  I had to run earlier than I was use to doing. On the way back I gained a total of twelve-hours, so I had a longer Sunday giving me much more time to run. Originally I thought I might run twice on Sunday, but due to my sickness and inability to sleep on the plane ride I only ran once on Sunday, still accomplishing my goal of running at least a mile everyday consecutively. While traveling home I chose to run in Japan which was in local time around 9 a.m., the sun was shining, it made sense to take advantage of the scenic Japanese garden to Run in. I did not run again until around 5 p.m. Saint Louis time on Monday, but this is not because of any subterfuge on my part, but in dealing with the difficulties that exist when having to travel halfway across the world.