Phew, was it hot!
This Tasek Lama route is becoming a bit of a favourite now. It’s not bad really. There aren’t proper pavements for the first kilometre, followed by some treacherous narrow road edge treading for the third kilometre, and then a full blown deep excavation/construction site that I manage to casually dawdle through. Continue reading
Below are the stats from the day of my previous post when I took the photo of the silly monkeys at the entrance of Tasek Lama. I mostly go to Tasek to have a little relaxed walk on the short trail with my friends, which is why I need to get my run done and out of the way beforehand. Yes, I go for a run AND THEN go for a little “exercise session” with my friends immediately after. It makes sense because Continue reading
I’ve been told it isn’t safe to traverse the long trails at Tasek Lama on your own, especially at the time of day when the trails are quiet. You don’t know what psychopath is lurking out there… Or (supposedly) what supernatural being. Or not-so-supernatural being, i.e. aggressive psycho monkey or venomous creature. Anyhow, one morning a friend cancelled on me at the last minute when I was extremely looking forward to the walk. I couldn’t resist the temptation so I ventured forth into the wild jungle by myself. Probably shouldn’t ever do this again. In the case that I do though, I will definitely make sure someone knows where I’m going, what I’m doing, and exactly which trail I’ll be on. The world is such a terrible place, but YOLO.
I don’t think my poor Garmin can handle all the tree cover! My pace was all over the place, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t bad as the stats are telling it really! I was on 0:00 min/km… Objective proof I was teleporting.
Check out this satellite image. That’s some proper tree cover you can’t deny. Intense tree cover which could actually put my life at risk… What was I thinking?! Must never do this alone again!
Love, Brunei Runner. xxx
I actually thought this one was particularly difficult mentally, which was why I ended up walking a lot of it. I wanted to give up. And I did (clearly shown by the embarrassing lap splits right at the bottom of this post). The best bit of the stats saved to last. fml.
p.s. I wonder whether humidity affects the difficulty of a run?
Brunei Runner. x
My embarrassing run and walk intervals. The second “lap” represents a portion where I walking on a really unstable bridge. The other slow laps are just me gasping for air and dying.
It’s quite easy to get lost at the Tasek trails. I think I need to go there another few more times before I stop getting lost! If you’re planning to go try out the long Tasek trails yourself, please try to start early to avoid getting caught out in the dark. It starts to get pretty creepy around ten to six. Next thing you know you’re out there in the jungle in pitch black. Unless you love being out there in the dark, and would like to take the expression “being at one with nature” to an extreme level, you DO NOT want this to happen to you! Another thing to note – don’t fully trust those maps you find along the paths. There will be points along the route (not indicated on this map) where the path divides. GPS does not help either because those routes aren’t specified on Google Maps. I believe the one obvious thing you could do is to just try out the trails and familiarise yourself with the route. Start early (around four would give you two hours) and don’t get disheartened when you get lost – you can see from the map below that I got lost today too, stopping and tracing back my steps to where the path last divided. You can kind of tell where the path is just by the presence of people walking along it. This is not a fail-safe way to know the route though! People do use alternative paths! Also, I would suggest bringing company with you. In the case of failure, you can take relief in the fact that someone else is there with you (also, failing with you)!
Anyway, I had a wonderful time killing my legs on those hills today and I hope you would too when you go there yourself. Just think of the beautiful legs you will have once you’ve done it (about ten or thirty times – don’t kid yourself, you need to work to have beautiful legs).
Stop getting fat and work.
Brunei Runner. x
A bit of background and reasons why I started this.
I just moved to Brunei six weeks ago and was excited to start running here. First thing that was on my mind was to find a running buddy or group that I could go with to familiarise myself with places that were good to run. After googling and asking around about runners clubs/groups, I quickly realised information about them weren’t exactly accessible by the general public. There were no websites, no facebook groups… A quick search on Garmin Connect turned up absolutely nothing. meetup.com only listed one event/activity which would consist, apparently, of geeks doing geeky technology things like debating, hacking and copyright piracy, or whatever they do that’s legal in Brunei but illegal elsewhere. I asked a friend whom I knew ran himself and he recommended some roads you could run along. I mean, roads?! Seriously, with all the beautiful nature you can find in Brunei the best place to go running is along the roads. Like shut up, please.
So I set out, forever alone as usual, to places I knew and have heard to be popular spots for running (or jogging, as many seem to adore calling it here). To name the places – Tasek Lama, Jalan Menteri Besar Recreation Park (JMBRP), and just today, Shahbandar. Tasek and Shahbandar, I absolutely adore! They have some great trails with loads of cute monkeys. I got chased by a cheeky monkey today because I meowed at it. That’s never happened before, and I’m really unsure as to whether monkeys are dangerous creatures? When I waved it away, it stopped and watched me continue on my way. JMBRP is quite the disappointment. Good enough if you want to do laps of that wonderful concrete. Laps and laps and more laps! Because it’s only 1.5 km and life isn’t short at all. I suppose that’s where roadsides come in..
I suppose you can tell what direction this blog is going to take from this point on. The blog title is pretty self-explanatory. I hope to be as informative as possible, but we’ll see about that.
If you are a frustrated runner in Brunei yourself and looking for running buddies or even just information, I would love to hear from you! If you’re a happy, satisfied runner in Brunei, I wouldn’t mind hearing from you either.
Thanks for reading,
Brunei Runner. x
Adventures of a Runner in Brunei 