As a member of the International Association Of Ultrarunners, I did a 10K “run & hike” in my backyard loop in connection with the “IAU Global Solidarity Weekend”. This event was initially conceived in 2020 during the Covid-19 Pandemic Lockdown and since then this event was conducted every year. The Philippine Association of Ultrarunners (PAU) which I am the President for the past 14 years, had been joining this event representing my country, Philippines. There was a time that only selected runners within each team-country would join this yearly event. For the past events, Philippines had been represented by the PAU runners with a team of 10 male and 10 female runners. And as the President, I would join the group of countries’ Presidents for this event.

However, for this year, the IAU had created a Facebook Page where anybody among the runner-members would post their running experience as part of this year’s “IAU Global Solidarity Weekend Run”. I have the impression that this event is open to the public and anybody would just run and post his or her running results during the duration of the event. Actually, this is a very good format and it would be a good way for every runner to be motivated to run without any limit of distance and time.

And so, for today, I did a 10-kilometer distance by “running and hiking” for more than two hours inside my backyard where I have been running and hiking within a loop that has a distance of 800-900 meters per loop. It was hot and humid and I am glad that my backyard loop is almost covered with fruit trees. I did still sweat and got tired after this activity. But it was worth it for the day.

What is unique in my “running and hiking” was that I was wearing my heaviest denim jeans and Chelsea Work Boots. I did it purposely because I was trying to fade my denim jeans and then “breaking-in” my Red Wing Chelsea Work Boots which I started using in my backyard works for the past 2 months. The same with my jeans, I have been using it for the past 82 days out of the 366 days (one year) to wear it. At the end of the year, pictures of this denim jeans will be submitted to the company brand who made it and there will be a selection committee who will select the Best Fades for such Denim Jeans. By the way, this competition is open to only people who ordered the jeans from the company. However, I am not vying for any position in this competition as I would like to experience what it is like to fade the “heaviest denim jeans in the world”. The denim fabric weighs 33 ounces per square yard and if you put it in context, the ordinary Levi’s Denim Jeans has a weight of 10-12 ounces per square yard depending if it is an ordinary woven denim or selvedge denim. Oh well, I will explain in my incoming posts on the difference between an ordinary denim jeans and a selvedge denim jeans.

So, I will make another “run and hike” tomorrow and and hope to post my activity on the Facebook Page on Monday.

Thanks for reading and thank you for your support.

For the past years, I have been buying my flight tickets 2-3 months before my scheduled flight and most of the time they are more expensive. Lately, I have found out that buying your flight tickets as early as 5-6 months makes a lot of difference. So, since then, I made sure to plan and study my calendar one year ahead and consider the period to purchase my flight ticket which is 5-6 months before. The main consideration or reason why buying your flight ticket very early is because it would be very cheap.

At the advent of Online transactions, most of the travellers choose to schedule and purchase their flight tickets through online on the flight carrier’s website or to flight ticketing platforms. However, since I don’t have a Credit Card (although Debit Cards are also allowed but the limit of online purchase is only P 30,000.00 which is below the flight ticket’s price), it is impossible for me use these online websites and travel platforms. With this situation, I have to resort to asking my Travel Agency to do the purchasing for me which was the way I have been doing through the years. The Travel Agency will advise you about the terms “Peak and Low Seasons” of travellers. Peak Season means more expensive flight tickets and Low Season means cheaper flight tickets where your savings would be added for your accommodation and food expenses.

In my personal opinion, choosing a Travel Agency is the best option for the first time travelers. I am so glad that I have been using a Travel Agency since in the 1980s and the staff would always give me the best option (cheapest deal!) Of course, the Travel Agency would always advise and answer your questions if you have doubts about purchasing your round trip ticket. The travel agent will inform you about the “High and Low” peak seasons of travellers. And by the way, I always pay in cash.

As part of your planning, make sure to find out if you need a VISA to visit a country. This is the document that will be attached to your Passport which allows you to visit the country you are going or visit. The Travel Agency will advise you if you need to apply for a Visa depending on the country you are visiting. In all the Southeast Asian countries to include Hongkong and Macau, citizens of the Philippines do not need any Visa to visit these countries.

As an advise, you can start experiencing in traveling abroad by choosing places that are very near the Philippines. In my opinion, Hongkong is the best destination to experience your first travel abroad. The reasons will be explained in my next blog post!

Thanks for reading and for your support.

I will be starting a series of posts in this blog about traveling abroad and will try to help my readers, make this blog as a guide and maybe, inspire others to do the same as what I have experienced. Before my retirement from the active military service, I have started this blog about running and my running adventures before and after I retired. I have traveled more countries abroad in other countries because of running and I really enjoyed the experience.

However, after the Covid-19 pandemic I have reduced my running training and I could only afford and do at least one marathon race a year. Due to old age, I can still train for 9-10 months for my marathon race and have the remaining months as my recovery period.

Starting this year, at the age of 72 years old, I have promised myself to travel at least two countries for this year. I have just concluded my first trip for this year after an 8-day stay in Osaka, Japan. I will write the details of my trip and stay in this second largest city in Japan in the coming days.

For a person to travel abroad on a pleasure or holiday trip, one must have a Passport. Passport is the most important document that one would carry in order to travel abroad. Other things like Round Trip Ticket and Accommodation places will follow later. Overall, planning is the most important thing to do before going to a trip abroad. The first first of the plan is to have a passport.

As far as I know, one should be able to get a passport, if living in the Philippines, the most easy way. Simply search on Google on how to apply for a new passport in the Philippines and this one would appear. https://psahelpline.ph/blogs/passport-application-and-renewal-the-ultimate-guide?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw7-SvBhB6EiwAwYdCAVSzG6aOzt0JQDayfC0de8aImMGeDIP0SMI_Yu9tBxFHvAjJsbJpZBoC6XIQAvD_BwE

Follow the procedure above and everything will be alright. Give at least, one month (which is too long already for your planning stage to consume as your first step in being able to travel abroad).

If you have already a valid passport, then you can now travel abroad.

But first, consider what is the purpose of your trip. For pleasure, holiday, group tour, shopping, to experience other culture, meet friends you met on Social Media, and simply just relax and get away from the daily grind in your house or in your locality, have some pictures to post on Social Media and others.

In my next post, I will discuss some recommendations on the reasons why you should travel abroad. For me, I just want to wander around and “feed” good things to my eyes.

I was able to run non-stop using my heavyweight denim jeans and Converse Chuck Taylor with a distance of 5K. It took me 59:20 minutes with an average pace of 11:51 minutes per kilometer. It is very slow but I am still happy because I was able not to walk during the workout.

After the running workout, I made a 20-minute stationary cycling in a very slow but consistent cycle pace. This is another way for me to sweat a lot and it was worth the time.

This will be my last running workout with more concentration on the distance covered. My next workout will concentrate on the number of hours and minutes on foot. It will still be continuous non-stop running workout.

Day 5 was my Rest Day and I did not run and walk because I decided to have this day as my rest day. There was a “brownout” or electric power interruption that started at 6:00 AM (in the morning) and I felt lazy after not being able to post a blog. Oh well…

I activated my cellular data connection with my cell phone just to be able to look for some updates in my social media accounts for a few minutes. And after posting some updates on my X account, I thought of making some video content to my You Tube Channel. I thought of this while I was about to wake up from bed. Actually, I did this once last year for me to show my subscribers one of the things that I do to my selvedge denim to develop nice creases and “honeycombs” to the fabric. I collated all the clips that I made and formed it in a short video or “reels”.

Using my heavyweight selvedge denim with my dumbbells and improvise/DIY Barbell, I was able to make some videos and I was able edit and collate them into two separate video contents. One video on landscape (horizontal screen/wide screen) which needs a voice over and vertical screen mode which needs some written words on the video and some music. I have yet to finalize these videos before I will be able to post them in my YT Channel. Aside from those exercises, I did some clips also while I was running in some segments of my backyard loop. I was satisfied of what I have done as a “newbie” video content maker.

The electric power was restored at 4:00 PM and I only did a short walk after that.

After 3 days of running continuously for 3K and 3.5K, I thought of one of the running and endurance sports training principles of “Hard & Easy Days” workouts before I started my daily running workout. So, I decided to make it an “easy day” yesterday and I decided to walk/hike.

As a result, the hike/walk became some sort of walkathon (faster walk) within the middle of my workout and I really enjoyed it. I was able to do my workout for almost one hour, to be exact, 58:52 minutes, covering a distance of 4.42 kilometers which was more than my daily distance covered from the previous days. I was walking at a pace of 13:19 minutes per kilometer and it was a breeze before I decided to stop my workout.

Just the same, I was wearing my heavyweight selvedge denim jeans and my CROCS sandals during the workout.

Before this workout, I made a video content for my YouTube Channel and had it posted last night. And to my surprise, it got a lot of views for the duration of 10 hours since I published it. And for the first time, I got 8 comments in my channel for the past 10 hours which I answered immediately upon reading them. The topic on my video content is my decision to switch or change the heavyweight selvedge denim jeans to a lighter one as my competition pair for the Year 4 Indigo Invitational denim Fade Competition. I think I made a post on this blog about such event in the past. Anyway, I will make a separate post/story on this blog about this.

If you are a follower or subscriber on this blog, you can visit me on YT Channel and search for “Jovenal Narcise”. Please subscribe, too! Thank you!

Yesterday was my Day 3 of running. I ran a distance of 3.52 kilometers with my heavyweight denim jeans and Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers which is half kilometer farther than the distance I usually ran two days previously. It took me 36:26 minutes as I tried my best to run non-stop in my Backyard Loop. The workout resulted to an average pace of 10:21 minutes per kilometer which was slower than I had the previous day by 2 seconds. Not bad.

After removing my wet shirt from my perspiration, I did a 16-minute stationary biking/cycling and I continued to sweat a lot. Actually, I did this workout the day before but I did it for 10 minutes only.

By the way, I did these workouts on the later part in the afternoon. I started at 5:00 PM and it was about a few minutes before sunset (6:00 PM) when I finished.

I will be continuing this daily workout in the coming days.

Before I took my shower last night, I took my weight and the weighing scale registered 141 pounds. I think I was able to eat a lot for lunch yesterday.

This was my second day running 3K in my backyard loop and it was done on the later part of yesterday afternoon. As usual, I was running with my heavyweight selvedge denim and now with my old and dependable Converse Chuck Taylor in black.

It was a slow start and I was able to maintain my pace. Actually, it was not a perfect running workout but it was some sort of jogging but I was able to maintain it without stopping. It is understable that the weight of my jeans could reach more than 4 pounds which is almost 2 kilograms. The reason why I am using this jeans is because I am joining a denim fade competition for one year and I selected the heaviest denim jeans as my competition pair.

Despite some difficulty in running, I was able to make my run faster this time as compared to my result yesterday. I finished the run in 31:03 minutes and I was able to improve my time by 3:40 minutes from yesterday’s run. My average pace was 10:19 minutes. I was slow as compared when I was younger 3-4 years ago but I was happy just to be able to run or jog continuously.

I am getting all my running/workout data from the COROS Watch that I always wear whenever I hike or run and I am impressed on the data that are being recorded as a result of my running workout. The data recorded is immediately synchronized to my cell phone using the COROS Watch Apps.

By the way, one loop in my backyard trail loop can cover a distance of 1 kilometer, which is a figure 8 loop. I can make some variations in running my backyard trail of either following the 8-loop or simply the usual figure 0 loop. And maybe, because of the nature of my running surface and presence of lots of corners/90-degree curves, I could not run/jog faster as I wanted. Maybe, in due time, I will be able to get out of my backyard and run along the road surrounding my place. We will see!

So far, so good.

As I was hiking yesterday with my denim jeans and Crocs sandal (for the first time, instead of my heritage boots) in the middle of the day in my Backyard Loop, I thought of started running and to find out how I would do for a short distance. The short distance I was thinking was only about 10 meters and before I knew it, I was running continuously and finally decided to continue.

I ran continuously without stopping for 3 kilometers and I was surprised that I was able to sustain the effort. It was not a fast one but I think it was a decent one because of the heavy denim jeans that I was wearing. After the run, I was happy and decided to think about continuing the effort on the next day.

It took me 34:46 minutes to complete the 3K run with an average pace of 11:33 minutes per kilometer and average heart rate of 152 beats per minute.

I rested after the run as I have perspired a lot. It was a great day and effort for me. At last, I am motivated again to be back on running.