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.

Yes! 2008 is 16 years ago. It was the time that I started to be popular as a blogger because of my running posts and stories. And because of this blog and running activities, the name “Bald Runner” started to be identified with me and people whom I know would call me such name or simply say “BR” to me.

Later, on my birthday, May 17, 2008, I retired from the active military service as a Major General of the Philippine Army which is main component of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. On the day after, I was completely an ordinary citizen and very private.

I had dreams and personal ambitions to be of help to the society and to my country in a private/personal manner. Since this blog was about running and the Bald Runner, I came up with the FIRST Ultramarathon Running Event through a platform which I called “The Bald Runner’s Events”. The event is an ultramarathon running event that traces the famous Bataan Death March of 1942 route. After months of planning, it became a reality and the rest is history. I created also a group of elite runners as a Running Group/Club/Team with the aim of making my runners as members of the National Elite Pool of the Philippine Track and Field Association or PATAFA, the National Sports Federation For Athletics in the country. All of the things that I have done to promote running as a lifestyle were properly documented on this blog.

I also created other ultramarathon events which promoted “Sports Tourism” to the different provinces and regions in the country when this term was still unknown to everybody. Please browse on my past posts on this blog as this blog was and still being used as the repository of the RESULTS and my own thoughts about each event that I have conducted.

Too many things to recall that had happened on the span of 16 years. Those were the good times! And let this blog reminisce the thing that I have done and find out if I really contributed something good for the society and to my country after serving for almost 37 years in the military service.

More stories to come….soon! Thank you for your support.

You can send some amount for my coffee through my PayPal account. This is my e-mail address: jovie75@hotmail.com.

It’s been so many months that I stopped running non-stop as what I was used to do on a daily basis. I have attempted to run non-stop but after a few minutes of slow running, my knees would be hurting. As I attempted to run longer in time, I would alternately, run, jog, and walk. For some time, I was able to sustain doing this way for so many days but ultimately, the knees would be in pain almost every time I finished my workout.

So, I need to adjust my daily workout and tried to maintain my daily walking using my boots and denims. Before, I would jog with my denims and boots but I surrendered to have instead of walking. And for the past months, I have been walking with my denims and boots.

For the past three years, I have been joining some events or challenges among the Denim and Heritage Boots communities. It was just for fun and form of camaraderie among friends with the same interests whose members are in almost all countries around the world. I joined my first Denim Fade Competition using two items, a Denim Jacket and a Denim Shirt. These denims are made of Selvedge Denim fabrics which were Made In Japan. They are expensive than the ordinary denim fabrics in most of the denim jeans in popular fashion brands but their fading potentials are very commendable.

I used the two denim items for One Year or 365 days and most of the time I used them in my walking and backyard works and vegetable gardening. It was a challenge because wearing a denim attire in a tropical country would be an invitation for more sweat/perspiration on the body. Although my place is situated in the mountains/higher elevation, in a matter of less than 30 minutes, the heat of my body would entail the start of perspiration. And because of this situation, the use of my denim outfit would last an average of 3-4 hours a day and most of the time was spent through walking. Fast forward. I was adjudged among the Top 20 Finalists out of the 800 participants. I got a prize of a free leather belt which is worth $200. Not bad. Since then, I have been hooked in this event which is being done yearly.

Last January 1, 2024, the Year 4 of the Indigo Invitational Denim Fade Competition had started and each participant must use a Selvedge Denim Jeans for the whole year or 366 days. I opted to use the heaviest selvedge denim jeans in the world and I am using it right now in the walking on a daily basis. And because of this event, I always make it a part of my schedule to walk every day with this jeans.

In my next post, I will discuss the different “challenges or events” that inspire and motivate me to do my daily walking routine.

Thank you for your time reading this post! Have a good day!