Category: <span>Fitness</span>

Fitness

Day 241: A morning jog in front of the Colosseum

Managed to get a quick morning jog in on my last day of Rome. I’ve been trying to get at least one jog in every city I’ve been to. Not quite managed it so far, sometimes I wasn’t there long enough or I was just busy, but I can at least claim I have jogged in every country I have been in.

This morning I set off just for the first patch of green I saw on the map. I didn’t exactly realise where I was heading until I saw the Colosseum peeking out from between the trees.

Colosseum peeking out between the trees

The place was called Parco Del Colle Oppio. It’s an unassuming scrap of land that you wouldn’t even think twice about but, of course with it being Rome it is also the home to some huge ancient buildings.

This was Nero’s grand villa complex, Domus Aurea, but it’s a bit busted up now:

Domus Aurea

This was on the other side and is the remains of the Baths of Trajan:

Baths of Trajan

After going around the four corners of the park I got a good shot of the Colosseum which was just sitting there in front of some old men. They were either enjoying the park benches and catching up with friends or they were homeless. I’m not entirely sure. One guy looked homeless but was busy combing his dog for most of my time there.

Colosseum

I ended up just doing laps up and down Viale Cesare Caradini in the end because there was too much distracting me wanting to be photographed!

Viale Cesare Caradini

It was a decent spot to jog in and it put me through my paces considering I hadn’t jogged for a few weeks. The park is on a small hill so its a light incline, enough to get the heart going, with some flat spots to recover on.

5.04km in 30:25mins
The map of my jog
Domus Aurea
Baths of Trajan
Colosseum peeking out between the trees
Basketball court on the lower part of the park
Colosseum
Viale Cesare Caradini
Fitness

Day 195: Jogging in Hiroshima-Nagasaki park

Managed to get my first jogging session in for Germany today. I looked on the map and found a nice green space not too far away from my hostel called Hiroshima-Nagasaki park.

What I didn’t realise was that I was walking straight through the middle of some kind of college area as there were about 30-50 youths all stood around on the streets. I was dressed all in blue thinking I was fly but the temperature was most definitely not t-shirt and shorts weather so I had all eyes on me as I strutted down the street 😛

I haven’t been jogging for almost a month so I took a leisurely pace:

In the middle of the park was a large square man-made lake which served as a focal point for the joggers; I passed several of them going different directions in laps around it. There was even a really old silver-topped gentlemen bombing around the place and a sweet old lady with two hiking sticks getting her power walk on.

The place is right next to some busy streets and you can see the traffic but its set back enough to give you a feeling of being in nature. The circuit around the lake is flat ground but there is a bit of a hill if you go end to end of the park.

There was a lot of ducks napping by the edges of the lake. They ignored me as I jogged by each time so after I had done my 5k I slowly walked around and tried to take some photos. The duck got wise to me:

 

The geese didn’t really care and actually just walked in front of me several times.

After I had finished I stopped to get catch my breath and a snap a few shots, my favourite one is the little ramp they built for the ducklings to be able to get in and out of the lake 😀

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