a hive of activity at the national stadium
I don't know what happens in the real world but I'm sure there must be some kind of arrangement for different groups to use the track at different times? Today on my trip to the national stadium here in Lao PDR, in downtown Vientiane, it was an absolute bun fight for space. What a fantastic state of affairs when there are so many people in this impoverished nation keen to get active.
There was a national football game on the grass, complete with spectators with their plastic chairs on the track (lanes 3 to 5 in front of the entrance), sprinters in spikes gunning up and down one section using water cups as their markers, relay teams practising their baton handover, the taekwondo team wandering on to the track in their pjs, kids playing everywhere, young people just hanging out, older folks out for their evening stroll, the mid and long distance runners chugging around the grass, a group intermittently doing circuits under the strict eye of the newly imported German Olympic-sponsored coach - at one point he yells at a young man with a jump rope 'get on the grass, you are not wearing shoes', 5 hurdles set up part way round lane two, and today for the first time there was no bike or motorbike access so it was just bodies. Everywhere.
All this with half of the track in absolute tatters as piles of broken bricks, dust and cement are scattered throughout the track and grounds. The stadium is being demolished, or rather rebuilt as a football only stadium for the regional South East Asian Games that Laos is hosting in 2009. There will be a new athletics track 16km from town. This is pretty far for folks that don't have transport.
Before I arrived at the track I thought I was having a bad day. This just really put my day in perspective. The fact that I also continued my recovery and return to jog/run amidst this chaos was delightful. Also a great reminder of how absolutely fiercely anal and narrow minded people can become, and I have been in the past, when in training. And how others, like all these folk, humbly, make do and give it the best they have given the circumstances.
(Laos sent four athletes to the Olympics this year - two sprinters and two swimmers. They didn't make it out of the heats, but boy... what a journey they undertook!)
There was a national football game on the grass, complete with spectators with their plastic chairs on the track (lanes 3 to 5 in front of the entrance), sprinters in spikes gunning up and down one section using water cups as their markers, relay teams practising their baton handover, the taekwondo team wandering on to the track in their pjs, kids playing everywhere, young people just hanging out, older folks out for their evening stroll, the mid and long distance runners chugging around the grass, a group intermittently doing circuits under the strict eye of the newly imported German Olympic-sponsored coach - at one point he yells at a young man with a jump rope 'get on the grass, you are not wearing shoes', 5 hurdles set up part way round lane two, and today for the first time there was no bike or motorbike access so it was just bodies. Everywhere.
All this with half of the track in absolute tatters as piles of broken bricks, dust and cement are scattered throughout the track and grounds. The stadium is being demolished, or rather rebuilt as a football only stadium for the regional South East Asian Games that Laos is hosting in 2009. There will be a new athletics track 16km from town. This is pretty far for folks that don't have transport.
Before I arrived at the track I thought I was having a bad day. This just really put my day in perspective. The fact that I also continued my recovery and return to jog/run amidst this chaos was delightful. Also a great reminder of how absolutely fiercely anal and narrow minded people can become, and I have been in the past, when in training. And how others, like all these folk, humbly, make do and give it the best they have given the circumstances.
(Laos sent four athletes to the Olympics this year - two sprinters and two swimmers. They didn't make it out of the heats, but boy... what a journey they undertook!)
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