Our running routine in Chiang Mai

The food, the small scale, the streets, the people, the surrounding mountains — it's just a really good life here. We're also hanging out with a few friends (who are also our colleagues), which makes it even better.

Daniel and I arrived here first after two hectic but fun weeks in Bangkok. A week later, Egg landed. Joe and Holly flew in a few days later. Last, but definitely not least, Ronald arrived and I finally got to meet the newest member on my team at Ghost in person. Actually, not even last — Naz will be joining us soon!

Although our social life went from working and eating at home to doing these things outside with other people every single day, it's not all fun and games. It's been a while since we've stayed in one place for longer than a month, and we've jumped at the opportunity to get into a stricter routine. We've got some races on the agenda for next year, and are both building up our running volume again.

We wake up at 6am every day, and are on our way to the running track half an hour later for 6 days of the week. I'd never ran on a track before and I imagined it would be somewhat monotonous. The reality is that I really like it. It allows you to just zone out and run without having to navigate. It's so easy to just do "one more lap" and before you know it, you've added another km to your run. The early rise and all the running mean that we call it a night at 10pm. Sounds boring to a lot of people — but for us this is actually where the fun begins.

Our strict early sleep and early rise schedule has caught on and we're not the only ones to be found on the track at 6:30!

My favourite part of the routine — the first coffee after a good run. The only place open this early is Roastniyom. Lucky for us, a lovely man sits in front of the cafe selling bananas and mangos. After buying half his stash every morning, I can now say with confidence that we are his favourite customers. I hope to find him there next year!