The Zen of Ultra Running

Wow. All I could say is that the past weekend was a pretty eventful weekend. On Saturday, I went out for a hike with friends (tapering for a 50K race on Sunday). It was good to catch up with my favorite people and get my mind off of work.  Then, we visited Purple Skies Farm. A participant in our cooking class referred us to the lady who owns the farm and she invited us to visit the farm on Saturday.  This pandemic year has been crazy for many of us including me and P. We had to cancel our trips and travel. But one good thing that happened to us during the pandemic was the #QuarantineCooking class that we started in April. The class has grown so much since we started. I was looking at the data last week and decided to create an infographic chart to summarize the statistics from our cooking class. It was fun to see the numbers (yes, we are nerds).  We taught the cooking class on Saturday evening (it's now offered once a month) and had a lot of fun (as usual). Many new people have joi

 Why do I feel like it has been forever since the last race and the last blog update?  That could be because September was not very kind to me. The new online live teaching format because of COVID changes what I do in classes quite a bit (e.g., in-class exercise, discussion, presentations, etc). We also had to deal with wifi issues and spotty internet (both my & students'), low motivation, attendance, participation, etc. It was quite a headache.  Back to racing and running stuff. In April, Forget the PR 50K was postponed to October but then later they decided to make it a virtual run (due to many reasons), which I totally understood. I then talked to C. and a couple of people. They said they were going to go down to Mohican and run the course (C. had the course map). Originally, we were going to go down on Oct 17 but then the University of Akron asked me if we could teach the cooking class on that Saturday because it's UA homecoming & family weekend. So, I asked C. if w

I have to document this race while it's still fresh in my memory.  After Vermont 100 DNF last year, I was lost and did not know what to do. The big questions were "Do I want to train for another hundo?" (considering the amount of time and physical & mental effort I had to put into it) or "Should I take a break year and focus on my career?" (while still doing shorter ultras like 50Ks or even a 50 miler). During one of the runs with D., we had a long talk about my current #life situations and possible goals for next year. For sure, I needed something to focus on to have some kind of structure in my life as well as the mental, stress outlet. I operate better with structure and precisely defined steps and goals. Luckily, D. has done it all (ultramarathons, Ironmans, and stage races). After hearing me b*tching about my current career and life situations (she listened quietly and said nothing), she suggested that I look into doing a half Ironman. She said the trai

I would say July caught me off guard and I feel like I was hit by a high-speed train. My body is still intact but mental health is somewhat destroyed. Every day there is always new information, new details, new rumor, new communication, new direction, new policies, new politics, etc. I woke up everyday and felt like I wanted to throw up. Everything is so confusing that I had to take a step back to look at the overall picture and re-assess the situation. All I know is there are only minimal things I can control and I'm not going to worry about what I cannot control.  Back to #life updates.  The Canal Corridor 100 race weekend was a success. It was the first 100-mile race in god-knows-how-many months since the beginning of the pandemic. The race had good social distancing and volunteering policies. The good thing about the CC100 is that it's very small (less than 100 runners) and everyone followed the rules. I had a great time biking the course to cheer on runners and volunteerin

The 4th of July weekend was a success! Since P. was busy with work, I got a chance to get out and play with friends all weekend :D  On the training program, my coach said to do a long bike ride on Saturday and, if possible, I should do a half marathon run on Sunday. A group of friends wanted to check out a trail in Holmes County, OH so we went there to do a bike ride. It was flat and most parts of the trail were shaded. It was REALLY hot this weekend (90F). The group wanted to ride 32 miles (out and back) started from Fredericksburg, OH. After 32 miles, everyone went home. I packed a lunch and went back out for 20 more miles.  By the end of the ride, my GPS watch said 59 miles and it did not feel "right" to me to end my ride at 59 miles while I could get a metric century ride in with 3 additional miles. So, I went back out on the road to finish the 100K ride.  The bike ride was very beautiful. It was flat and we had a great time talking and biking together.  Then, on Sunday,

Last week was not a great week in terms of race morale. Ohio 70.3 (half Ironman distance) race was canceled with options to transfer the entry to other 70.3 races later this year or defer it to next year. Although I did not plan to race Ohio 70.3, I was considering it as an alternative race in case the September race does not happen. Now that Ohio 70.3 was canceled, I think there is less chance that the September race will happen.  Earlier this year (some time during COVID quarantine) R. messaged me and A. saying that her family was putting together a race for her as a Mother's day gift (so sweet of them) and asked if we could join her. We said, "of course". They planned the route and the preparation for the race was perfect. They even had bibs for all of us.  The race was called "Corona Crush 10 miler".  I arrived at R's house at 8 and saw that they had the runner check-in station where we picked up our bibs. Our names were even written on the bibs! The wea

This past week has been a good training week. I was able to stick to the training plan and only missed one ride (because it was raining outside). Life also seems to be back to normal. I saw people going out to restaurants, shopping, gym, etc. Because many people had big parties on the Memorial Day weekend, we decided we will wait a couple of weeks to see if there will be any spike in the number of COVID cases (the incubation rate for the virus is believed to be about 2 weeks). For now, we are still enjoying our backyard patio dining :)  I fell off the bike on Sunday so I had to skip Monday open water swim :( On Thursday, we attended P's virtual graduation (yay, finally!). It took him 5 years to get this degree and finally he is done! It was pretty uneventful. We watched the online ceremony and went back to work.  We then celebrated his graduation on Saturday with a seafood meal :) Medina Half Marathon was supposed to be this weekend but it was canceled so the race director organize

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend. Most people have 3 days off and, of course, if you are training for a 100 miler in the summer, this is the weekend where you log big mileage. On social media, I saw people did a 20 miler, a 50K, and other long distances followed by another long run on Sunday and Monday. In Northeast Ohio, we are also fortunate to have nice weather this weekend (instead of miserable rain that they predicted).  I had to try my best to stick to my triathlon training plan and not to go run a stupid amount of miles like when I was training for a hundo. The good thing about having someone (a coach) telling you what to do is you just get up and do it. I like the structure and the fact that someone is doing the "thinking" for me. This has worked out pretty well.  The city and country have started to open back up. Restaurants, hair salons are opened but they still have to follow the social distance protocols. Gyms will re-open this week. I will not talk a

To follow up on the previous post about the #QuarantineCooking class, I am going to write about it in this blog. During the first week of April, I saw a professor in Cleveland taught her students to cook Indian food (she is Indian) on Saturday nights and I thought it was a very cool idea! but I did not think my students would be interested in making Thai food as much as my friends would so we started a virtual Thai cooking class on April 11 where we taught our friends to make green curry. Everyone loved it and they thought it was a cool idea. So, the next weekend we taught another class on Pad Thai. This time I sent out an invitation to the whole campus because I was using the university WebEx account to host the class. My WebEx could host up to 1,000 people so I guess I should invite as many as possible. On the 2nd Saturday class, we had 80 people joined us for the Pad Thai class. It was a big hit as many people like Pad Thai and wanted to know how to make it. We posted the ingred

First, all races have been postponed or made virtual or canceled. Second, we are stuck at home. Third, I stopped running with other people. Because of COVID-19, the university canceled classes from March 17 to the end of March. Then, all classes went online afterward. So, April was batsh*t crazy for me. I also started to keep the social distance from all friends by exercising alone most of the time. It was hard and I missed my running friends. Then, I had an idea of hosting an online Thai cooking class among friends who wanted to learn to cook Thai food. So, on April 11, we started a "green curry class" and taught our friends to make green curry through my university WebEx account. I will write another separate post about our #QuarantineCooking classes  Because Forget the PR 50K and Outrun 24 were postponed to October, I had no race until September. So, I shifted my focus to triathlon training. I've been riding more and running less. Luckily, I

At this point, I think everyone around the world knows what COVID-19 is. Just in case you were born after 2020 and we did not have an apocalypse, and this blog is still working/active so you are still able to read this post, COVID-19 is the name for novel coronavirus disease that is a respiratory illness, which can spread from person to person. It's originated in Wuhan, China in late December 2019 and spread across China in early 2020 (Jan-Feb). Now (March 2020) it's spread around the world causing deaths among vulnerable groups such as seniors or people with pre-existing health conditions. How are our lives affected by this pandemic? - After the virus was spread in the US and got to Ohio (where I live), the Governor started to shut down schools, restaurants, bars, gyms and canceled every social/public gathering. The University where I work decided to cancel classes until the end of March to allow the students to stay home or go home and all classes will be moved online unt

To summarize the 2nd week of the Spring semester in three words - tired, out-of-shape, and (already) overwhelmed. I had another big deadline on Friday that I spent all week working on it. After that big deadline, together with a long teaching & meetings day on Wednesday, I felt drained and lost motivation to do anything. I was so mentally and physically drained that I skipped all prescribed workouts on Thursday (then, felt like sh*t that I missed the workouts). On Friday, I managed to go to the gym and did some strength training. Saturday was the Chinese New Year (Lunar New Year) so my husband (Chef P.) cooked the traditional Chinese New Year food at home on Friday night (duck, fish, noodle, etc). It was delicious. It's been 14 years that I did not celebrate the Chinese New Year with family but we always do our own "celebration" at home (mostly eating a lot of traditional food). On Saturday, we went out to run the Buzzard Day course in Hinckley. The trails

Happy New Year 2020! As usual, we spent our Christmas and New Year in Asia. We went to Sri Lanka during Christmas and came back to Bangkok, Thailand around New Year. Sri Lanka trip was really fun and it's a beautiful country to visit (especially if you are Buddhist). We spent 4 days in the mountain visiting different UNESCO World Heritage sites and 2 days surfing in the South. It was the first time that we'd been to South Asia and we totally fell in love with that part of the world. We will definitely go back. Maybe we will visit India next time. Picture: We took a beginner surfing course at Weligama Beach in Sri Lanka. Great way to spend Christmas. Then, we came back to Thailand 2 days before New Year and I went to a beach town with my family and spent the New Year with my family. In November, I found an ultramarathon in Bangkok called "Ultra Park Run Thailand 100" on January 5. For some reason, I thought it was a good idea to run an ultramarathon in Bang