The Zen of Ultra Running

Tortoise and Hare is a race organized by a local running club. This 5K race is also walker friendly. I signed up because I recently became a member of this running club and thought it would be nice to have a lot members participate in all races organized by the club. And because I am also training for the triathlon. Thursdays are my Brick training days. Meaning that I had to do two sports back to back. So, I biked 6 miles before the race started. I took advantage of the biking by going through the race trail to see how it ran. Biking before the race was like a warm up for me. So, when I actually ran it, it's not too exhausted as it would have been. Not sure if I made a PB today because I immediately left the finished line area. It's a point-to-point race meaning that I had to walk back to the car, which I parked at the start line (urgh. Another 2 miles here).

Forget what you know. Forget your "hindsight bias" from previous practices. This yoga session focused on what you know at the moment, not what your past experience had taught you. This session was shorter than the previous two sessions and was "beginner friendly". The session stressed on the core strength and balance.  I feel that sessions that are beginner friendly is good to develop your basics and foundations. I'm glad that Adriene included this session in her 30 days of yoga series. However, I guess that she must really like the "boat pose" because she has been doing it in every session since the first one. In my yoga classes, I don't usually do the boat pose so this is good to help me develop the core strength.  Then, back to my triathlon training. After skipping a day of workout, today I ran 4.5 miles outside in a windy/hot weather. The sky was so clear as if someone has painted it. Now I realized why I rarely see running races i...

Second day of the 30 days of yoga with Adriene. Today, the class focuses on stretching and cultivating the energy from within. When I started practicing today, I felt sluggish from sitting in front of the computer all morning feeling demotivated. After the yoga session, I felt more energetic and warmed up. Glad I made the right decision to take a break and do yoga. I found that, for my home practice, 30 minutes works best for me as it's not too long to be boring and I still gets the benefits of yoga. I even felt ready and had a chance to practice my headstand away from the wall. First attempt = success but too bad I did not take pictures :(  

This is not a kind of challenge that you see other people are doing online. I have seen some people do the "30 day challenge" series that are not only for yoga but for other things in life such as thankfulness, gratitude, weight loss, exercise, etc. I was googling (is that a word?) some sort of free yoga videos that I can do for a short amount of time everyday and found the "30 days of yoga" by Yoga with Adriene and thought it would be fun to try a video a day for 30 days. I don't aim for 30 consecutive days but hope that I can practice as frequently as I can. Day 1 of the 30 days of yoga series titled "Ease into it!". Adriene only goes through easy yoga poses focusing on stretching and increasing flexibility. The video is good for beginners and advanced students alike. It's only 30 minutes so I was able to do it during my lunch break (at home).

I recently found a new power yoga class at Dragonfly Dance and Wellness. This class is on sunday at 3pm so it's good for my schedule. I usually add another workout from my training schedule after this yoga class. The class is power yoga. The instructor, Wendy, promised that you would sweat at the end of the class (see her website here ). I really like it as it's a vinyasa style class with fast movement. My sweat was dripping on the floor by the end of the class. After the sweaty yoga class, I continued with my triathlon training by biking 15 miles along the Chippewa river trail. The weather was hot but biking was not too bad. 

We saw that there's a new restaurant in town in Volumn One's article . According to the article, it was just opened on Monday July 20. We are always excited every time there is a new restaurant in town as we currently don't have many choices. The restaurant is on Hastings Way on the corner of Hastings Way and Fenwich Ave across the street from O'Reily's auto parts. It used to be another restaurant that I've never visited (thought about it so many times but kept forgetting to go). We went to Lynn's Chatterbox Cafe for lunch on saturday. Here is what the front of the restaurant looks like.   They also have 2 purple rocking chairs in front of the restaurants but I forgot to take the picture. Inside was kinda neat. The yellow and red wall makes it bright and inviting. They also have "busy boxes" for kids to keep them occupied while waiting for the food. It's quite a family friendly environment. We ordered burgers with side salads...

It's been a week since the last update. I had been on a do-nothing vacation in the Dominican Republic. We booked an adult-only, all-inclusive resort in Punta cana and were there from Friday to Wednesday. Luckily, the hotel gave us an upgrade to a honeymoon suite (yay). The resort was nice and most importantly drinks and food were already included in the price! I got a chance to practice open water swimming in the sea. The shore is pretty shallow with a lot of seaweed under the water making it difficult to swim. However, I practiced the sighting technique and am now more confident in open water swimming. Workout at the gym. All equipment menus are in spanish AND in metric system!! I had to run with a calculator (on my phone) in my hand. The gym played folk music from Venezuela, which is pretty much like Thai Loog-Toong music. haha We came back from the DR on Wednesday and I continued my training on Thursday and Friday. Thursday, I swam 1km and Friday I biked 10 miles. Ha...