The Zen of Ultra Running

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 volunteeri...

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...

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 org...

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...