The Zen of Ultra Running

This year I had a chance to race a sprint triathlon in Thailand during my visit. I signed up for a race organized by the same company before COVID but it was canceled due to COVID. I saw that they had another sprint tri this summer during my visit to Thailand. So, I signed up for the race.  The problem was I did not want to ship my bike to Thailand with me (due to many logistic problems) so I borrowed a bike from my friend who is also training for an Ironman. I use her bike to train for the Ironman when I am in Bangkok.  The race was on Sunday (June 26) in Chonburi, which is about 1.5 hours from Bangkok. The course was actually in a golf resort owned by my college friend. So, we decided to go there a day early and stayed there on Saturday night. I did not want to wake up super early to drive to Chonburi on Sunday morning. We arrived in Chonburi about 5pm, checked in at the hotel, and went out to dinner at a restaurant by the sea. We missed fresh seafood.  On Sunday mornin...

Oh boy, it's been a while (again) since I updated this blog. Things were super busy at the end of the semester then we left for Ireland and I went to Charleston, SC. May was a busy travel month for me (but it's a good busy). Because I was gone/out of town so much in May, it was hard to keep up with the training (although I was pretty active during the trips).  Every year, the Cleveland Tri Club (CTC) hosts a tri camp in early summer but they had to cancel the in-person tri camp during COVID years and only had the at-home tri camp where participants attended the virtual sessions and sometimes got together in a small group to do a workout. This year was the first year of the in-person. The club changed the venue from Mohican State Park to Salt Fork State Park this year (I guess it's because Mohican 100 was on the same weekend).  It's the first year that I participated in the tri camp. Everything leading up to the camp was super clear and organized. Before the camp, the cl...

About the 3rd week of April, I had a pretty bad travel itch. I think it's because the Spring semester was extremely busy (and unproductive) for me. I felt like I was constantly behind and no matter how hard I worked, I'd never been able to catch up. So, on Saturday morning (before my morning run), I went online and looked for a plane ticket to anywhere outside the US and found cheap tickets to Ireland in May. By Sunday night, tickets were booked. We looked at each other and we were like "well, guess we are going to Ireland in 3 weeks?". Then, we had to think about where we were going to go in Ireland because we never thought about this country before.  After watching a couple YouTube videos and reading about each city, we decided to go to Cork and Kilkenny. There is an Ironman race in Cork and I would like to see if I wanted to race there (assuming that I like the distance and want to do another Ironman). Turned out that the water was choppy and cold! (Yike. That'...

Towpath half marathon is in the books. After our 5-miler race on St Patrick's day in St Louis, P. wanted to run another 5 miler. I found that the Towpath Half had 2 distances - 5 miles and a half marathon. So, I signed him up for the 5 miler and I did the half marathon (of course).  The morning of the race was reallyyyyy cold. We got there about 1 hour before the race to get the parking spot and use the porta potty. Then, we stayed in our EV until 5 minutes before the start because it was too cold to stand outside.  The first half of the race was nice. I saw a couple of friends at the start and ran with them for a couple of miles. The half marathon started about 10 minutes before the 5 miler. We ran north to the turn-around point (about 2.5 miles) then turned around and ran south where the 5 miler finished but the half marathoners kept going.  The second part of the race was very windy as we were out in the open area. I had to slow down and walk up the bridges but I was a...

 This year Forget the PR is back to in-person. Yayyyy.  I signed up for the 25K because of pure FOMO. I like the race, the location, and the people. I hadn't been trail running in a couple of months so I knew that the race would be slooowww and probably mainly hiking for me.  The race is named "Forget the PR" for a reason. They threw in as many hills as they could find at Mohican State Park to the course including the famous "Big Ass Hill".  We drove down to Mohican in the morning because my race (25K) did not start until 9am. I missed this race in 2019 (before COVID) because I had a conference on that day. At the packet pick-up, it was very nice to see many people I knew and caught up with them since COVID. The trail running community is amazing and everyone is so friendly and laid back.  The start was quite uneventful. The RDs talked about the flag colors and how the course was marked. I have not been to Mohican since last year. I think the last time I went do...

No race in February because life happened. I also wanted to focus on training without worrying about racing. I was able to keep up with the training schedule in February because there were no major events at work going on.  Then, March hit me at the speed of a small hurricane. In a blink of an eye, it's already the middle of March and I fell behind at work. I had to be in St Louis for work. We know one person who lives in St Louis through the cooking class that we teach and have become good friends with him. Since I would be in St Louis anyway, I asked Pat if he wanted to join me for the weekend so we could visit our friend's house and get to meet his wife and kids. There was a St Patrick's day race (5 miles) on that Saturday, which our friend usually runs with his dad and cousin. He asked if I would like to register for the race and of course, I said yes (because I had to get my training in any way). To my surprise, Pat also told our friend that he would run the race with ...

First tri of the year at Lifetime Fitness Indoor Triathlon. In early January, I posted about signing up for races on social media and Mickey sent me a private message about this race that he organized. It's an indoor tri with a 20/20/20 format. That is 20 minutes pool swim, 20 minutes stationary bike, and 20 minutes treadmill run. I talked to B (my coach) and he said it sounded like a fun race so I signed up.   The week leading up to the race was pretty uneventful. Work was busy as usual but not stressful. It was supposed to be super cold on race day (thank god it's an indoor tri). I asked hubby to drop me off at the race, which took place at a gym in Beachwood. He was not interested in my race so he dropped me off and went to a coffee shop and grocery shopping LOL.  I got to Lifetime Fitness about 1 hour before my wave started. The race was very well organized and the volunteer walked me to the designated area in the locker room and marked my body. After I put my stuff i...