“Considering what you have been through, doing an Ironman is a gift” - My coach One month after the bike accident, I finished my 3rd Ironman at Ironman Ottawa this past weekend (Sunday, August 2). I was supposed to do this race last year, but #life happened, so I deferred it to this year. Going into the race, I was not sure how it would turn out. Exactly one month before the race, I had a bike accident, broke my front teeth, and had multiple wounds on the face and body. I had to pause the Ironman training for more than a week. Considering that I was undertrained to begin with because I just got back from spending a month in France, I was not sure if I would even start the race. Slowly and carefully, my coach and I worked together to rebuild my confidence on the bike. I tried to get as much open water swim practice as possible with two weeks left. Compared to the preparation going into IM Mont Tremblant and Chattanooga, I think the amount of training this time was not e...
As I'm writing this blog (3 days after the race), I still cannot believe that I ran 100 miles this past weekend. Everything was like a dream (a good one) and I am still processing what happened this weekend. After the first 50 miler (Double marathon at Run with Scissors), I was kinda of lost and was not sure what my next goal was going to be. I proved myself that I could run 50 miles (in a bad weather condition). What else should I do? As a typical goal-oriented, Type A person, I needed another goal to motivate me to run and be active. However, I did not "dare" to think about the 100 miler. The distance sounds too scary and I felt like it was only for seasoned ultramarathon runners or really strong people. I am not a type of person who would immediately jump into something without thoroughly calculating the success rate and my own ability. During a run with R., he suggested that I should consider the Canal Corridor 100. It is flat and well-supported (of course, I am als...
This race has been 3 years in the making. **Read THIS POST for the reason why I switched from a 100-miler to a half Ironman in 2020** After submitting the tenure packet in September of last year (2021) and completing 2 half Ironman races, I knew I was ready to step up to the full Ironman distance. This is because 1) I hoped that by this time next year I would be tenured already and 2) I wanted to give myself a 40th birthday present. It's always been my life goal to do an Ironman as the distance sounds difficult and challenging. However, the training and the time commitment scared me. I had no bandwidth to self-coach or train for an Ironman while still working toward tenure. That's why I kept putting it off until I was pretty sure that my career was stable. One day in October of 2021 while I was grading papers and having an existential crisis I decided to bite the bullet and sign up for the Ironman Chattanooga in 2022. After reviewing and reading comments about differen...
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