The Zen of Ultra Running

First race of 2017 turned out to be a 50K! I signed up for the Buzzard Day Trail Race last year before the price went up. At that time, I just completed the first 50K at Buckeye Woods and felt that 50K was not too horrible. I signed up for the 50K because I thought I could always drop to the 25K if necessary. Then, after coming back from the 3-week vacation, I started a training plan with a hope to train for a 50 mile race in June. I upped my mileages too fast too soon and that's how I got injured. My left ankle started screaming after 13-15 miles. Along with other issues, I had to change my training plan to focus more on triathlon training instead. The week prior to the race I ran the whole Buzzard course with the Saturday run group for the first time in 2 weeks. My ankle was fine and I felt good after the run. I also ran 4 easy miles on Sunday because I wanted to test if my ankle could tolerate back-to-back runs and it did! (yay) The week before the race weekend we got a sn...

After couple of weeks of switching to a loose triathlon training plan, I finally got in the groove. Monday - All-level yoga. Started the week with low motivation to work and high level of stress due to a series of bad news last week. I needed something to calm me down. Tuesday - Swim. It was raining pretty hard on Tuesday morning and I did not sleep well the night before so I canceled a run with M and went to the pool instead. Swam about 0.8 mile to practice bilateral breathing. Wednesday - Indoor cycling class. After skipping class twice, I felt guilty for skipping another one. Now I realized the impact of cycling on my running. It helps tremendously on hills.  Thursday - Oak hill trail run with M. We talked about possibilities in life. Time flew when we engaged in a good discussion. My ankle started to hurt less. Friday - Candle light yoga. Wanted to swim in the morning but the pool was closed because of a competition. Then, I had a long meeting at work...

Sometimes, life is not always how you want it to be and we get lost in other activities that we forget what the true priorities are. We all have professional and personal goals that we try to reach but we have to admit that only few people could accomplish both at the same time. Lately, I have been focusing (too much) on my personal goals and on myself that I was told I gave running and exercise the first priority. Ultra marathon training is demanding and sometimes you can be running for 7-8 hours, especially when you do back-to-back long runs, which means your whole weekend is gone. It might be fine if you are single or your family is fully on board and they are not expecting you to be home by a certain time. That is not a case in my family. I have to re-prioritize things. Family comes first. Long run on Saturday will have to be subject to whether the family has other plans on that day or not. It has to also be clearly communicated a few days in advance about what time I will be h...