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'...