The Zen of Ultra Running

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...

First, all races have been postponed or made virtual or canceled. Second, we are stuck at home. Third, I stopped running with other people. Because of COVID-19, the university canceled classes from March 17 to the end of March. Then, all classes went online afterward. So, April was batsh*t crazy for me. I also started to keep the social distance from all friends by exercising alone most of the time. It was hard and I missed my running friends. Then, I had an idea of hosting an online Thai cooking class among friends who wanted to learn to cook Thai food. So, on April 11, we started a "green curry class" and taught our friends to make green curry through my university WebEx account. I will write another separate post about our #QuarantineCooking classes  Because Forget the PR 50K and Outrun 24 were postponed to October, I had no race until September. So, I shifted my focus to triathlon training. I've been riding more and running less. Luckily, I...

At this point, I think everyone around the world knows what COVID-19 is. Just in case you were born after 2020 and we did not have an apocalypse, and this blog is still working/active so you are still able to read this post, COVID-19 is the name for novel coronavirus disease that is a respiratory illness, which can spread from person to person. It's originated in Wuhan, China in late December 2019 and spread across China in early 2020 (Jan-Feb). Now (March 2020) it's spread around the world causing deaths among vulnerable groups such as seniors or people with pre-existing health conditions. How are our lives affected by this pandemic? - After the virus was spread in the US and got to Ohio (where I live), the Governor started to shut down schools, restaurants, bars, gyms and canceled every social/public gathering. The University where I work decided to cancel classes until the end of March to allow the students to stay home or go home and all classes will be moved online unt...

To summarize the 2nd week of the Spring semester in three words - tired, out-of-shape, and (already) overwhelmed. I had another big deadline on Friday that I spent all week working on it. After that big deadline, together with a long teaching & meetings day on Wednesday, I felt drained and lost motivation to do anything. I was so mentally and physically drained that I skipped all prescribed workouts on Thursday (then, felt like sh*t that I missed the workouts). On Friday, I managed to go to the gym and did some strength training. Saturday was the Chinese New Year (Lunar New Year) so my husband (Chef P.) cooked the traditional Chinese New Year food at home on Friday night (duck, fish, noodle, etc). It was delicious. It's been 14 years that I did not celebrate the Chinese New Year with family but we always do our own "celebration" at home (mostly eating a lot of traditional food). On Saturday, we went out to run the Buzzard Day course in Hinckley. The trails ...

Happy New Year 2020! As usual, we spent our Christmas and New Year in Asia. We went to Sri Lanka during Christmas and came back to Bangkok, Thailand around New Year. Sri Lanka trip was really fun and it's a beautiful country to visit (especially if you are Buddhist). We spent 4 days in the mountain visiting different UNESCO World Heritage sites and 2 days surfing in the South. It was the first time that we'd been to South Asia and we totally fell in love with that part of the world. We will definitely go back. Maybe we will visit India next time. Picture: We took a beginner surfing course at Weligama Beach in Sri Lanka. Great way to spend Christmas. Then, we came back to Thailand 2 days before New Year and I went to a beach town with my family and spent the New Year with my family. In November, I found an ultramarathon in Bangkok called "Ultra Park Run Thailand 100" on January 5. For some reason, I thought it was a good idea to run an ultramarathon in Bang...