Sunday, August 11, 2013

Past & Present

I stumbled upon this video on my phone the other day. It was taken about 8 months ago. My dad's driving beside me as I run down a mountain in my parents' hometown in Taiwan. Please note my dad's enthusiastic cheering and my reaction to stray dogs...

Aaanddd I am a heel striker. Nothing new here.

Moving on to the present!

I finally did my first long run in preparation for my fall marathon. I've been putting it off since the beginning of summer, but with 11 weeks until race day it's time to get serious.

Here's a look at my week in running.

Monday- 4 difficult miles outdoors. Mentally and physically I was not there. Could have been attributed to a weekend of drinking and poor eating while celebrating my brother's birthday. <--- crummy food makes for sucky running :(

Tuesday- 11 miles split up into two sessions. 8 miles at 5:30 am on the treadmill before work and 3 miles outdoors after work. Random speed and hill work thrown in on the treadmill to avoid boredom.

Wednesday- 8 easy evening miles on the treadmill.

Thursday- 10 miles on treadmill.

Friday- 16 miles on the treadmill. I procrastinated a little too much and by the time I was ready to run, it was already 3pm and disgustingly hot outside. Wanting to avoid intensifying my tan lines, I resorted to the treadmill. I was a little nervous about this run because I had never run more than 15 miles at a time in the old, sweaty, hot-as-f* gym. Thankfully I was prepared with hydration and fuel. My setup shown below generated a few too many stares for my liking... In order to avoid a soul crushing blowup on this run, I started out with conservative 8:50 minute miles and slowly increased my speed for the first 5 miles until I reached a comfortable 8:30 pace.



Saturday- Off. "Cross-trained" at Disneyland by walking around and standing in lines all day.

Sunday- 12 miles outdoors by the beach.

Total= 61 miles. I still stick to my philosophy of running based on feel. I know that specific training plans with intervals/hill work/strength etc. will make me faster, but by listening to my body on a daily basis I am able to consistently run high mileage without getting injured.





Thursday, July 18, 2013

A Long Overdue Reunion

It's a day of celebration of sorts! Not really...it's just an arbitrary day I chose to sign on to this lonely little blog of mine.

What has happened in the past 7 months or so since my last post?

  • Studied abroad in Hong Kong
  • Visited Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Macau, Taiwan, China
  • Got lazy with running in the heat, humidity, and my own sweat
  • Ate my way though ethnic cuisines and finally started eating pork again after 6 years. (this has sparked a really unhealthy love for bacon)
  • Ran in the Hong Kong half marathon, achieved a personal worst by a few minutes or so. (don't run this race. No crowd support and 2 miles through an underground tunnel with no wind/thousands of other runners absolutely kills you)
  • Ran the RnR San Diego half marathon and got smoked by my brother who ran a
    "long run" of 8 miles in preparation
  • Moved to Santa Monica for a summer internship
  • Ran 21 miles to celebrate 21 years of a happy, healthy life

So a whole lot of "stuff," lets put it, has happened in the first half of the year. Any resemblance of quality running was left in the dust.... leaving me in the dust in the only two races I've shuffled my way though this year.

But not all is lost! I'm officially signed up for two races and am motivated to run far and fast.

I'm currently signed up for the America's Finest City Half Marathon on August 18th and the RnR St. Louis Marathon on October 27th. I'm hoping to use the half marathon to gauge of my speed. Marathon #3 will hopefully be lucky my BQ. 

My shoe rotation for this training cycle will be the Brooks Pure Flow 2s and the Saucony Kinvara 4s, two new-to-me styles. So far, I'm loving both. The Sacuony's are a bit more of a minimalist shoe, which is great for shorter, speedier distances while the "heftier" Pure Flows help cushion my joints on long runs.

I also recently bought an overpriced yoga mat from lululemon in hopes that the hefty price will motivate me to place my lazy butt on the shiny pink surface and do some stretches and core work. We'll see. It's currently hidden in a corner of my apartment collecting dust.

TLDR; Both the blog and I are up and running.