In awe

Day500 happened during the end of last summer. I have been putting off a midterm (day 525) review for a bit because it happened close to the end of the year and I already had done various reviews for the end of the year. At the time, I’ve also done a bit and was still pretty much know what I was doing.

New year came. Since then I am kind of lost as to my purpose.

I had a great season in the fall. I reached the end of the year finished many big races: Stone Mill, JFK, Devil Dog. I made a couple end of the year reports (EOY, and here) which reflected on those races. I won’t recount them here.

Last eight weeks, I have been on and off doing some soul searching. My race schedule for 2023 has crystalized. I kind of know what races to run. They are filled in by now. I know I was struggling back in December about what to do (here about ABC). I came up with the new year resolutions for 2023.

I still am missing something. I woke up everyday asking myself what am I trying to do. January went by before I knew it. We are in February. I always tell myself we die without vision. A reason we want to live is aim for the next thing.

I still feel kind of lost. It was kind of expected after Devil Dog early in December, because I had no planned races. I ran some local stuff like Red Eye on January 1, but for last 8-10 weeks, things have been quite calm.

I need stress and excitement to get me going. I need big races to stress me. The good stress that shakes up my system. Now everything is kind of fine and boring. So I had been doing some soul searching over the past week. I did not come away with much.

This year my schedule is stacked like last year. When people asked me what race am I running. I have no quick answer. I said it is on the web somewhere. I had a collection of races. They seem to be not laser focus as before. It is bad when I could not recall what races I am about to do.

My races, Here they are: I have MMT coming up in May. I have OBX Blackbear Revenge in March (next month) and then in September I have Grindstone.

All three races are pretty big deal to me, They were not on the schedule last fall. I was at the time searching for what to do. Now they are. OBX was going to be a signature race for 2023, because I was going to spend some time there for vacationing, but now it is scraped (instead the focus is moved to Toronto).

Harder Challenges. I want something harder or weirder. This week I looked into if I should run GSER (april 29) a week before my Toronto Marathon. I pick GSER because back in 2020, it was my first and second failed attempt at running a 100 miles. I really wanted to go back to prove myself. This time around though GSER will be a 100K (62 miles). Still I want to redo it. The 2020 race was a special race and an exception. (still considering).

Another possibility is the Lake Tahoe Marathon. I have been reading up on this. It can be done as a normal marathon, 26.2 miles with hundred others on a Sunday in the fall. But what interesting is it offers three marathons on three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and by running all three you would circle around Lake Tahoe. I was at Lake Tahoe maybe 20 years ago and the size of this lake always attracts me. This is not all, one can also run two normal marathons, Friday and Saturday, and then on Saturday night, do a loop around the lake and catch up to those who run the Sunday marathon. This is what I want to do. The total distance is like 125 miles. I consider it is a good challenge for me to do two back to marathon and then with out much rest do a 72 miles under 18 hours. Not likely will do it this year, but it is underconsideration.

50 states. I was asking myself what am I doing. If I want to test myself, go do it. What was I trying to do? I want to get 50 states. This year though, I am not getting that many states. I may only get one or two. Texas is in play. Maine maybe. New York maybe. Oklahoma also maybe. Or Space Coast for Florida.

One question I asked myself how on earth do I get all 50 states. At first, I did this without much planning. Doing one or two marathons a year, and hopefully when I reach 70 ish I will get all 50 states. Last couple months, I really wanted to sit down and come up with a plan. I did not get anywhere. Luckily, one of my friends is doing the 50 states too and she is on her 31 states. So all I had to do is copy her. I am taking note. This year’s schedule though is full. Yes, that is one of my problem of feature creep of trying to do too much.

This week, I had time to catch up — like a mental health day. It helped. It allowed me to catch up on some of the things. I updated my race schedule a bit. It was mostly fine but I have been jotting down race dates and such in various places (calendar, my race spreadsheet, and here on WP) and they were not in sync. Usually they should be in sync. Yet the few months I was kind of lazy and they got out of sync. So during the week, I did some house keeping and updated all the pages/places to the same calendar. So now, here on WP, my race schedule is finally accurate again.

My life is made up of the things I do for fun. Yes there should be other domains like home, friendship, church, and civic/religion. But for me, mostly I have been focusing only sport (running) and traveling.

I try to run in all 50 states. I try to do a 200 mile marathon. I try to do an even longer trek across the US on foot.

So I have been thinking a lot — when I had so much free time this weekend. I kept asking myself what am I doing? I can’t no longer keep all the races in my mind. I am slipping on race dates and all.

There are some countries I want to visit. One of them was to go to Nepal. Some recent development is I might have to defer the trip for a few more years, instead I am likely will be traveling to Australia soon, which is also one of my goals.

2023 seems so scratter brain with my so call “planning”. I want to do so much, but it might be I do everything that comes across my desk. I am kicking this till the next report/focus session.

I did not resolve my anxiety or my frustration. However, when I was out on the trail, I forget them for a bit. In the end, I asked, does it matter if I don’t finish all 50 states or if I don’t reach any of my goals? I think the main thing is I try. We live to struggle for another day! This parallels with races I no longer enjoy when there are no challenges left.

I know I have been wandering around the topics. Conclusion is to do something fun in your life. Do something meaningful. I validate myself by writing them down afterward.