In awe

Author: Antin

  • vision & mission

    Day 224

    Goal: Key ideas usually come to me while I am running. I have been trying to have some kind of goals for this year. At first I was not so into the new year resolutions this year, which I usually made one in the past for all my adult life. It was probably all the ‘destressed’ /breaking in period from coming back from Chile. I was going through a time of mini depression but now better after finishing another marathon (Carlsbad). So I am back in the swing of things.

    My last few weeks of training have been going great! I put up double digit back to back. It was even better than last fall when I was struggling with all the training and non-training activities, plus the stress from work. That was a mouthful.

    Life was looking great! But I am not satisfied where I am. It seems too haphazard. It seems things are too random. Suddenly everything in life flows together where few months ago it was rough and tumbling.

    I want control! So looking at my life, what do I really want to do this year? There is not anything ‘exciting’ I want to do. I am pretty much happy of where I am at.

    This is not a resolution but pretty much a plan. I will get to the resolution later.

    1. Running more ultras. I enjoys running so much and I think I am actually overboard obsess with it. Excessive is what can described about me. I don’t know why I was so down back in January. But running is what I like. This year I have signed up so many races! Incredible races and not sure how I will be able to do them all! see races.

    2. I want to run fast! This should be a year I was trying to get a sub 3 marathon. However, this dream will be deferred for a few more years. I hope I can get a sub 4 marathon time or somewhere close. This will be very challenging. As of now, I am not confident if I could run a 4:30 marathon time.

    3. Do something exciting! (Travel). Planning year for next year. I know I don’t have much money to travel any more for this year. But I should plan for the following year. Some exciting things are to travel to Everest! The group I usually travel with is going there this fall. A fall back option is, I would take Mt Kilimanjaro. I also want to run Rim-Rim-Rim of the the Grand Canyon. Basically you run across the Canyon to the other side and then back again. People plan this a year in advance!

    4. A Hard Camping/BP trip. This is already happening but I am still quite nervous about camping by myself. A trip or few trips I want to do is Black Forest Trail in PA, Hut-to-Hut at Presidential Traverse, NH, and Andirondack the Great Range Traverse, NY. These hikes made my great leader/grown-man/women cried. I want to experience the same.

    5. Be more open to people. Singleness. I am single and in many ways great because I am enjoying the single man life of running/hiking/traveling. Yet being single is not for me. It is definite a resolution item to get myself out there and meet more women who want to share a life together. My goal is to share myself more. Ah, how hard this is for me. Don’t laugh.

    6. What would be good to have! Pacer. Running is mostly a solitary thing for me. As I tackling longer distances, I wish I have a training buddy, a coach, a crew and some pacers. I am actively seeking and recruiting pacers for my first 100 miler. I already put down the race I want to do. C&O ultra. I probably can do this without a crew or pacer, but it would be really nice to have one or two!

    Back to topic. Yes these were what I am currently doing any way. They are in no way what I call a resolution. A resolution is something I must do differently.

    As I was running on Thursday night, I realized I need an aim or focus. One thing that can give me an aim is to have a mission statement: what do you want to accomplish? vision statement: How do you see yourself when you reach your goal.

    I really don’t have one written out yet. I have been running on auto pilot. Mostly to run and to run a lot and to run fast etc.

    To enjoy life. To do something I don’t think I can do. I have been breaking a lot of mental barriers and did a lot what I couldn’t do five years ago!

  • keep going

    Day 223

    This post might be more a pile of things throw in together.

    After my group run last night, I was able to catch up with a group of running friends I have not seen for a while. We were excited sharing what have been happening and what our ‘running’ plan for this year. Can’t believe we are already in February!

    I have so many things on my plate! This month I will try to go out on the trail every weekend. I have been looking at the possibility of heading to Laurel Highlands (PA), next next weekend (President’s Day). I believe with three days I can complete the 70 mile hike/run trail. This will be the trail for my race in June. So I want to have a heads up. I hiked (backpacked) the final part of trail last May. As I was looking into camping sites, I found out the place (some part of it) are snow covered. There are plenty of ski hills around the place. Oh great! That really dampens my plan. So now I might head up to PA maybe later in the spring. I might have to divide into four separate trips doing a 20 mile segment each time instead of the whole thing in one shot.

    That’s that. Apparently the campsites on Laurel Highland trail are opened in the winter! I might still head up there and do a snow camping/backpacking during the President’s Day weekend.

    My group of guys texted me last night about going to a singles event. Funny thing is we ran 5ks together and we did a half marathon together. This time we jokingly said, it would be one of the most challenging event we guys are doing together. I have never attended this kind of singles event and will look forward to it.

    I am looking for pacers for a possible 100 mile race in 2021. One guy gave me his OK. I am looking for a couple more. One should be enough, but it is good to have a back up. I think I need someone to hold my hand between mile 70-90.

    Yes, my head is putting together a plan to tackle a 100 mile race. I am looking into signing up a 24 hour endurance race in the fall. More to come.

  • running summary

    Day 222

    It felt good to be able to do long runs. I ran the same routes as in previous weekend. Many thoughts passed through my head. What gave me hard time while running two miles last July, now seemed like nothing at all. I was amazed after running even 16 miles and did not feel tired. I was only limited by time available, otherwise I would keep on running.

    On Saturday I was dragging me feet to get out the door. I was going to do 26 miles in the mountain but ended up just running 16 within my neighborhood. I missed the hill work-out. It was 1 pm by the time I stepped outside. I did not really get into my zone because I made a stop at my mom’s place and that pretty much ruin the rest of my run. I was hungry and stopped there. Ate. I went back out though but couldn’t pull a 26 mile. I didn’t finish my run until 6:30. It felt really really long. I stopped at my mom’s place for dinner thinking to finish with a four miles afterward. My mom ended up driving me home. It takes strong resolution to say no. Non-runners think they are doing you good of offering you a ride…and keeping you from the element, but to me training when I am tired, cold, and at my weakest is the most helpful thing for my up coming ultra. Any way, I gave in to the luxury of a quick ride home, even though I knew if I went back out for that four miles it would really shape my willpower of not giving up. I need to do better next weekend to avoid making a stop at my mom’s place.

    I did better on Sunday. I was in my element and had a good time.

    Monday: rest day

    Tuesday: 4 miles. group run

    Wednesday: rest

    Thursday: 4 miles with the group.

    Friday: 8 miles. late start and got lost in Georgetown. Was going to do 12 miles.

    Saturday: 16 miles around my neighborhood. long day. 1-6:30pm. caught in rain. Had a long lunch break (45 min).

    Sunday: 6 miles (10K race) and 16 miles afternoon run. Arlington loop. Finished in 3 hrs.

    Total miles for the week: 54 miles.

  • Should be back in shape

    Day 221

    I should be back in shape. Not yet at peak condition but should be ready to tackle some hard training this weekend and the next few weekends. I have not put together a solid plan. Actually I prepared one while I was still in Chile in December, but since coming back with 5-6 weeks of not running, that plan is pretty much useless. So I have to adjust. I have about 12-16 weeks of training before my big race (Laurel Highland 70 miler)

    My next few weeks if weather permits, I will be heading out to a trail every weekend.

    Though tomorrow weather is not looking up but it has improved quite a bit. I think the rain will hold off and I plan to head to a trail. I plan to do Buck Hollow/Buck Ridge, but if the weather will be poor, I will head to a nearby trail – Ashby Hollow / Buzzard Hill.

    I plan to have a solid run tonight and maybe 26 miles tomorrow and a 16 miles on Sunday. This will give me around 40-50 miles for the week. Ambitious I know.

  • more house keeping – about running

    Day 220

    I don’t have a clear direction for this post. I have been thinking of a new year resolution (2019). A few weeks earlier I had no interest in making one for this year, but couple things happened. Last night, our church had a review on the last 21 days fasting. People were sharing how their life have changed during these 21 days.

    I did not participate in the fasting this year. I have been joking around that in 2019 I fasted because I wanted to but this year I did not want to and were forced to because I was out of money.

    I remembered on Jan 2, I did not even have the money to pay my rent and I had only $300 in my bank! Technically I could buy lot of food with that money but there was fear what if I don’t have enough, because $300 is just about enough money to pay for my gas and metro fare. Money came in on Jan 3 though, I received a bonus at work and it was enough to cover my rent. any way, I will end the month in black with a bank balance at least 4-5 times what I started. I already paid my rent for the next month and there are plenty of food in the fridge!

    One think that touched my heart was while away on my trip in California, a friend called me and said she considered me to be one of best friends. She told me something like that back in August but I did not take to heart and her call was a wake up call. I mentioned this because looking back at my 2019 resolution, I wrote about making one friend. Now looking back, I found more than a friend. I have some issues to work out, since for couple months she was angry at me for some thing I did (see Day 200). Any way, I prompted me to take a more serious look at my new year resolution.

    I never really thought friends can have an impact on my running. One of the reasons I have not been running much was due to lack of motivation and that stemmed from a personal conflict with the friend. Now everything kind of resolve and I am hitting the pavement once again.

    For the last couple of days, I have been making my training schedule. It is not done yet but I scheduled couple big runs for next month. I will write more about them as time approaches. I also set up an expense / to-do worksheet. I have about a dozen of races for the year and it got hard in tracking the cost as well as whether a hotel or flight is booked. So now I have a spreadsheet that tells me all that.

  • Day 219

    Buy one get one free got to me this week and spent over $70+ on grocery and it is only Tuesday.

    I brought three loaves of bread! Normally one loaf would have taken me three weeks to finish. But it was cheap!

    I cooked a pound of beef Sunday night. Ate most of it. It was supposed to last for a whole week. So I went and got another pound of ground beef. I made Chili last night and had them with my bread.

    What caught my eyes last night was chicken breast was $1 a pound. I spent $12. I am rich with food. I cooked all of them last night and it is like a pot of meat! I will be eating chicken sandwiches till kingdom comes.

    The rest was mostly fruits. I had avocadoes, oranges, banana, asparagus, strawberries and lot of lot of Jello.

    Can’t believe I went through two pounds of ground beef in two days.

    random: what to do for Feb 14? Who want to head into the woods?

  • Run

    Day 218

    Finally got my training started for this season. Maybe when I have time I will post why it took two months to get it off running. I blamed it on Post-Marathon Blue.

    I will cheat a little and count the Sunday in San Diego as my Day 1/ 0.

    -Sunday: 26.2 miles. ran the Carlsbad marathon

    -Tuesday: 3 miles. group run. recovery run. was difficult since all my muscles were hurting.

    -Thursday: 0 mile. Probably the Tuesday run got me sick. Fever on Wednesday to Thursday, and then the coughs.

    -Saturday: 6 miles. felt like a new man. Did not have much sleep on Friday night due to all the pain from my cold and not from my running. I felt like an old man with pain at no matter which position I turned. But the run relieved all the tensions and tightness and the pain gradually dissipated.

    -Sunday: 16 miles. Arlington/Airport loop. Realized not completely recovered from my marathon. Deep muscle pain.

    total for the week: 51 miles.

  • normal day

    Day 217

    I skipped my group run tonight. Not feeling well. Having a slight fever since yesterday. Coughing and having running nose. They say, if you are hurt from neck down, go run. If you are hurt neck up, don’t run. So no running for me. I could have gone out, but feeling a little woozy.

    I replaced my other car key battery. I have two different keys for my truck. I have a Viper 7756V clicker and one from the auto company. The battery for the clicker was delivered today and I had some fun disassembling the key and put in the fresh battery. I haven’t done something like this for a long time. I love taking things apart as a kid.

    That’s the old rechargeable battery and can’t hold charge any more.

  • upkeep

    Day 216

    I finally got my car inspected. My car is absolutely safe to drive but this year inspection had more dramas than any preivous years. I think it took me about four tries and three days time (of over a span of two weeks) to get everything square. And the cause of it was some minor lightbulbs. I almost needed to spend hundreds of dollars to rewire the whole thing because of all the problems it was giving me.

    Here is a picture.

    I was wondering the whole time why a ‘simple’ car has so many types of light bulbs. Why can’t they all have one type of socket like household light. All you need then is to match the right wattage or power to get the light you want. But no, a car has dozen of lights and they are all different.

    None of those bulbs I replaced were essential except the headlight. I replaced the fog lamps and the day time running lamp. LED bulbs really caused all the headache and I couldn’t put back the normal bulb because it was no longer wired for the normal bulbs.

    That’s that. I replaced the battery for my car key too as well as have all the fluid and oil changed for the car. There are few more maintenance items to do but I can wait till end of the year.

    As for running go, I had a few miles last night. Still very stiff and tight all over.

  • Carlsbad Marathon

    Day 215

    The full name is TRI-CITY MEDICAL CENTER CARLSBAD FULL & HALF MARATHON and SURF SUN RUN 5K

    I toed the line with maybe a thousand other runners on an early chilly Sunday morning. It seemed like a small town race but they hosted like a big city race. They exceeded my expectation in swags given out and the expo.

    They did it better than the Marine Corps and the Baltimore marathon in some aspects, such as dividing the lane between the half marathoners and the full marathoners, so that the Half marathons did not get in the way of people running the full marathons. This is the first time I have seen it done in a race!

    starting line at the Shopp Shopping Mall parking lot)

    It was well organized. At least for the Full Marathon. We had plenty of potta-johns before and after the race. There were only a thousand of us and we probably have one toilet per runner. I can’t speak for the Half crowd, they were ten times the size of us. There were plenty of volunteers and water stations spaced at nearly every mile.

    I stuck with the 5-hour finisher pacing group until past 13 miles then I stepped up my pace to reached the 4:45 finish-time pacing group at mile 19. However that was short-lived. I ran out steam by mile 20. I had to walk and run for the rest of the race (last 6 miles). Luckily, I was still ahead of the 5-hour pacers. I finished at 4:54 (hr:min).

    What a beautiful morning. The temperature was around 50s.

    My first goal was to finish the race and the second goal was to finish in 5 hours and lastly to have fun. Haven’t not run much after my JFK 50 race last November I was really nervous about my physical condition. I chose 5 hour finishing time because that was the last pace group available and I did around 5 hour on my last few marathons. The course had a time limit of 6 hours. I reached all three goals and had a good work-out.

    I felt great and refreshed when I started out. I did not have the hang-over feeling for having lack of sleep for the last couple days. The Hotel was great but because of the time difference I didn’t sleep that well. Also I have been going to bed quite late (past midnight) and waking up quite early (3 AM) – biological clock from having East Coast time. Or maybe it was a pre-race jittery. I always have that before every race. I would wake up at every hour and check the clock.

    The view was beautiful. We ran along Carlsbad Blvd (local name), which is also called Hwy 101. Hwy 101 hugs along the coast of entire California and is considered one of the most scenic highways in America.

    There were many pretty lookouts but I am not much a photographer to capture them

    My nutrition plan for this race was out of wack. At first I wanted to go to Target or Walmart to pick out sone candies or chewys for the race but I procastinated all day yesterday and by the time I could go, I was too tired and decided to just wing it. Meaning let manna comes from heaven.

    I had chinese food two nights before: white rice, broccoli, mongolian beef, scallion and chunk of carrots and ginger with some kind of chinese sauce – probably oyster sause. Yum! Last night was even better. I had a wedding banquet – a fancy buffet style kind, but I felt it would be rude to get a second serving. I didn’t see other people getting a second. I am not good to describe what was on that menu.

    However, I think the Bride/Groom secretly ordered a side dish of Chicken on hamburger buns with sweet potatoes fries for me. I was so surprised when I returned to my seat after going to the buffet line and saw the fancy burger on my plate on the table and no one can tell me who put it there. I even suspected if there was some mix-up of some kind, maybe for people who are on gluten free diet or vegetarian. People were asking ne if that a real chicken breast. Mind you we were on a farm and there was no McDonalds or ChickFil-a nearby! Bride and Groom used to run a few half marathons before. They must have brought it beforehand for me. I looked around no other people had special meal like I did. It was a mystery but I was so touch, because it was supposed to be their day not mine. And how thoughtful of them.

    As for breakfast this morning, also from the bride and grooms after the guests have left, they gave them to me. I think it was from their secret stash. I took couples of them and ate them before going to bed but saved one for this morning.

    Crunchy pre-race breakfast. I was going to stop at a McDonalds but ran out of time. Chips would do

    As for during the race nutrition plan, I had a 6-8 oz hydration bottle on me during the race, which I sipped from it for the first 13-14 miles. I was a bit dehydrated even from the beginning. My mouth was dry. Also my throat was hurting from all the potatoes chips I ate late at night. For the second half while doing walk-and-run I used on course supplies. Their Gu was quite good. I was afraid to use Gu at first because the last few times I used them I had an upset stomach. This time there was no issue. Also the gel was in a much larger package and it was less sticky, they were almost sauce-like and I like them a lot. They were not too sweet. I think I used about three, one at the 16 miles, 20-ish, and 24-ish.

    As with all marathons I did, the last mile was the hardest. I don’t know how I overcame that, maybe one foot before the other, but I finished it and sprinted in full stride after the 26th mile mark. It might not look that way, but in my mind I was sprinting, crossing the finish line and reaching all my goals.

    One of the post race goodies. I noted it required heating for 90 seconds in a microwave, but unfortunately I did not come prepare with one. The rice probably can be eaten without heating but I didn’t try.

    Post race: I sticked with the usual bananas and crackers, and water. I chucked two cartons of muscle milk they gave out. Ah that felt so good even though I am lactose intolerance. I feel sorry for whoever will be seating next to me tonight on the plane on my way back to Boston and then DC in the morning.