Half marathon

I did it! 13 miles in 1 hours 59 minutes.

It has been a goal of mine to run the half marathon in 2 hours or less. This is roughly twice the time of the half marathon men's record time. This is the 5th time that I've attempted to do this. And the best I've done in the past was 2 hours 12 minutes, the worst is 2 hours 30 minutes.

My learning from these attempts:

1. the most important element is temperature. it was 60 degrees when I started, I think this is the coolest it's been of all the time I tried. I didn't even need water. (i could have used some, but my daughter who was supposed to ride a support bike with water slept in and didn't get out to the trail until I was done)

2. upper body strength is important. Even though I've been running/training a lot less this time compared the previous attempts, I've been been doing a lot more push-ups than before. Even though my legs were tired, but my upper body was less tired than usual.

3. in my condition, it was important that I forced myself to take walking breaks during the run. This time my plan was to run 9 minutes and walk 1 minute, throughout the run. I was able to run at a faster pace when I ran (8 to 8:30 minutes per mile), and it took a lot longer before my legs got sore. In the past, I was in better running shape so I ran continuously, and by the 10th miles, my legs and feet were so sore I wound up walking a lot in the last 3 miles.

4. better preparations. This time I ate a yogurt 1 hour before running, as well as drinking a lot of water. I didn't do that as much before. It really helped because I wasn't running out of energy during the run. In the past, about 90 minutes into the run, I would feel depleted of energy and water.

Notes from the run:

1. felt a twinge in my right ankle at the start of run, that went away quickly

2. at mile 3, felt a twinge in my left knee, that also went away quickly

3. at mile 7, the left knee now begins to have a light constant dull pain

4. at mile 11, the right knee now begins to have some pain, fairly noticeable. the 1 minute of walking in between does seem to relieve it somewhat

5. at mile 12, both hamstring seems to tighten up, i slowed down my pace a little, and that kept the legs from cramping up even more.

3.0 miles mark at 26:55

6.5 miles mark at 57:49

13.0 miles mark at 1:58:53

Six-pack abs challenge

My wife and I are challenging ourselves to get 6-pack abs by Christmas this year (2011). The person who achieve this will get $2000 to spend as they want. I figure we need some kind of incentive to go through the trouble of getting 6-pack abs.

This will require getting rid of a layer of fat and bulking up the abdominal muscle as well. We'll see where this gets us. It's a good thing there's no downside to this challenge.

Cracks in the mortality armor

I passed out (blacked out or something) this morning. Getting out of bed to wake my son up, I got to the bedroom door and felt the blood flushing away from my head and just slumped over. I banged my head on the bed frame, and according to my wife was out for 5 to 10 seconds. I didn't feel anything abnormal, and the worse part was banging my head on the bed, but this may be signs of things to come.

Old age is showing up in force.

Running diary

10/10/10 -- Ran in a 5K. My time was 22:41, which was much faster than I had anticipated.

As noted in July, I was going to try to run/train on a regular basis to get in shape to run a half-marathon in under 2 hours. I kept up the training for about 3 weeks, and just totally slacked off. So it was a surprised to me that I was able to run the 5K as fast as I did. My previous 5K in July was at 24:12.

10/16/10 -- Went for a 13 miles run to see what kind of shape I was in. The results was the same as before. That is decent time up through 10 miles, but all pain after that.

I got through 3 miles at 26:10, 6 miles at 53:00 and 10 miles at 1:33:00, but after that I mostly walked, essentially all of the last 2 miles to finish the 13 miles at 2:22:00.

I'm going to try to do this once a month until the end of the year. I have 2 goals.

1st - to run the 13 miles faster 2:10:00

2nd - to run the 13 miles in less than 2:00:00

I'll report back to update my progress

half marathon challenge

When I started to regularly exercise again a couple of years ago, my fitness goal was to be able to run any distance at twice the world record time. This was a fairly reasonable goal, not too fast, but also not too slow. So far it's been easy enough to meet this goal in the shorter distances, 400m up to 10k, but beyond that, I haven't been able to meet the challenge. The biggest reason is fitness level. I'm going to have to train to be able to handle the pounding my body will take for that long of a distance. I have run/walk 13 miles 3 times. 1st time at 3 hours, 2nd time at 2h30m, and the last time at 2h10m. My goal is to do it under 2 hours. I'm going to start a 10 weeks training program to get my body in shape enough to handle running for 2 hours.

The program is from runner's world. It consists of 3 workouts a week. 1 speed, 1 tempo and 1 long run. I'll report back on my progress.

Hiking at Yosemite

Went hiking at Yosemite this past Saturday. Left the bay area at 6:30am, hiked up to yosemite fall and drove home that evening. Got home at 10pm.
The hike was very tough. It was only a 4 miles hike one-way, but it was steep most of the way. The trail is somewhat small (average 5-6 feet wide) and rocky, so you have to watch your step all the time. You don't get to take in the scenery while you're hiking, only if you stop. On the way down, it started to snow. We hiked while it snowed for about 1 hour. I'm still sore from the hike. The fall was beautiful, full of water and so tall.

Parent/Child estrangement/relationship

Boy,

I'm reading the comments for the article about parent / child estrangement and it's just gut wrenching. I don't know if this will ever happen with me, but I've seen some of this in other people's lives, and it's difficult to deal with.
Anyway, here's the link to the article:
http://www.well.blog.nytimes.com/2010/05/03
"When the ties that binds unravel"

half-marathon

I had noted last year (april 2009) that I went for a 14 miles run/walk with my wife, which took 3 hours to complete. And that I would try to cut that time to 2hrs 30 min by year's end.
In any case in september 2009, I went out for 13 miles twice.
The first time on september 6th, I reach the 6.5 miles mark at 60 minutes, and finished the 13 miles in 145 minutes (2 hours 25 minutes)
The second time on september 18th, I reach the 6.5 miles mark at 57 minutes, and finished the 13 miles in 129 minutes (2 hours 9 minutes)
My goal is to be able to finish the 13 miles in 2 hours. Which I still haven't accomplish.

Of course, the other day my 14 years old son went and ran 12 miles at 7 minutes/miles for the first 8 miles, and ran the last 4 miles at 6:45, for a total time of 83 minutes (1 hours 23 minutes). He runs cross-country for the high school varsity team, but it sure makes my time looks awfully slooow.

Divorce Rates

For some reason I decided to look into divorce statistics:
Here's some interesting nuggets:

% of married people making it to their:
05th anniversary -- 82%
10th anniversary -- 65%
15th anniversary -- 52%
25th anniversary -- 33%
35th anniversary -- 20%
50th anniversary -- 05%
of course death plays a role in some marriages not reaching those 25+ anniversaries.

And it looks like the statistics of 50% of all marriages ends in divorce is about right, but only
41% of 1st marriages ends in divorce, as compared to
60% of 2nd marriages ends in divorce
73% of 3rd marriages ends in divorce

These statistics are pretty staggering. The divorce rates for asians in america is a lot lower than the average, about 20% vs the 40%-50% rate.

My wife and I have been married for 15 years now. Hopefully we'll be around for the subsequent milestones (25th, 35th,...50th and beyond)

To those of you who are married, GOOD LUCK!!

Back to school

The summer ended, all too quickly the last two months has gone by. The kids are back in school for 2 weeks now. While my "struggle" with getting my kids to & from school is very easy (they walk/bike to school by themselves), I'm reminded by others how difficult it can be.
This leads me to remind young parents/couples to really pay attention when they buy their house. They want to buy a house in a good school district, and just as importantly, they want to make sure that the house is a walkable distance to all the schools (elementary, middle & high school). This saves so much hassle. No worrying about dropping the kids off at school, picking them up in the afternoon.
I've heard stories from friends & acquaintance where they lose as much as an hour dropping off/picking up their kids at school each day. It's just one less thing to worry about. I was fairly lucky that my house is next to a park, and close to all the schools. I say lucky in that when I bought my house as a single guy, I knew I wanted a good location, but I didn't specifically made sure that it was walkable to school. Now that my kids are in school, I realized how much easier it had made my life.

Mid-life crisis musing

I've been wondering about mid-life crisis for the last few years. When it would show up? How it would show up? And how would I deal with it?

I've decided I won't have a mid-life crisis, because most of the time, those people would do something stupid/crazy/wild to recapture their youth. I don't need to do that. I'm married to a woman who looks like my daughter when we're out together. How much younger can I get?

On a more serious note, I think the important thing is to assess your life and be thankful for all the good things in it. If your life isn't what you thought/hoped it would be, then look into yourself and see what you can do to make it better. But to run away from your problems is to take the coward's way out.

I read this quote in the New York Times and thought is was insightful:
“If you spend your entire life searching for keys — the key to happiness, the key to success, the key to health, the key to love — you may become startled and somewhat humbled at the end of your time on this planet to realize that no keys were to be found because there never were any locks.”
I see it as that there are no limitations, no secrets. Life is what you make of it. It's up to you. Go live your life.

I sometimes joke with my wife that my favorite quote is: "Eventually, why not now!"
It can be good or bad, depends on how you use it. But if you're waiting until "retirement" to start doing things like traveling, learning for knowledge's sake, reading for pleasure, being more active in the community, doing more volunteering, etc.... you might as well start now.

Thang

How to give of yourself

Whatever you do something for someone else, "you must always make sure that you are genuinely enjoying yourself. Doing things for other people's sake will lead to feelings of corrosive resentment that will then find expression in some unhealthy fashion, like cancer. Your first responsibility is to your own happiness. If you are unhappy and you do things merely out of a sense of duty rather than genuine love and generosity, then others will sense that and ugliness will result." (Tom Hodgkinson - writer for Slate.com)

This is what I think about helping/taking care of other people, but can't always articulate as clearly as this person did. Hopefully, I will keep this in mind.

Exercising

Went for a 14 miles run/walk last Saturday. It took 3 hours but it got done. I'm going to try to do this once a month, and see if I can get the time down to 2 hours 30 minutes by year end.

The blog has been dead since last August, this is due to the fact that not much is happening, and that time is going by so fast now. Will try to be more frequent about this.

recession

this is the first recession that i can remember feeling like a recession. the last recession (2001-2003), didn't feel like a recession, especially if you still have jobs. the dollars was strong, stuff were cheap, so if you were still making money, things were great. the recession before that (1990-1992), i was young, had a job and so didn't notice it either. eventhough i still have my job this time around, everything is so much more expensive, and the dollars is slipping against other currencies so traveling is more expensive as well. as the economy feels tighter for me, i sure hope other folks are doing okay or better. good luck to us all.

Life's juggle

Something profound that I read today in the NY Times:

"Think of life as a game in which we juggle five balls labeled Work, Family, Health, Friends and Integrity. One day you understand Work is a rubber ball. You drop it and it bounces back, the other four balls are made of glass. Drop one of those, and it will be irrevocably marked, scuffed, nicked and maybe even shattered.”