Milestone: The Race of "The Avenue of The Giants"

Giants: Week 11

I just realized, booking a hotel at this point is challenging. Most of the places that are close to the course are sold out and the rates are ridiculously high for just an ordinary motel ($140 something). After an hour and a half's hunting. I finally decided to book one that's bit far but absolutely beautiful place on the oceanfront. The place is called "Tides Inn". I'm gonna spend most of my Saturday there and leave early on Sunday morning for the race

week 9: finally a 15 mile run, long passed due

it wasn't until late march when I finally get my Saturdays back to myself from my course. And then I started a 19-day working streak. My training suffered a lot. I had to try really hard to squeeze a run in here and there. The good thing is that I became creative doing it, such as running to subway for lunch and back. running on the treadmill after midnight watching a movie. But my mileage remains low. despite the 13 mile run in Rancho San Antonio, I haven't really done any major damage. 

But finally, this weekend is mine and all mine! It feels like the first 2 full days this year I gotta spend whichever way I want. And here is what I've done so far: 

1. sleep in till 10am (10am is seriously late for my bio-clock)

2. playing my acoustic

3. 5 miles on the treadmill watching "when harry met sally" (I love this movie)

4. break

5. another 5 miles watching "Eric Johnson's guitar lesson" (very cool video)

6. playing my electric, had some food

7. another 5 miles, watching "Forrest Gump" (I cried 3 times in an hour)

8. writing and waiting for friends to come visiting:)

I feel pretty good after today's run. body's fine, calves are sore, especially the left side, gotta see to it. knees are a little sore, nothing concerning.other than these, I feel fine, if not for friends' visit in a little bit, I probably would have run a 4th 5.

In the time still left before my race, I gotta step up quite a bit in training, core, back, glutes, and a ton of stretches. 

week 5 - 6: running against a busy schedule

week 5: 2 runs, 6 + 6
week 6: 2 runs, 7 + 7


The major challenge of these 2 weeks is time. Work plus all the activities I'm doing. and on top of that, my best friend came visit me during the weekend. I know that there are ways to have everything working at the same time, but at times it seems rather hard. I cut down my sleep hours, which is never a good idea, and keep doing everything I want. This can last for sometime, but the toll I'm taking makes it not worth it. 

Giants week 4: dealing with knee pains

Last week I breezed thru with 5+3+3, this week I ran a 6 and now my right knee hurts. 


This time not just uncomfortable, but it literally feels painful. Maybe I wasn’t doing something right. Maybe I need to hit the gym, I think my leg muscles are not strong enough. This is the most upset I’ve felt so far in my training. I knew it could happen but I thought I’ve done enough to prevent it. Anyways I’m seeing my PT Dave today.
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it was encouraging to see Dave because he always makes me feel that the pain I’m having can go away with proper exercise and care. 

He explained to me how muscles help cushion the knees and I totally got enrolled. I will need to strengthen my calves, quads and glutes. It seems that my calves are the weakest of the 3 right now. 

He also talked about the balance of the whole body’s muscular system. Because I’m sitting most of the time during the day, some muscles get too weak so other muscles compensate. This is not good because then the whole system is not working together properly, which causes muscles to get over stressed and become tired easily. 

What I need to do is balance out my workout so every muscle plays a part in my running, including upper body (core is extremely important, as it can carry some weight off lower body keep a good posture)

  

Giants: Week 3: pain free marathon

I ran 8 miles on Sunday, with my new Brooks running shoes. It was quite painful after the 7^th mile. My knees felt very tired but I kept pushing through it. I then took 2 days off from running. I thought about doing some swimming or working out on my leg muscles but ended up doing just some research about knee health. It seems that the wear on knees from running is unavoidable. Dang, this is gonna be my first race, but certainly not the last one. So I went to see a physical therapist, David Severson in Milpitas. My coworker strongly recommended him to me and the visit turned out great! I learned some useful exercises and got a lot of assurance and now, I’m committed to run the race PAIN FREE!

Giants Week 2: learning while running

I took a day off and the next one for playing tennis. Meanwhile, I did some research online for marathon training and also talked to Craig (a crazy runner=D).

What I found was that it may be a better idea to take a break every other day, and having a big run on Sunday. So I got back running 3, 5, 4 miles on Mon, Wed and Fri. Conditions on my knees didn’t feel like getting worse. But I will definitely get myself a better pair of shoes than these tennis shoes I've been wearing now before running the big run (shooting for 8 miles) and I’ll also need some ice-packs.

Giants Week 1: kick-off

This series of entries that have "Giants" in them are for the race "the avenue of the giants"

I ran on the tread mill for 3 miles every day, with speed either 6 or 7 mph. On the eighth day, I felt soreness under my knee caps. Nothing major, and it was totally expected. I took the next day off.

I started off without a detailed plan. The idea was simply to give my body a heads up. I think this went OK. After the first 2 days, 3 miles seemed very mild. I had music on and sometimes I can even sing some lines without losing my breathing rhythm :D which is pretty fun.

The Avenue of The Giants

Race: the Avenue of the Giants full marathon

Date: May 2^nd 2010

I’ve had the idea of running a marathon since the first time I met Craig Peterson, a big fellow I met at the San Jose Landmark Education center. Craig was sharing his running experiences. 6 feet 5, 220 lb, being in his late 30s, if not older, Craig has run 30+ marathons, including some Iron Man races.

It struck me hard because I have always had this concern that I cannot be a runner since I’m tall (6 feet), and don’t have strong knees (thanks to basketball). I’ve been keeping the idea of marathon very well under my interest radar. But when Craig stood in front of me, I couldn’t help but thinking, “There is got to be a way for me to do it without hurting myself”

But then I didn’t know Craig that much and I didn’t feel comfortable declaring that I’m going to do it so I said nothing and time went passing by. Until one day this January 2010, I finally mustered enough courage to go up to him saying, “Hey Craig, I want to run a marathon this year. Could you give me some advice?” He was lit up and asked me which one I wanted to run. I had no idea. So he started to list out all the marathons in the north-Cal and he especially mentioned the one in Humboldt in May. Right at that moment, the possibility of running the race was so present to me, as if I could already see myself doing it. A couple of weeks later, I registered to that race online and officially started my training.