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.