During year 6, I got a lot faster in a fairly short amount of time. The base was probably already there from my many years of slow running, I just needed to start working on the faster gears. One side effect of my successes was the growing importance of PRing. Before I only kept track of my marathon times. I didn’t have any idea of what my best times were, 5ks or 50 miles. I also didn’t even keep track of how many marathons and ultras I ran till this year. I always ran for fun and love of exploring so the numbers never mattered. I challenged myself by going farther - if you love something, why would you want it to end sooner? Then I started running frequently with others, started getting faster and people started praising my progress. It got into my head. One example of the change - for the 9+1 I did for the 2016 NYC marathon, I did not attempt to race any of the 9 NYRR races. The halves were practice long runs, the shorter distances I simply ran with friends going at whatever pace they were. Compared that against the NYRR races in 2018 and 2019 where I went for a PR for each one. I considered not PRing a big failure.
I also started reading books about training and all my solo car rides were full of ultra running podcasts. My head was full of how to get faster and train better and that became more important than the adventures that running brought me in the past.
October 2018
Suffolk County marathon - From ultra running podcasts I had been hearing about how fat is the more important energy source so I decide to skip breakfast for this marathon. I did all of my morning runs without breakfasts so it made sense to me. Despite starting over conservative and easing into marathon pace over a couple of miles, I end up hitting the wall early on and stopped at a medical tent for a few minutes, wondering what was wrong with my body. It ended up being a disaster of a marathon but despite temptations to try again almost immediately, I decide to hold off till Houston marathon in the following January. If I thought about it carefully, I would have realized this happened before during the 18 mile tuneup a month before where once again I blew up after not eating breakfast. I considered the race an utter failure, I was so sure I could PR massively.
December 2018
I ran the NYC Runs Cocoa Classic 10k. It rained heavily and the start of the race was a mess. I quickly entered a negative head-space that didn’t leave. I didn’t get the PR. I really wanted one more PR of the year and the sole point of doing the race was to get it.
January 2019
I once again ran the Houston marathon. This is my 24th marathon and first marathon that I went back to. It breaks my tradition of always doing new marathons. There are so many marathons out there and I enjoyed the new places that a new marathons takes me to so I never felt like I needed to go back to one. The Houston marathon was at a good time of the year and flat so it was a chance for redemption after the Suffolk marathon. I ended up falling in a trail run the day before, bruising my face and was recovering from a virus so I lowered my goals for the race. I managed to get a small two minute PR.
I also found out that I won the UTMB lottery and got a spot in the largest trail race in the world. A result that would change the rest of the year for me.
March 2019
I ran the NYC half and fail to PR once again.
I ran the Sleepy Hollow half the next week, at PR pace but the course ends up being a half mile short. The next day I pace 9:15 for 15.8 miles at the QDR 30k. I’m a bit more prouder of running these two events in the same weekend.
April 2019
Lake Sonoma 50 - I decided to do this race mostly because it was a competitive 50 miler and I wanted to see the stars of ultra running. For training I experimented by focusing more on doing 10-14 mile races as tempo runs instead of the classic double long runs. I ran it in a pace similar to the easy 9:15 effort I paced earlier in March but I felt awful by mile 15 and after my second wind ended at mile 35, the rest of the race felt more like a crawl. I wrote a pretty detailed race report here - https://www.strava.com/athletes/6702485/posts/4957163
Leatherman loop - a muddy (spring in NYC) 10k trail race. I find the cross country style start to and the fast pace of the race to be a lot of fun. It’s definitely a style of running I want to get more into in the future.
June 2019
After minimal training I do the Eagleman half ironman. I was pretty scared of doing the swim and to my relief, rough waves ended up canceling that portion of the triathlon. I did pretty poorly on the bike, going out way too fast and then discouraged, ran the half marathon portion in an easy pace. I was debating if I should attempt a full Ironman in July and then UTMB in August. It’s definitely a doable feat to experienced athletics, someone that has done Ironmans before and has done difficult 100 milers would be able to do them in a short period together. I wasn’t in that position, I had no full Ironman finishes and barely finished what would probably be classified as an easy to medium level 100 miler (can you really call any 100 milers easy?). I decided that I could do it by pouring a ton of time into training. I was already behind in the Ironman and I quickly started training 3 hours daily on weekdays and another 6-7 on weekends. I went to mostly training on my own, I was already sacrificing sleep to get what I thought was the best training I could do (though in my mind, it wasn’t enough) so I didn’t try much to coordinate with others. I found success initially, I got a decent PR in the Queens 10k, then a massive PR at the Vegan Power 50k.
July 2019
Finger Lakes 50 - my body simply breaks down after my IT band flares up. Lucky I am able to switch from the 50 miler down to the 50k but I end up walking a good chunk of the race. I pretty much over-trained and I would not be able to recover during the rest of the summer. I do the Whiteface Sky Race which sounds like on paper to be a good last long run before my Ironman but I ended up getting super sore on the quads. I don’t recover in time for the Ironman and my quads burning in the shakeout bike ride the day before the race. I DNF Ironman Lake Placid after not making the loop one cutoff of the bike course. I still take the accomplishment of getting through the swim - 2.4 miles in open water as a big win. I was kicked out of the slow lane of Flushing Meadows Aquatics center only 3 years ago. Even two days before the race, I was feeling nervous and not able to get myself to swim past the second buoy before turning back. Somehow the swim went pretty smoothly, other than the few punches from pasting swimmers.
August 2019
Following the Ironman DNF, I started running with groups more. To get use to the elevation gain that UTMB required, I started hiking more. Overall, I started enjoying the process. Before I felt like I was desperately trying to fit all the training in and still not being good enough. The 4:30 wake ups were a dread while tri training. Now I was waking up excited for the day. I was still feeling burnout however and I thought of UTMB as my final, retirement ultra.
UTMB - I wasn’t used to the long stretches of elevation gain and my weak hiking muscles slowed down and I didn’t make the 50k time cutoff. I ended up DNFing UTMB but falling in love with the running community once again. It also reignited the spark for exploring again. I enjoyed the race and would have happily continued whereas during the Ironman, I was sort of relieved to have been cut. Figuring out how to get back to UTMB became an obsession for the next few days but I decided against doing an unplanned vacation to Oman for another 100 miler to attempt to bypass the lottery for next year.
September 2019
Berlin marathon - While I made attempts to work on speed, coming out of tri and ultra marathon training I decided to run the marathon as a celebration of 7 years. After 17 miles I realized that I won’t be able to PR so I pulled back and just enjoyed the experience.
Like my track in archery, once I started improving in running, I started to become harsher on myself. It’s like a mental double edge sword. You feel better knowing you are improving but then small things start to bother you. You don’t pay attention and those small things remove the joy out of the hobby. Despite knowing that more training doesn’t always result in better performance (it about how your body absorbs adaptations), it still required burnout for me to get back to enjoying the process. Despite hearing about this in so many podcasts, it seemed like more of an elite athlete problem to me and I didn’t realize that things might be going wrong till my IT band flared up during Finger Lakes 50.
It took me this year to realize that my joy in running wasn’t due to some external validation, a finish line is just a moment in time but in the process of getting to the finish line. Most runs should be fun and enjoyable and I should be excited that I get to do all these cool things rather than, say, dreading a long run. Of course I'll be trying to get stronger and faster but I'll also be looking at things with a more long term approach.
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Monday, October 7, 2019
My trajectory into long distance running part 3
Year 5 starts with me having to deal with my DNF at Mountain Lakes 100. It’s my second DNF in a row, in a relatively short time (within 2 months). The biggest thing that haunts me is that I chose to give up in the 100 miler and the aftermath of that decision leaves me with a reduced motivation to run.
November 2016
I run the NYC marathon and get over 5 hours due to not training. I start to relearn how to swim and sign up for my first triathlon - Lake Placid half ironman.
December 2016 - I DNF my third ultra in a row - TARC Fells ultra winter, a 40 hour - 4 x 10 mile loop race. I missed the time cutoff by quite a lot, I didn’t really try.
January 2017
After reading Finding Ultra by Rich Roll and then Whole by Dr. Campbell, I slowly adopt a vegan diet. My mom being vegetarian, I grew up not eating meat. Even as I started eating meat in late high school and the years after, I never really developed a taste for it. So giving up meat was easily, it wasn’t really in my diet anyway (I only ate it when going out). Giving up diary was much harder. I have a blog post on this if anyone wants to know more. The biggest effect of going vegan, which was really more of simply cutting dairy out - was the tremendous weight loss.
February 2017
I do the Sean O’Brien 50k as my first ultra to get back to trying Mountain Lakes 100 again. I use heart rate to slow me down in the first half and then force myself to speed up in the second half. During a recovery run in Alley Pond park, I ran with Michael who slows down to run with me. He encourages me to join a running club and tells me about Queens Distance runners, that they are a group of young and fast runners. I heard of QDR beforehand when a friend - Jianli ran with them. She also said they were fast runners and didn’t continue since she didn’t want to slow them down. I knew about running groups by this point - Alley Pond Park had the Alley Pond Striders but I was turned off by their yearly membership fees. My other hesitation to join a running group/club/team was that I felt I was too slow and that the desire to run faster would get me injured. I actually didn’t know many people that have gotten injured from running until I joined a running club. I signed up to join QDR that night. I couldn’t find any team runs however till springtime so it didn’t immediately change anything.
April 2017
I move to Sunnyside! The day after moving I find Woodside Sunnyside Runners on meetup and join them on their long run (back when their long runs were official). I do the Gorges 100k where I get to the halfway point completely exhausted. I use mediation and focus on my breath to beat the cutoffs and finish the race. I ran more with WSR!
May 2017
I take part in my first international marathon - the Vancouver marathon. I get 4:13 which makes the 4 hour mark within sight. I do my first run with QDR at Astoria track. The directions were to meet at the track which is pretty broad. I eventually, awkwardly made my way to Edwin and asked if it was QDR. It was my first track workout and I missed the drills. I didn’t care, I was ready to do the workout but Edwin encouraged me to warm up first. One thing that surprised me was that after this first event with QDR, I got quite a lot of friend requests on facebook, even with people I didn’t talk with.
I also finished the Devil’s Path this month, completing the DNF hike from 2014.
June 2017
I do the PA ragnar relay with some of my original Disney marathon gang. Then next day I DNF my first triathlon. Like everything else, I went into the race by trial by fire. It was my first time in a wetsuit, first time in open water, two weeks prior was the first time I was able to swim an entire pool length without stopping and the week prior was the first time I was able to two pool lengths. I had to get rescued 4 minutes into the swim.
July 2017
I take part in the Finger Lakes 50. I signed up for the 50 miler but hard rainfall caused me to drop down to the 50k. I do the SF marathon and finish the hilly course with a 4:04. I’m confident I could break 4 hours in the marathon now.
August 2017
Edwin asks me what my training plan for Mountain Lakes 100 is. I don’t have one but I decided to look into Hal Koerner's Field Guide to Ultrarunning, which has plans in the back of the book, and start from whatever week out I am in. I mostly focus on the double long runs on the weekend. My other runs at this point were mostly with WSR and QDR. I do the Volcanic 50k which I still think is the coolest race ever (you go around Mount Helens, exploring 4 different types of environment). In the race I meet a woman named Martha who would be volunteering in the Mountain Lakes 100.
September 2017
I DNF my Ironman 70.3 race. I immediately paniced in the open water but got guidance by a man on a kayak and was able to swim for an hour and 25 minutes before getting cut for not making the time cutoff. The next week I did the Spartan Beast in Killington and placed well (top 10% for my first Spartan race). I returned to Mountain Lakes 100 and after 29 hours and 43 minutes I finished 100 miles. Despite the training, the race did not go well. My stomach gave out before mile 30 forcing to depend on liquid calories, I struggled with running alone in the dark after from miles 55 to 70. My quads then gave out from there and I limp walked miles 88 to 97. I had no hope to finish within the 30 hours cutoff till a volunteer told me that Martha, who I met earlier volunteering in the race, wanted me to finish. I probably had recovered a bit physically in my long walk but coming back mentally was something I wouldn’t have been able to do alone. With that simple reason, the fire relighten in my body and I ran the last miles hard. I was the final finisher of the race and I cried hard after crossing the finish line. I have a very detailed account of my 100 mile journey in my blog.
Reflection:
My 5th year of running had me dealing with failure and finding the motivation to come back into running. Joining a QDR and WSR benefitted me quite a lot. After I moved out of my parent’s place, I lost a bit of my social life and was able to quickly find it again with the running community. Running wise, I learned about speed workouts and strength workouts which would get me a bit faster. I also think answering questions about ultras and my training plans when I didn’t give them any thoughts before forced me to start thinking of how I was progressing into races. I ran more consistent thanks to the two running groups as well. That combined with my huge weight lost got me to become a faster runner. I won’t really know it till the following year when I returned to running shorter distances. I also got to interact with running without running - I volunteered for QDR long runs, took photos and weakly cheered at races, and would volunteer at races.
Year Six October 2017 - September 2018 - The Year of PRs
October 2017
I ran the Chicago marathon only two weeks after Mountain Lakes and attempt to break 4 hours. Had I been there alone, I probably would have ran it easy but being there with QDR and hearing everyone talk about their goals got me to want to try. I hit the wall at mile 8 and walk ran my first road marathon from the 13 mile mark. Despite it not going well, I felt like it worked as a recovery run. The next week I ran the Brooklyn half and broke the two hour mark for the first time.
November 2017
I learn that I have earned 11/15 points to qualify for the UTMB lottery. I heard of UTMB and knew it to be the biggest trail race. I look for a race to get the remaining points before the January 2018 lottery - a 50 miler in December. I do the NCR marathon in an easy 4:23 as my longest run to the race.
December 2017
I do the McDowell Mountain Frenzy. A highlight was running a section with Jeff who taught me a bunch of the local plants (race was just outside of Phoenix) and how he trains in Phoenix. Also around this time I get into bouldering and especially use their bootcamp and yoga classes. This comes at a cost though and I start reducing my group runs with WSR (QDR didn’t have weekly neighbor runs at this point). Triathlon training also contributed to this.
January 2018
In a very controlled marathon, I sub 4 hours in the Houston marathon. Passing the 4 hour pace group (after losing them early in the race) in the last 400 meters is still my proudest moment in running.
March 2018
A storm delays my flight to New Orleans for the Rock and Roll New Orleans marathon to the next day so I decided to do my shakeout run in Alley Pond Park. Looking at how to climb over a fallen tree blocking the path, a man calling himself Fast Eddie tells me to follow him to a path around. We talk for a bunch and are later joined by a woman. Both are Alley Pond Striders and look old to me. I was pretty surprised that the woman talked about PR and training. Anyway, I probably shared too many details of my life with her. At the NOLA marathon the next day I got 3:54 in the marathon, PRing in about 5 minutes. The major difference this time around was that I didn’t want Julie who was going for 3:40 to wait too long for me so I went out at a faster pace. To my surprise I was able to hold it. Two weeks later I ran the Georgia marathon with a 3:47 in a hilly course. Same strategy as before.
April 2018
I do the NJ marathon after a long 5 week taper where I was afraid I was borderline on injury. I get a 3:35, cramping right before the finish line (first time cramping during a run ever).
June 2018
I finish the Ridgefield tri - the same tri I DNF the year before. I do my first ultra with a friend - the North Face Endurance Challenge 50 miler in MA with Rene. Rene being a much faster runner than me performs well. Two weeks later I do Maintou’s Revenge - a 54 miler in the catskills. Despite being in the last wave, I spend the entire day passing people and perform well. The next week I do the Pemi loop, a difficult but beautiful 30 miler in the white mountains with Michael. Looking back at this month, I was probably the most trained for UTMB.
July 2018
I do the Cayuga trails 50 miler with Rinchen. I catch up to Rinchen during the race and run with her till the last 47 miles. I think running with her helped me push the pace and I got a massive PR in the 50 mile distance.
September 2018
I complete the Lake Placid 70.3 half ironman. I also do the Bronx 10 miler at a 7:21 pace which is crazy to consider the year before.
Reflections:
Year 6 was a very successful year. Before this year, a sub 9 minute pace was considered fast and this year, 8 minute pace became my marathon pace. My 100 miler of the year - Eastern States got cancelled but I still got to challenge myself in both speed and with a crazy ultra season. Returning to shorter distances I PRed like crazy. This success had a downside to it however. I started racing for PRers and started letting results define what was a good or bad race. Before I didn’t have that need for that external validation. Year 7 would be about finding my way back, back to the love of running but it would require a bunch of lessons learned the hard way.
November 2016
I run the NYC marathon and get over 5 hours due to not training. I start to relearn how to swim and sign up for my first triathlon - Lake Placid half ironman.
December 2016 - I DNF my third ultra in a row - TARC Fells ultra winter, a 40 hour - 4 x 10 mile loop race. I missed the time cutoff by quite a lot, I didn’t really try.
January 2017
After reading Finding Ultra by Rich Roll and then Whole by Dr. Campbell, I slowly adopt a vegan diet. My mom being vegetarian, I grew up not eating meat. Even as I started eating meat in late high school and the years after, I never really developed a taste for it. So giving up meat was easily, it wasn’t really in my diet anyway (I only ate it when going out). Giving up diary was much harder. I have a blog post on this if anyone wants to know more. The biggest effect of going vegan, which was really more of simply cutting dairy out - was the tremendous weight loss.
February 2017
I do the Sean O’Brien 50k as my first ultra to get back to trying Mountain Lakes 100 again. I use heart rate to slow me down in the first half and then force myself to speed up in the second half. During a recovery run in Alley Pond park, I ran with Michael who slows down to run with me. He encourages me to join a running club and tells me about Queens Distance runners, that they are a group of young and fast runners. I heard of QDR beforehand when a friend - Jianli ran with them. She also said they were fast runners and didn’t continue since she didn’t want to slow them down. I knew about running groups by this point - Alley Pond Park had the Alley Pond Striders but I was turned off by their yearly membership fees. My other hesitation to join a running group/club/team was that I felt I was too slow and that the desire to run faster would get me injured. I actually didn’t know many people that have gotten injured from running until I joined a running club. I signed up to join QDR that night. I couldn’t find any team runs however till springtime so it didn’t immediately change anything.
April 2017
I move to Sunnyside! The day after moving I find Woodside Sunnyside Runners on meetup and join them on their long run (back when their long runs were official). I do the Gorges 100k where I get to the halfway point completely exhausted. I use mediation and focus on my breath to beat the cutoffs and finish the race. I ran more with WSR!
May 2017
I take part in my first international marathon - the Vancouver marathon. I get 4:13 which makes the 4 hour mark within sight. I do my first run with QDR at Astoria track. The directions were to meet at the track which is pretty broad. I eventually, awkwardly made my way to Edwin and asked if it was QDR. It was my first track workout and I missed the drills. I didn’t care, I was ready to do the workout but Edwin encouraged me to warm up first. One thing that surprised me was that after this first event with QDR, I got quite a lot of friend requests on facebook, even with people I didn’t talk with.
I also finished the Devil’s Path this month, completing the DNF hike from 2014.
June 2017
I do the PA ragnar relay with some of my original Disney marathon gang. Then next day I DNF my first triathlon. Like everything else, I went into the race by trial by fire. It was my first time in a wetsuit, first time in open water, two weeks prior was the first time I was able to swim an entire pool length without stopping and the week prior was the first time I was able to two pool lengths. I had to get rescued 4 minutes into the swim.
July 2017
I take part in the Finger Lakes 50. I signed up for the 50 miler but hard rainfall caused me to drop down to the 50k. I do the SF marathon and finish the hilly course with a 4:04. I’m confident I could break 4 hours in the marathon now.
August 2017
Edwin asks me what my training plan for Mountain Lakes 100 is. I don’t have one but I decided to look into Hal Koerner's Field Guide to Ultrarunning, which has plans in the back of the book, and start from whatever week out I am in. I mostly focus on the double long runs on the weekend. My other runs at this point were mostly with WSR and QDR. I do the Volcanic 50k which I still think is the coolest race ever (you go around Mount Helens, exploring 4 different types of environment). In the race I meet a woman named Martha who would be volunteering in the Mountain Lakes 100.
September 2017
I DNF my Ironman 70.3 race. I immediately paniced in the open water but got guidance by a man on a kayak and was able to swim for an hour and 25 minutes before getting cut for not making the time cutoff. The next week I did the Spartan Beast in Killington and placed well (top 10% for my first Spartan race). I returned to Mountain Lakes 100 and after 29 hours and 43 minutes I finished 100 miles. Despite the training, the race did not go well. My stomach gave out before mile 30 forcing to depend on liquid calories, I struggled with running alone in the dark after from miles 55 to 70. My quads then gave out from there and I limp walked miles 88 to 97. I had no hope to finish within the 30 hours cutoff till a volunteer told me that Martha, who I met earlier volunteering in the race, wanted me to finish. I probably had recovered a bit physically in my long walk but coming back mentally was something I wouldn’t have been able to do alone. With that simple reason, the fire relighten in my body and I ran the last miles hard. I was the final finisher of the race and I cried hard after crossing the finish line. I have a very detailed account of my 100 mile journey in my blog.
Reflection:
My 5th year of running had me dealing with failure and finding the motivation to come back into running. Joining a QDR and WSR benefitted me quite a lot. After I moved out of my parent’s place, I lost a bit of my social life and was able to quickly find it again with the running community. Running wise, I learned about speed workouts and strength workouts which would get me a bit faster. I also think answering questions about ultras and my training plans when I didn’t give them any thoughts before forced me to start thinking of how I was progressing into races. I ran more consistent thanks to the two running groups as well. That combined with my huge weight lost got me to become a faster runner. I won’t really know it till the following year when I returned to running shorter distances. I also got to interact with running without running - I volunteered for QDR long runs, took photos and weakly cheered at races, and would volunteer at races.
Year Six October 2017 - September 2018 - The Year of PRs
October 2017
I ran the Chicago marathon only two weeks after Mountain Lakes and attempt to break 4 hours. Had I been there alone, I probably would have ran it easy but being there with QDR and hearing everyone talk about their goals got me to want to try. I hit the wall at mile 8 and walk ran my first road marathon from the 13 mile mark. Despite it not going well, I felt like it worked as a recovery run. The next week I ran the Brooklyn half and broke the two hour mark for the first time.
November 2017
I learn that I have earned 11/15 points to qualify for the UTMB lottery. I heard of UTMB and knew it to be the biggest trail race. I look for a race to get the remaining points before the January 2018 lottery - a 50 miler in December. I do the NCR marathon in an easy 4:23 as my longest run to the race.
December 2017
I do the McDowell Mountain Frenzy. A highlight was running a section with Jeff who taught me a bunch of the local plants (race was just outside of Phoenix) and how he trains in Phoenix. Also around this time I get into bouldering and especially use their bootcamp and yoga classes. This comes at a cost though and I start reducing my group runs with WSR (QDR didn’t have weekly neighbor runs at this point). Triathlon training also contributed to this.
January 2018
In a very controlled marathon, I sub 4 hours in the Houston marathon. Passing the 4 hour pace group (after losing them early in the race) in the last 400 meters is still my proudest moment in running.
March 2018
A storm delays my flight to New Orleans for the Rock and Roll New Orleans marathon to the next day so I decided to do my shakeout run in Alley Pond Park. Looking at how to climb over a fallen tree blocking the path, a man calling himself Fast Eddie tells me to follow him to a path around. We talk for a bunch and are later joined by a woman. Both are Alley Pond Striders and look old to me. I was pretty surprised that the woman talked about PR and training. Anyway, I probably shared too many details of my life with her. At the NOLA marathon the next day I got 3:54 in the marathon, PRing in about 5 minutes. The major difference this time around was that I didn’t want Julie who was going for 3:40 to wait too long for me so I went out at a faster pace. To my surprise I was able to hold it. Two weeks later I ran the Georgia marathon with a 3:47 in a hilly course. Same strategy as before.
April 2018
I do the NJ marathon after a long 5 week taper where I was afraid I was borderline on injury. I get a 3:35, cramping right before the finish line (first time cramping during a run ever).
June 2018
I finish the Ridgefield tri - the same tri I DNF the year before. I do my first ultra with a friend - the North Face Endurance Challenge 50 miler in MA with Rene. Rene being a much faster runner than me performs well. Two weeks later I do Maintou’s Revenge - a 54 miler in the catskills. Despite being in the last wave, I spend the entire day passing people and perform well. The next week I do the Pemi loop, a difficult but beautiful 30 miler in the white mountains with Michael. Looking back at this month, I was probably the most trained for UTMB.
July 2018
I do the Cayuga trails 50 miler with Rinchen. I catch up to Rinchen during the race and run with her till the last 47 miles. I think running with her helped me push the pace and I got a massive PR in the 50 mile distance.
September 2018
I complete the Lake Placid 70.3 half ironman. I also do the Bronx 10 miler at a 7:21 pace which is crazy to consider the year before.
Reflections:
Year 6 was a very successful year. Before this year, a sub 9 minute pace was considered fast and this year, 8 minute pace became my marathon pace. My 100 miler of the year - Eastern States got cancelled but I still got to challenge myself in both speed and with a crazy ultra season. Returning to shorter distances I PRed like crazy. This success had a downside to it however. I started racing for PRers and started letting results define what was a good or bad race. Before I didn’t have that need for that external validation. Year 7 would be about finding my way back, back to the love of running but it would require a bunch of lessons learned the hard way.
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