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.
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