Guns help me make decisions

Today was the first actual day of the rifle class. We started learning the basics of the M4, which is a carbine version of M16. Basically, M4 is what they use in urban warfare, like in the middle east. It was surprisingly heavy and disappointing at the same time. Thanks to violent R rated movies, the gun didn't look "real," because I've seen it in movies. (I know that made little sense, but I associate movie things with fake things.)

But despite Hollywood ruining some of the excitement, I still felt really cool. And because I felt so cool and powerful, I decided to bite the bullet and actually sign up for a marathon in May. I threatened my bf with the gun to make him register for the marathon with me. J.K. He agreed before I had to resort to that.

I can't believe I'm actually registered for the marathon! 

Since I can't afford a running coach, I'm going to have to start looking online and asking you guys about tips on training and fueling.

Hopefully we'll still be smiling on May 20th. 

I can't wait to embark on my marathon training journey! Hopefully with you guys's help, I can stay motivated and sane through out the process! 

Now if I can only do a pull up, my life would be complete. 

11 Things!

Kathy tagged me for the 11 themes thing that has been going around the blog world. And now that  I'm on the do everything kick, I'm actually going to do the questionaire.

The rules:

1. Post these rules.

2. You must post 11 random things about yourself.

3. Answer the questions set for you in your tagger's post.

4. Create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer.

5. Go to their blogs and tell them you’ve tagged them

6. No stuff in the tagging section about "you are tagged if you are reading this." You legitimately have to tag 11 people!

Random things

1. I once fell off a treadmill. . . twice. I was at the gym and my towel fell off. I pressed stop button and stopped running without waiting for the treadmill to fully stop. So the first time was super embarrassing because people were in line to use the treadmill. Tons of people witnessed my humiliation. And then I tried to get back on the treadmill. But I didn't realize that the tread was still moving, so I fell off again. Not my greatest moment. 

2. I am an energetic person. I seriously run around everywhere and power walk to class for no reason. 

3. I was crazy freshman year. For some reason, I slept 4 hours and stayed giddy for the rest of the day. I also crashed every two weeks. Since then I've grown older and now require way more sleep. 

My hallmate had this sign up on the door for a while. Yeah, I woke up at 6AM on weekends. 

4. While I had no problem staying up for no reason, I have a hard time staying up when there's work to be done. Nothing puts me to sleep faster than reading scientific papers on isomerization catalysts. 

I tried this so that I'd wake up. Verdict: 5 hour energy works way better than lying in the snow. 

5. I used to have a bunny at school. Correction. My boyfriend had a bunny at school. It was mine by name, but he actually cleaned the cage, fed it food, and all the other stuff that goes with bunny ownership. But we had to give it away. 

Look how cute it is. 

6. I love swing dancing especially aerials. I'm so happy that my bf is big enough to throw me around so that I can pretend that I'm flying. 

Look at us dancing. 

7. I did kendo for about a year. And then I advanced enough to wear the full armor and have other people hit me. Then I promptly quit. Hitting teachers was way more fun than getting hit by beginners. 

8. I can sleep anywhere. During sophomore year, I fell asleep even when my roommate was having a phone conversation with her bf. I once fell asleep on the bus and had to walk all the way back to my stop. 

9. I am a pro at decorating wedding cars. If you're having a wedding, you should invite me and I will make your car awesome. 

I should be a car advertising model. Look how well I'm selling the car. 

10. I really like staying in and watching a movie or just chilling with a small group of friends. I'm only a super crazy party person about one day out of the month. 

A random photo of an aerial. This is actually a dance move. The bf is not trying to kill me by smashing my head into the ground, which is what it looks like. 

11. I have random photo shoots with my friends. It just happens when we're procrastinating. 

I don't know what we were trying to do. We are all doing different things. 

Questions from Kathy:

1. What is your ‘must have’ song on your playlist?

 I actually don't run with music. But I do have head music, and I definitely hum "Rolling" by Limp Bizkit whenever I run up rolling hills. 

2. Name one song on your playlist that you are embarrassed to admit is there.

Well the one album that I have on my itunes that I'm ashamed of is the High School Musical Series. 

3. Given the choice would you have a housekeeper or personal chef at your beck and call?

Definitely a personal chef. I like food more than a clean house. And to be honest, I'd rather clean than cook. I find vacuuming to be relaxing. 

4. Favorite childhood cartoon and why ... ??

I grew up in Korea, so I grew up with anime style cartoons. My absolute favorite was Sailor Moon. But once I moved to the US, I watched Recess. 

5. If you could pick any historical figure as your running buddy who would it be and why? (Anything goes ... Cleopatra, Napoleon, Freddy Mercury, Fred Lebow, Kurt Cobain... whatever)

Since Kurt Cobain is on there, I am going to assume that I don't need to pick an actual super historical figure. I would run with Feynman. I find him hilarious and incredibly interesting. 

6. What is your favorite board game? Are you a good sport ... or like me?

My favorite board game is Ricochet Robot. My entire family plus my bf is obsessed with it. It's super nerdy. You basically stare at the board and try to come up with the shortest way to get a certain robot to a certain square in the board in your mind. Basically, a game for theoretical physicist who think for a living. I actually played once with a theoretical physics grad student once. I lost. 

I am a really bad sport. When I play Ricochet with my bf, I fake cry, get pouty, and fist pump all in one game. 

7. What is your bucket list race/tri?

Olympic trials. But getting real, I'd like to run the Boston. If that can't be done, I would like to make lots of money and do a European vacation marathon. 

8. If you could pick one dessert to be calorie free what would it be?

I love bubble tea. I just like having something to drink while I work, and bubble tea makes me feel like I'm having a snack as opposed to just a drink. 

9. What was worse for you in PE class? Running laps or climbing the rope?

I've actually haven't taken PE since middle school. In high school, I took dance and weight training. But definitely climbing rope. I have NO arm strength. It's quite sad. 

10. What is your favorite book to read over and over?

I love the Little House Series. But now that I'm grown, I really like Hot Lights and Cold Steel. It's a memoir written by an orthopedic surgeon about his residency years. I find him hilarious. I can often be seen laughing by myself with his book. 

11. Who was your first childhood celebrity crush? How do you feel about him/her now?

I loved Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. Yeah, I went for older men. None of those Disney stars for me. I still find them attractive even with Cruise's crazy phase. But now that I'm older, Daniel Craig is very attractive! He exudes manliness. It would be really disappointing if I met him in real life and he was girly. 

You're welcome. 

Now for 11 new questions:

1. What did you do for fun in your childhood?

2. What's your hobby other than running? 

3. What's your most embarrassing workout related moment? 

4. Would you rather run a 50 miler or do an ironman?

5. Which celebrity would you run with? (I pick Daniel Craig of course)

6. What's your favorite movie of last year? (AKA I'd like movie recommendations)

7. What's your fashion must have? 

8. What's the one material thing that you can't live without? 

9. What's one of your life goals? ( I totally wanna learn to do a back flip)

10. Which childhood place holds most memories?

11. Where in the world would you go if you can go anywhere? 

Now for 11 people

Jamie

Mike (Jamie's Mike)

Kara

Raina

Ashley

Tami

Cindy

J

Rachel

Melie

Daniel Craig, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise (Just in case you guys happen to stumble across my blog)

That was a super long post. Thanks for reading through it! I hope I didn't miss anyone in tagging. I tried to go through most recent comments. Have a great Tuesday! 

Doing Everything

I was the opposite of this last week. I tried to do everything, and then got stressed and just slept a lot. I also worked on school work like it was the end of the semester. Sadly, despite the fact of being a second semester senior, I had group project meetings before classes even started.

 

First week in and this is how I feel. Like I'm dying, like the last 0.1 miles of the half. 

I know that people busier than I am find time to do everything and be productive. So I'm going to try to be more efficient and consume lots of coffee. In fact, there's even a t-shirt sold by the chemical engineering society that reads: "Cornellians run on caffeine by day and alcohol by night." Seriously, there are some crazy people here who do more things than I do, and then party like a rock star from Wednesday to Saturday. I am unfortunately not at that level, so I'm going to do everything that I need to do and then train for a marathon.

This is totally going to be me. 

Part of the reason I'm kind of running around everywhere is that I'm not prepared to drop my fun classes yet, like Human Bonding, figure skating, dance technique, and rifles. Yup, I'm taking a rifles course where I am going to shoot M-16s. I'd say that's beasting it. Especially since 50% of the grade is how accurately I can hit the targets.

Last time I really pushed myself, it turned out pretty well. 

So hopefully by the end of this semester, I'd be modern dancing, figure skating, marathon training, M-16 shooting, researching, teaching English, blogging, and hopefully employed after graduating chemical engineer. Wish me luck! 

Tell me, how do you guys do it all? Or how do you guys keep from procrastinating?  

Leaving California

I left sunny California Tuesday night. And ended up in Rochester, NY. It was crazy to have such a drastic climate change.

I left this:

Playing at the dog park with Dante

And came back to a very cold icy terrain. I would insert a cold picture here, but I haven't even been able to muster up the energy to leave the warm indoors.

Back in California, I had all these grand running plans, but now that I'm actually back it's hard to get out in the cold and start the run. 

I totally would have slacked yesterday and not gone on a run, except I made plans with this girl. 

Jaime and me. Her husband and my bf was there too, but one was taking the picture and the other was shining the head lamp on our face so that there was enough light for a quick cell phone picture. 

It was so much fun. I am usually not a big group runner, but talking made the cold more bearable and the time go by faster. Before I knew it, we had gone for 3.25 miles at a comfortable 9:52/mile pace. They were even nice enough to go slow and for shorter in order to accommodate my bf who had recently been sick. 

We were unsurprisingly the only crazies out in the dark canal at 6:30PM. And the only ones in running clothes at a nice crepe place that we visited afterwards. I thought I should take a picture for the blog, but the nutella crepe was so good and getting to know Jamie and Mike so fun that the crepes were gone before I could take a photo. 

Unfortunately, I haven't been out running today. It's harder to go when I only have to answer to myself. But hopefully, I'll get some good spinning and a boot camp class in. 

I'm definitely going to convince Jaime and Mike to move to Ithaca for the winter. So that I'm forced to run outside. 

What do you guys do in the cold? Do you run outside? What's your winter must have? Or how do you motivate yourself? Here's to a safe winter running! And to everyone who reads my blog, let's meet up sometime! 

13.1 marathon LA recap

I officially completed my 3rd marathon!

Best birthday present to myself ever!

To make the long story short, I broke 2 hours and came in with a time of 1:58:59. So for the rest of the year, I can slack off on half marathons, since I already met my resolution! :P And this was also the first race where I ran the whole time even through water stations. But now let's back up to the beginning. 

Yesterday morning, I was not feeling the race at all. I had gone to bed past midnight and didn't want to wake up at 5AM in order to make the 7:00AM start. 

So I snoozed until 5:30AM and grabbed a quick breakfast of pita bread with cheese and headed out the door. I had never had pita and cheese before a run before, but I figured it would be fine. 

When I got to Venice Beach, the whole place was packed. It was quite an experience, since I've only really done small local races before. But I liked the atmosphere and seeing all the runners. Before the race started, it wasn't quite light out yet, but I decided to wear sunglasses just in case it brightened up. The real reason was that I have never worn prescription sunglasses before, and I wanted to try them out. Probably not the best idea to try new things like a new breakfast and new glasses on race day, but it turned out okay. 

You know you're cool when you have sunglasses on even though it's dark. 

The worst part of the morning was trying to decide on a race strategy. I thought I might be able to hold a 9:15/mile pace, but I didn't know what my pacing strategy should be. So I did what I'm not supposed to do. I decided to try and hold a 9:00/mile pace for as long as possible and then positive split to a 9:30/mile or so pace later in the race. I figured, this would average out to a 9:15/mile. 

For the most part, I stuck with the plan. I did end up positive splitting when I got tired. 

I started really struggling around mile 9. I was tired and just wanted to walk. I also ended up throwing out the free GU that they were handing out at earlier miles. I don't take any energy gels during the race, but I wanted to try out clif chocolate cherry flavor after the race. That was the saddest moment of the race, when I no longer had the energy to hold on to an unnecessary item. 

Right at the end when I looking at my medal and also for a trashcan where I can throw up. 

After mile 10, I really wanted to walk for a bit. But since there was a clock by every mile marker, I knew that it was in the realm of possibility to make it under 2 hours. Whenever I wanted to quit, I reminded myself how sucky it would be to have to hold to a 8:55/mile ish pace for the first 9 miles all over again in a future attempt to come under 2 hours. 

So I just gritted my teeth and pushed on. By start of mile 12, the balls of my feet were so sore that I couldn't pick up the pace at all. In a last ditch effort, I started heel striking. I'm usually a ball striker (hee hee). But seriously I prefer to stay on the balls of my feet to prevent knee pain, but I figured a mile of heavy heel striking wouldn't hurt. 

There was a really nice downhill in the last 0.5 miles, which was awesome. So I came in under but close to 2 hours, heavily heel striking, but I remembered to raise my arms up in the air at the finish line. I also smiled and waved at all race photographers I saw. 

A brand new PR! 

In conclusion, I think I should take this as a sign that I should race every year on my birthday. Thanks for reading this super long recap. And I also loved all your good wishes on the race! Definitely helped. Have a great Monday! 

Friday the 13th

I've had a pretty bad couple of days with personal stuff, but I think Friday the 13th was the last day of bad luck. Knock on wood!

One bad thing was that I couldn't get contacts. I learned that at the eye glass place I go to, the doctor won't prescribe me contacts because of a cornea ulcer I had two years ago. It resulted in a scar in the left cornea so he wanted to make sure I didn't hurt my right cornea. Meaning, I will now always have awkward race photos with bouncy glasses.

But I guess things could be worse. I could be blind. Glasses is infinitely better than that.

Glasses aren't so bad with a witch's hat. 

Even though it's upsetting, I'm going to try to stay positive. And I do most of my training runs with glasses anyways so it shouldn't be that  much of a problem tomorrow. 

Tomorrow will be my first race with glasses. If the day is bright, I might try out the prescription sunglasses I just got. 

Picked up my bib! I love picking up race packets. It's just as fun as the race without any pressure. 

Wish me luck tomorrow! And good luck to everyone running tomorrow! We can all reach our goals. Does anyone here run races with glasses? It's not that bad, right? 

Inspiration

I've been getting swept up in the excitement of the Olympic marathon trials that's happening this Saturday. I can't even imagine running one miles at a 5:XX pace. I wonder if it feels like flying to be that fast. I hope one day I can spectate the race and see all the elites in person. 

Today, I found these awesome videos on youtube about the athletes that the Hansen brothers are training for the trials. 

In the video, their warm up of 3 miles is in 22 minutes. Holy mackerel! That would be my next goal race pace for a 5K. 

From obsessively watching these videos, I realized that one big thing that separated me from these elite athletes was the dedication they have to their training. Well other than the fact that they've been running a lot longer, have better mechanics, have longer legs etc. 

I've decided that I want to be just like them. I read somewhere in Born to Run by Christopher McDougall that you peak in running when you're around 29. So, if I keep up with hill intervals, speed intervals, tempos, and other running workouts, maybe I can reach the sub elite level with dedication. 

What I hope to reach someday.

I am going to dream big in hopes that I'll land among the stars, like a BQ. So even though I can't even run a sub 2 hour half yet, I'm going to dream big and train hard in hopes that maybe one day I'll be fast enough to be considered sub elite for NYC marathon. Or at the very least, run a solid BQ.  

Come on everyone, dream with me! What's your big running goal in your life? If it's a super reach (like my sub elite dream), that's even better.