Blog: Entries Tagged With 'running'

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Travels and Travails - Wednesday, April 23, 2025
We last visited the Bay Area in October for me to say goodbye to my coworkers and for us to see friends and family. We thoroughly enjoyed our time up there, but we thought it would be longer before we visited again. However, last week we found ourselves visiting again.

The main reason was to go to my uncle and aunt's place to retrieve our guitar and keyboard, which they had graciously let us store there during our move. Priscilla needed those to practice since we're starting to help out with worship at our church, with Good Friday being our first time serving in this way. We always had a feeling that we would reprise our roles playing piano (her) and drums (me) for worship after joining a new church.

So the previous Friday, after our morning gym session, we drove up the 101, stopping at our new halfway spot in Atascadero for a short break. We got to Mountain View in the afternoon and I joined up with Frank to go running. We ended up running 8 miles on the Stevens Creek Trail like old times.

We stayed up in the Bay for four days, which gave us plenty of time to see people and get stuff done. We stayed two nights with the Chans, having breakfast with them on Saturday, then two nights with the Leongs, having breakfast with them on Tuesday. We also caught up with the Yehs for a late-night hangout, did lunch with Albert and Ruth, dinners with both pairs of my uncles and aunts, and dinner with Tracy at Google. Plus talking to a lot of people at church for 3.5 hours until our voices were sore. Whew. Thankful for all the people we've gotten to know and their generosity in letting us crash at their houses (several families had previously offered).

We also had time to get the prongs on Priscilla's ring adjusted at Shane Co, and also hike Mission Peak on Monday. Hiking Mission Peak once a year has been our annual tradition, so we (I) thought it would be cool to do it again this year during our trip. Will we keep up this tradition going forward? I guess we'll see. Priscilla is as thrilled about it as I am about traveling in general.

We've also been busy helping parents, both remotely and in person. The cadence for now is to visit Priscilla's parents about once a month, and we saw them yesterday and fixed a lot of things around the condo.

Her dad's dementia is getting progressively worse, and during the last visit we helped them fill out and get notarized a Durable Power of Attorney and Advance Health Care Directive for each of them. We also bought her dad a medical ID bracelet which he lost within a day. We also ordered a bracelet with a tracker that's difficult to remove, so hopefully that will be better. There's the doorknob cover to prevent him from wandering that I mentioned in a previous post, and yesterday I installed a keyed lock for her mom's bedroom to help prevent her dad from going in there and taking things. He's also been breaking things around the condo because he can't figure out how they work. He seems to have clarity less than half the time, and usually when he talks, his communication is all over the place and nobody knows what he's trying to say. It's sad seeing him decline and not be able to do a lot of the things that he used to, but I have to remind myself that this happens to just about everyone as they age - whether it's our bodies or our minds breaking down. I myself have been having a lot more aches and pains in the last few months, so I'm getting to experience things through a new perspective.

Things are the most difficult for Priscilla's mom, of course. She feels like she's being driven crazy daily due to his actions and him frequently talking about seeing/hearing people in the condo. Priscilla and I have it easy, relatively speaking, though I'm sure that will slowly change as we start helping them more. We have to remember that we're here to love and support them, and this is what we signed up for when we decided to move back down.
A Busy Two Months - Saturday, March 16, 2024
Call it... February frenzy and March madness?

Over the past couple months, it feels like I've done a lot and also not done a lot at the same time. Where does the time go?

After my large project wrapped up in November, my workload at work has been manageable. The first week of February, our business unit started requiring employees to come into the office four days a week. I'm typically a lot less productive in the office - there are so many distractions in the form of meetings, people asking for help, having to walk around to use the bathroom or get food, and overall just not having long blocks of focused time. Last week, I was so behind on interrupts that I decided to just take a WFH day so that I could focus, and I was able to close/dispatch 50 tickets in our triage queue. Granted, I ended up working some extra hours that day, but there's no way that I could achieve that level of focus in the office. Leadership really needs to understand that everybody works differently and that people, and thus the company, benefit from flexibility.

Since I have to be in the office, I make time to go running with Frank almost every week. We ran together sporadically before the pandemic, but starting at the beginning of 2023, we've been running together after work one or sometimes even two times a week, with each run averaging around 5 miles. It's a good way to stay accountable, though he already runs most days each week, unlike me.

Two Saturdays ago, I participated in the annual RealOptions Walk for Life 5k race. Our church participates every year, though most people do the walk instead of run. Thanks to the generosity of our church, our team raised over $19,500 to support the work of RealOptions. This was my fourth year doing the 5k and I ended up getting 1st place out of 65 runners this year, though my time of 21:34 was slightly worse than my time of 21:31 from last year. It just depends on who shows up - when I first participated in 2018, there were 8 people with a time under 20 minutes! I had been hoping to get a time under 21 minutes, and my personal goal is to be able to run a sub-20 minute 5k, so I have a long way to go.

The day after, Priscilla and I sang in the combined choir during the combined service at church. We had 6 people total from the English congregation joining the regular choir members from the Chinese congregation. I think this was a record turnout from the English side! We sang an arrangement of "Then Sings My Soul" by Mary McDonald, which is a little different from the traditional hymn. It was actually kind of fun, and it was awesome hearing how the four vocal parts came together in a beautiful composition. I was actually the one who suggested joining, as Priscilla was thinking that I wouldn't want to do it. I guess I'd be okay with doing something like this again - but not on a regular basis, Priscilla!

On the home improvement side, I've been working on replacing the old blinds in the spa room and gym room. I ordered some basic blinds (still not cheap at $230) from blinds.com and I've had to find bits of time on random evenings to get the brackets installed. One of the windows is not totally square and so one of the brackets isn't flush with the other one. Since the design of these blinds makes it so that they just sit inside the brackets without being tightened down, the entire assembly wobbles when pulling on the lift cord. I'm trying to see if I can get something to act as a shim to sit inside the bracket so that the headrail doesn't have as much room to move vertically.

We're leaving for Japan tomorrow and need to spend today packing and getting things ready. After we get back, we'll try to find a real estate agent to get information on selling our house. We're thinking of listing with Redfin due to the lower commissions. There are still a lot of things we need to fix including reglazing the showers, replacing a toilet, painting (definitely exterior and maybe interior as well), cleaning grout, cleaning patios and walkways, landscaping, finishing the drip irrigation, and more. So we might not even list our house until May or June. We just have to take it one day at a time.
Walk for Life - Saturday, March 4, 2023
Every year, our church participates in the RealOptions Walk for Life. It's a great way to raise money to support a faith-based pregnancy resource center, and to push one another to exercise!

The event is held annually at Martial Cottle Park in San Jose, and participants can either walk 2.4 miles or run a 5k. In addition to this year, I've participated in 2018 and 2020. Naturally, I sign up for the run. Priscilla prefers to walk with church friends. We had 15 registrations from our church this year, with 10 of those being families. Our church has gotten big, and we had a large turnout today. A lot of the kids are starting to get to the age where they're able to run a 5k, and we have some fast kids!

The primary goal of the Walk for Life is to fundraise for RealOptions. With over $16,000 raised, our church placed 3rd out of all groups signed up for the event. I don't like asking people for money, so Priscilla and I just donated $400 to ourselves (and more to others). But we set a goal of $1,000, recalling that in the past, there were people at church who wanted to support participants. We didn't ask anyone for donations, but 7 people donated to us! Most of the donations were made anonymously, but they were almost certainly from people at church, as the link to join/support our group has been in the church bulletin for the past few weeks. Our last donor gave $25 after the event and brought us to our exact $1,000 goal! Everyone else in our group got at least several donations, and most people got to their fundraising goal. We have a lot of generous people at church.

My training hasn't been ideal. The past several months have felt colder than usual, and there have been so many rainy days, many of them with heavy and prolonged rain. Atmospheric rivers have been dumping so much rain on us that half the state is no longer in a drought. So it's been hard to get outside and run, though that's partly just me making excuses.

During my last training run, I ran a 5k at a 7:01 pace at max effort. I always have a tendency to start too fast, especially when I'm with people and they sprint out of the gate. So for today's race, I knew that I had to start intentionally slower and gradually increase my pace so that I could save some fuel for the latter half. I started almost at the front of the group (64 runners in all), but quickly had 15 or so people sprint past me, many of whom were kids. But one by one, I started passing people as I maintained a mostly constant pace while people started slowing down. 0.5 miles in, I saw one guy stopped on the side of the path catching his breath - he definitely went all in way too soon!

There was one guy who stayed in the lead the whole time, way up ahead, and I knew I had no chance of catching up to him. Trailing him by a fair distance was a pack of three or so guys who seemed to be trying to keep up with each other. I knew I wouldn't be able to catch up to them while maintaining that pace for the whole race, so I let them get a little ahead while making sure I never lost sight of them. Towards the 2 or 2.5 mile point, I increased my pace a bit more and was able to pass two of the guys, who might've also been slowing down. I then hustled to catch up to the third guy, but we both full on sprinted at the end and I crossed the finish line a fraction of a second behind him. Interestingly, though I came in 3rd place by gun time, I came in 2nd place by chip time, and the final results were based on chip time. My official time was 21:31, putting my pace at 6:56. My times in 2018 and 2020 were 23:17 and 21:38, respectively, so it seems like I've improved. The winning time today was 21:09. It really depends on who shows up - in 2018, there were 8 runners with a time under 20 minutes, with the winning time being 18:06!

I guess I do like the competition of racing, but even more, I value self-improvement. I recently read an article about a "totally average runner," close to me in age, who trained until he was able to run a 5-minute mile. That's become a goal of mine, as the necessary progression seems like a worthwhile investment to pursue. It sounds crazy and I know there will be a ton of work involved, but I'm not getting any younger, and late is better than never.

And hopefully all the training will help me get an even better 5k time next year. Anyway, I'm glad that today we were able to have fun and support a good cause. But the work, for all of us, is never done.
Madness? This is Sparta! - Saturday, October 2, 2021
Call it madness or something else, but it seems that I've been bitten by the Spartan bug. After my Spartan Race in August, I was hooked. And two weeks ago, I did my Spartan Trail Half Marathon at Sanborn County Park.

The trail race was actually run by a company called Pacific Coast Trail Runs and they had a 50k, half marathon, and two 10k courses. I woke up really early (had trouble sleeping due to excitement) and got to the park before 7am, in time to help cheer on the 30 or so people starting the 50k. The half marathon started at 8am and check-in took just 10 minutes or so. I probably would've had enough time to park at the shuttle pickup location in Saratoga and take the shuttle in order to avoid paying the $6 parking fee at Sanborn, but I didn't want to chance it.

The different courses shared much of the same route and I crossed paths with a good number of people, though it didn't feel too crowded most of the time. Most of the trails were single-track, and of course the trails couldn't be closed to non-racers since these are public trails.

The half marathon course was manageable but tough. It was over 3,200 feet of elevation gain, including a steady incline for the first 3 miles. We had to run to a point at the Lake Ranch Reservoir and grab a wristband there before running back. The climbing didn't feel too bad, though I did alternate between running and power hiking and tried to pace myself. I did push myself harder than on a typical trail run, and my official time was 2:48:27, placing 38/104, 32/80 for males and 12/26 for my age group. So basically, slower than the people who run competitively but faster than those who probably don't trail run regularly.

The one thing that messed me up was that I was running in new shoes. I'd bought a pair of Saucony Peregrine 11 trail shoes to replace my Saucony Mad River TR's which were starting to wear out. I felt like all my previous shoes hadn't needed much breaking in, the new shoes felt comfortable enough when I walked around the neighborhood in them, and it was the same brand as my other shoes. So I took the chance of doing the race without having run in them before.

Well, that ended up being a bad decision. A few miles in, the shoes were starting to rub against both ankle bones. The fact that I was wearing thinner, low-cut socks might've also exacerbated things. So my ankles were chafing and hurting, then the sides of my calves started hurting (that's never happened before), then both legs started cramping around 9, and then I had to just power through with occasional stretching. I literally hobbled across the finish line with both calves cramping. Needless to say, my mistake cost me a bit of time and turned what would've otherwise been an enjoyable trail run into somewhat of a slog. But overall, I still enjoyed the event, and finally finishing after all of that felt awesome. As did eating the free Mexican food that we got from a food truck that was set up in the parking lot.

Having now done both a Spartan Race and a Spartan Trail, I would rate the Spartan Race as more enjoyable due to the obstacles. I've since committed to doing a Trifecta next year - my church buddy Daniel and I both purchased the Trifecta Pass and we'll be doing the SLO Beast and Monterey Super together (we're still figuring out what we want to do for the Sprint). Also, Ruth from church shared with me that an organization that she's been promoting, Foster the City, is putting together a team to do the San Francisco Spartan Stadion this December. Registration through the organization is only $50 since they want participants to fundraise. So Daniel and I and a few people from church ended up signing up.

The Stadion seems like it'll be the easiest of the four events that I'll be doing, but it will be a good checkup to see if my training is paying off and if my muscles are holding up. I guess I've had some issues with my right shoulder and my event in August exacerbated it, so I've been having some shoulder pain when working out. I probably have at least a partial tear in the rotator cuff. I've been trying to strengthen the shoulder and go to the gym to do exercises that I don't have the equipment for at home (though I need to be more consistent in going, despite the gym not being that close). And I found that pullups exacerbated the pain, so I'm laying off of those for now. Hopefully with the right exercises, sufficient nutrition and rest, Lord willing, I'll be able to rebuild and take on the obstacles this year, next year and beyond.

Spartan events are pretty pricey, so I'm not really itching to do these all the time. But the events will give me extra motivation to train since I want to do well. The fellowship aspect is nice, too. But I must do all this with the right motivation. Fitness and health are often idols for me, so I have to remember that they are impermanent and that they must glorify, not take the place of, Christ. When (not if) they are taken away, I must be able to say like Job, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."
Reversion - Saturday, June 27, 2020
In last week's post, I mentioned the challenges of working in the office during the current crisis but that I hoped to stick it out for a couple days. Well, after two days total I decided to revert to working from home. Not having much that I could eat and having to wear a mask the whole time in the office were too burdensome (and half the time while I was at my desk with nobody around, I either wasn't wearing the mask or didn't have it covering my nose).

Everyone else on my team had already elected to continue working from home. And this week, due to the rising number of coronavirus cases both nationally and statewide, Pure decided to roll back the reintegration plan and require all employees, except essential staff, to revert to working from home again.

Today, with 44,782 new cases reported, the US set the single-day record for new cases for the fifth day in a row. For comparison, the number of daily new cases was less than half this number at the beginning of the month. Cases are spiking in western and southern states, California included. But it's encouraging to see that New York, where things seemed out of control in April, has appeared to have flattened the curve since then.

The spike in cases is likely due to states reopening, though people not taking as many precautions is probably a large contributor. One need only look around to see the signs. When we visited Santana Row mid-June, it felt like there were way too many people there, and many people didn't seem to be socially distancing or wearing masks. When I went running at Rancho San Antonio (an extremely popular hiking spot) last weekend, the trails were crowded and only about 25% of people were wearing a mask. It seems like the fact that we're reopening, plus some quarantine fatigue, has caused people to let their guard down, and now we're starting to see the consequences of that. Half of the new cases in recent weeks have been in adults under the age of 35, a worrying trend.

Personally, I'm not taking chances. I keep a cloth mask with me when running in an area where social distancing is not always possible, and I'll put it on when someone is approaching. And when going into stores, I've started wearing an N95 mask and a cloth mask over it - partly for the double protection, and partly to cover up the N95 mask because there seems to be a stigma against non-medical personnel having/wearing them due to shortages. We bought two N95 masks 2 years ago when NorCal was experiencing large-scale wildfires, but I don't want people getting the wrong idea.

At the current rate, I expect the crisis to get a lot worse before it starts getting better. Young people might continue not socially distancing and unknowingly catch the virus and spread it to others. We could be past the inflection point where the exponential spread of the virus really starts to accelerate. States could scale back their reopening efforts and shut down again, causing new economic woes that compound the earlier ones. Bay Area companies could very well require employees to work from home for the rest of the year. There's so much uncertainty now. But, places like New York (where all parts of the state have reopened to some degree) are proof that things can turn around, but it requires everyone to work together.
Missed Classes? - Friday, June 3, 2005
Oh, busy day. I awoke suddenly around 7:45 in the morning and, being groggy and blurry-eyed, I thought the clock read 1:45 (pm). I exclaimed, "Oh crap! I missed my classes!" as I cursed myself for staying up late to do my math assignment when it caused me to oversleep and miss my chance to turn it in. I ended up falling back asleep until the alarm clock sounded at 9, upon which I realized the truth. Then there was NO way I was missing class..

Tonight I headed down to the track to once again challenge my running stamina. I ended up doing 6 laps (1.5 miles) without slowing down, which is double what I pulled off last time. This running is showing great results, one of which is a decrease in the frequency of being late to class!
Running - Wednesday, May 25, 2005
I haven't done any significant running since high school, but I'm trying to pick it up again. This past Saturday I found I could run only 1 lap on the track (quarter mile) before getting tired, so I ran and walked alternately for a total of 6 laps.

Tonight I went again and ran 3 laps consecutively, then walked 2, then ran 1, walked 1, ran 1 as fast as I could and took 1 more for cooldown. Now if that isn't major improvement, I don't know what is. ;p