Introduction

2002-2006

I started running in the fall of 2002, my freshman year in high school (Hoover High School, Glendale, California).  I joined the cross country and track teams, and would stay on them during my four years there.  I wasn’t particularly fast, though I did captain the teams for two years.  I felt I was very involved in the sport and found it to be one my defining experiences during my teenage years.  A couple of things usually stand out during my time on the team, namely having 3 different head coaches, a season of track without a distance coach, getting slower between my sophomore and junior years, and advancing out of league as a team in cross country my senior year.

High school senior year 2006.

2006-2011

After moving to attend the University of California, Berkeley, I joined the university’s running club but eventually passed up runs for other things (video games, homework, and engineering clubs).  Like a lot of other people, I gained a certain amount of weight (somewhere in the range of +30 pounds at the worst).  However, I did somehow manage to run my first marathon in the summer of 2008 (I was 20 years old) – the San Francisco Marathon with a time of 3:48:29.  I wish I had kept some records of my training, because looking back I really doubt I did any structured training.  I would neglect running for another 4 years after this race.

2012

I received my Master’s, again from Berkeley, in December 2011.  I moved to Seattle about a month later to start working as an engineer at Boeing.  Because of the early start that the engineers adopted, I would work from 7am to 3:30pm, and even sometimes 6am to 2:30pm.  This meant I had a lot of time to go running in daylight after work!  Though it was hard to get back into things (I can’t remember how many times I told myself I’d “start running again”), I got back into decent running shape and ran the Seattle Rock and Roll Marathon in June of 2012.  I had a pretty poor race in terms of pacing, though, finishing with 4:02:09 – slower than my first marathon attempt!  My training was semi-structured, but again I made a lot of mistakes that only now I understand.  I had some minor injuries and then winter set in, making me go on-and-off with running for the rest of the year.

Elisha and me after the Seattle Rock and Roll Marathon 2012.

Even though I wasn’t running, it was around this time that I began to read more about ultramarathons.  By pure definition, an ultramarathon, or ultra, is a race that is simply longer than a marathon (26.2 miles).  The most common distances are 50K (31 miles) and then 50 miles.  At the time, I thought running 50 miles was impossible for someone like me, and it seemed like some event reserved for the most elite of runners.  Early on, I identified the American River 50 (AR50) mile as a good entry ultramarathon.  AR50 takes place near the Sacramento area in early April.

2013

After a year in Seattle, I returned to Berkeley to join the PhD program for the 2013 spring semester.  Because I got my Master’s in the same department and group (civil and environmental engineering (CE) department, structural engineering-mechanics-materials (SEMM) group), I only had to fill out some paperwork to re-enroll, which allowed me to arrive in the spring.  I had intensions to restart my running program, but going back to school made things a little tricky in the beginning.  I did sign up for the San Francisco Rock and Roll Half Marathon, and ran it in April of 2013 for fun.  AR50 actually takes place during the same weekend, and in the back of my mind I really wanted to run AR50 a year later.

After the San Francisco Rock and Roll Half Marathon 2013.

I signed up for The North Face Endurance Challenge (TNFEC) marathon in the Marin Headlines, to be run in December 2013.  During this weekend of racing, there are races from 5K to 50 mile.  I flirted with the idea of running a 50K, but that race sold out when I finally had the guts to register, and “settled” for the marathon. 

To prepare, I finally adopted a structured training program and started running seriously at the end of the summer.  There a lot of different plans to choose from – I ended up using the Hansons’ marathon method.  It comes as a book if you’re interested in it as well.  What I liked about it was the training methodology of cumulative fatigue.  Instead of focusing solely on a Saturday long run (with perhaps an easy day on Friday and taking Sunday off), you train your legs to run on tired legs to better simulate marathon racing conditions.  Of course, this program isn’t so easy to do (you get up to 10 mile tempo runs on a weekday), but I managed to do most of it.  Though I was training for a marathon, I was actually using this training period as a step-up to American River in the spring.  I figured if I could get through the training, I would have a strong base to transition into ultramarathon training.  Because I decided I would use a back-to-back long run type training for ultramarathons in the future, the Hansons’ method of cumulative fatigue fit very well with the overall strategy behind training.

Also during this time, I began to explore Tilden Park more, which really helped with the long runs.  Tilden is amazing and connects directly to Redwood and Chabot Parks.  You can actually get an out-and-back run of at least 50 miles on trails if you wanted to (not that I did, but just to let you know).

I had a bad stretch near the end of my marathon training due to research experimentations and my PhD preliminary exam.  I ended up running TNFEC (25.5 miles) with a time of 4:25:04.  There were some nice elevations gains during the run (the website says 4519 feet gained), and it was a good introduction to ultramarathoning.  At some points of my marathon race, the 50K and 50 mile racers were on the same path, so I got a little bit of that atmosphere.  I signed up for AR50 almost immediately following the race.

Finishing The North Face Endurance Challenge Marathon 2013.

I took a mandatory two weeks off after the race.  When I came back to start running, I found that I developed runner’s knee on my right side.  Usually when I get injured, I tend to deal with it, but this pain was substantial enough the stop my run.  I decided to take some more time off, which I had to do anyway, since Elisha (my girlfriend, and who will be mentioned often in my upcoming posts) and I went to Maui for vacation for New Year’s.