Winding it Down…

Man… haven’t written in this thing in FOREVER…

It’s been a combination of a lot of chaos in life and laziness that kept me away from wordpress…. I think if there’s that one thing that I will probably regret when all is said and done, is that I didn’t write enough on this thing… Oh well.. but its okay… BECAUSE, after tomorrow’s 3 mile run in the morning, my training is officially over… WHOO

I’m excited to tell you all that I will be flying out to San Diego this Saturday, and I will be running my marathon on Sunday…

I can’t believe it’s all happening so soon… seemed like yesterday when I first decided to start running…

Everybody has been asking me lately if I’m ready for this marathon or not.  My answer to that question is that I’ve never been as ready as I am right now.  I know I had to put a halt on my training and stuff because of my foot injury about a month ago, but right now I feel as ready as ever….

Speaking of the injury… It wasn’t much… just chronic pain in my right foot when I was running… Not much I can do about it, especially this late in the game, but to just go on… Basically my foot took too much pounding…  The shoes are fine, if it weren’t for the shoes I would have been dead a long time ago… but the shoes can only help so much, since my feet are so flat…

I’m so excited…  I keep saying that… but I’m so excited…

I’ve been memorizing some scripture in my past couple of runs, and it has been pretty awesome… not only does time go by much faster, but through it I can just feel God putting his strength in me…

I memorized Hebrews 12:1-2, A section of Philippians 1, and Isaiah 40.

here’s the punch line from Isaiah 40—

Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall,
but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength,
they will run and never grow weary,
they will walk and not grow faint.

These verses have been so amazing to me… I know running a marathon and all that is a pretty crazy accomplishment, but it is nothing compared to the glory of God and who he is… all men are like grass and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. All that is good within me is HIM.  no other way to describe that.

I guess I’ll end here since I need to get some sleep… Sorry for not blogging enough again.. and thanks to everyone who has been encouraging me along the way.  If it weren’t for you guys I’d be long gone..  Thanks for those who are supporting me with prayer and/or financially….  you guys are truly the greatest… I’ll blog afterwards when I am done with the marathon… wish me luck you all!

 

Eating Right

The last time I used to worry about what I ate was when I used to be this chubby, young Michael Jackson right here:

I worried about what I ate, but I never did anything to do anything about it.. haha

So my entire life I never really ate healthy… neglected the veggies, loved the galbi, loved the chocolate… The only reason I was somewhat in shape was because I played a lot of basketball… (I actually started playing basketball because koreans adults told me that it would make me taller… i was tricked… truly a young michael jackson)

Anyways… getting back to the present… I’ll let you guys know in how much I weigh…

Basically I’ve been at the 170-175 pound range for the past year and a half or so… But in my first two weeks of training, I lost 12 pounds! crazy. But the good thing is that I haven’t really lost weight after that so I’ve been at 160 for a couple of weeks now… I think it’s actually good that I lost weight because it’s gonna relieve a lot of weight off of my knees and stuff, especially because of my flat feet…

For like the first two weeks of my training when a lot of people didn’t know that I was training for the marathon, people would see me and thought I was going anorexic or something… and I would tell them “…ni. I’m running a marathon…”
Ever since I started running, I started a some sort of semi-diet? It’s not really a diet, but more of a meal plan… Basically what I try to do is eat 4-5 meals every running day. Weekends I have more trouble keeping with my meal plan, but oh well. I don’t really know much about nutrition, it would be tight if someone could help me out with that. But anyways all I try to do is to eat a lot of small meals, minimize junk food, eat a lot of carbs, eat fruit, eat salad, eat nuts…

Meal 1: some sort of breakfast

usually a bagel or whole grain cereal

Meal 2: some sort of lunch. usually a salad

“why can’t we just have like a saLadd?”

Meal 3: something with a lot of carbs

usually something with rice… spaghetti is crucial too…

Meal 4: Fruits dawg

some sort of fruit… coool…

Meal 5: something with protein

eggs, chicken breast, red meat.. usually eat it with more rice

so yea. that’s how I’ve been eating lately…. hopefully I’m eating healthy… if I find better things to eat I’ll mix up my eating habits I guess. let me know what you guys think though. cool.

random thoughts: Today’s 4-miles brought me up to 77.5 miles for my total miles trained. cool!

Peace Out

 

FlatFoot101

Flash back to two weeks ago. When training started, I figured I should go out and buy some running shoes. and i did. I went out to Dicks and bought some random New Balance shoes that looked pretty cool.

Later that day I ran like 5 miles or so, and I got off the treadmill limping because i had some crazy pain in the middle of my right foot… Turns out that the shoes that I got were the worst type of shoes I could have gotten… (The shoes that I got were designed for people with high arches…)

So. If you guys have not already known, i have flat feet! …. EXTREMELY flat feet!

here are some dog’s eye view pictures of my feet… (birds eye… dogs eye… get it? ha. ha.)

see how it bulges out on the inside when i wear my shoes???

Flat footed people are basically people that have very low arches compared to those of an average person… In severe cases, when a flat footed person stands up, the entire sole of the foot rests on the ground. (i’m one of those people…) Flat footed runners tend to get a lot of overuse injuries, including ankle, foot, knee, and lower-back pains…

I think i was pretty much born with flat feet, but I also heard from somewhere that you can acquire flat feet if your tendons and ligaments get weakened or something like that… and supposedly a lot of basketball players acquire flat feet… (i.e. kobe and lebron)

So after my terrible experience with the New Balance 8505s, I set out on a personal mission to buy some crucial running shoes that would not hurt my feet! I basically spent the whole day going to like a million different stores, and I ended up at my last one: Metro Run&Walk, located in Falls Church, VA.

So this is basically how it went down there:

Salesguy: I want you to take your shoes off so I can examine your feet and the way you walk and stuff.
Me: Okay… (takes shoes off…)
(guy stares at feet.)
Salesguy: oh my… Yo come check this out! (getting the attention of another salesguy. I stand in awkwardness)
Salesguy2: Whoa! I’ve seen some flat feet.. but this one is one of a kind!
Salesguy: Yea dude.. He’s basically like on the ground! (by now people sitting around me start staring at my feet as well)
Me: yea…

Anyways. The dude helped me out a lot and he got me my new Asics Gel Evolution III. He also hooked me up with a 10% discount, and a free pair of running socks… I think he felt bad for publicizing my flat feet to the entire store…

The shoe is basically designed for people with flat feet that tend to overpronate (release off the inside of your foot) a lot… I’ve been running with these for about two weeks now and I hardly feel any pain in my feet anymore… coool…

—————————————————————————

so… i’m officially in day 22 of my training, but in week 8 of the 24 week schedule that leads right up to the marathon… This week is probably the easiest week left in my schedule… from now on im gonna be running 20-30 miles a week… but the show must go on… yes…

quick shoutout to those that have decided to donate to china!