People train to run a marathon, people train to run a fast 10K, but what do runners do to prepare themselves for an ultra marathon? It was nearly 6 months ago that I decided to run at all, thanks to my girlfriend Leslie who encouraged me to run, and thanks to my childhood friend who inspired me to run after staring at his facebook updates.
In the 6 months, I went from running a 4 miler to a half marathon. I became addicted to running. I don't know what sparked this, but I felt the greatness and freedom of running. After running the Staten Island Half, feeling confident with running a marathon, I wanted to test out my limits. Well, K60K it is. The stupidity in me as well as fellow running buddy Charles Yoo, signed up for a ridiculous 60Km running event. 60K, which is about 37 miles...a marathon and a half marathon combined. What got into me?? I haven't even attempted a marathon and yet, here I was staring at the NYRR site.
Well, the day did come, and well, I couldn't finish the whole thing. It was kind of disappointing, but at the same time, a DNF (Did Not Finish) encouraged me to run it again next year. What also boosted my confidence was that I was able to run a marathon. I dropped out on the 7th loop of the 4 mile course. That's 28 miles! It was a gruesome 7 laps. I can't remember the time, but it was somewhere near 6:30:00. The course was a 4 mile loop around central park. Really nothing special. There were volunteers throughout the course and whats great were the runners running central park daily were cheering us on as well. I liked that a lot. It's always good to get motivation and encouragements from other runners.
The first 3 laps were going pretty good. I was pretty comfortable and my girlfriend was pacing with me the entire time. Leslie used to do cross country so she has more experience than me in running. She was able to maintain a steady pace the entire time while I was slowly struggling. When we hit the 4 lap, I decided to walk a little. My pace was a slow 11:00 and I should've gone a little faster. The slow pace paid its toll on me and by the 5th lap, I was in pain. Leslie decided to take a break after the 5th and I was on my own. I basically run/walked the entire time. I still admired the cheering from other runners and it made me want to run more but my body was pretty much shut down completely. I decided to walk lap 6 to regain some momentum, stretching a little here and there, but that didn't help much. The bottom of my feet were killing me the most and every step I took, it was a shock wave up my legs.
I should've kept walking the rest of the way, but I didn't have it in me. I could have finished and claimed my prize, but my confidence level was near zero. After walking lap 7, knowing there were 2 more laps, I decided to call it quits. It was painful both physically and mentally, but at that moment, I had a slight relief. My friends Charles and Wonah finished the race and I cheered them on. Wonah said she'll never do that again. Charles was getting at me for not finishing.
This race was a turning point in both mental and physical training. I vowed to train harder for next years K60K and I think I will continue to do this race as a mental training run. This also gave me confidence in being able to run a marathon.
So that day marked my first ultra attempt and I plan on training harder to do more of these.
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