How to Cross the Finish Line on Top

This year has been a significant one for my running journey. I recently surpassed a key benchmark at my gym’s “Catch Me If You Can” challenge by breaking the 4-mile barrier. I placed in the Top 3 at a trail half marathon in early October, and even hit a new personal best for my mile time, shaving it down to 4:38—a record I’m incredibly proud of. Additionally, I’ve checked off three states from my goal of running a half marathon in every state, all in the same year I began this adventure with my very first half marathon.

With so many milestones, there’s not enough time to wax eloquent about each one or give them the full attention—the love and praise—that they deserve. Yet, I believe it’s worth diving into each of them separately, expounding on them. It’s better to capture these moments than to let them fade into a chasm of unrecorded memories. It’s like hiking to the top of a mountain and seeing a canyon—an abyss that stretches from peak to peak. No one wants to stare at a blank page where there should be words, emblazoned in dark ink. So, I’m determined to take the time to put these experiences into words that capture the essence of the memory, and hopefully, resonate with others.

Half Marathon in Connecticut

My first half marathon was on April 21st of this year, in Reston, VA. I finished with a time of around 1 hour and 37 minutes, but the hills nearly got the best of me. I had prepared by doing trail runs, especially on the W&OD Trail nearby, though I’m not sure how much it helped with those relentless climbs. Before my first half, I carb-loaded with pasta – a tradition I’ve dutifully carried out and executed for every half marathon and most races since.

My first half taught me a lot about running the 13.1-mile distance, and about running in general. For example, running uphill is tough – borderline brutal – and has the potential to destroy me as a runner, while running downhill is exhilarating, a ride you should never fight. Don’t fight gravity. What goes up must come down; and the unfortunate converse holds true as well. It’s like an unspoken law of running, and of life itself. Newton should’ve taken note, if you ask me.

Another tip is on how to get water at the aid stations. I don’t know what’s the best thing, to get water at each aid station, or only to pick it up as needed. I guess it depends on certain conditions, like how hot and sunny it is on race day. The thing is, this being my first time, I didn’t know the best way to get water at aid stations. As a result, I spilled some on my shirt, unintentionally soaking it in liquid, or else almost choked as I tried to swallow water too fast. I’m still learning the art of drinking water as one is running. But I think I’m getting better on it. One last thing, it’s about getting lost in races. This unfortunately is still a problem with me, and it’s more prevalent in races of longer distances, such as half marathons. The reason here is that it’s very, very hard to run next to someone the whole way of it. The half marathon is a truly challenging distance, for not just you but everyone else attempting that race and distance. It humbles you as a runner, similar to hill running or incline workouts on the treadmill. My first half had a lot of newcomers who did not understand the distance of a half marathon, or 13.1 miles. Their minds could not comprehend it. Mine could barely comprehend it too. I was not a complete newcomer, having run the half marathon distance at least twice in a practice trail run. Still, it somehow managed to humble me once again. I have to attribute this to the sheer number of hills as well as the hard to run sections, in my first half marathon.

That said, I carried some of these lessons learned about racing and half marathon running, into my 2nd half marathon, which transpired in New London, Connecticut.

I had signed up a long time earlier for that previously, like maybe around May or so. Not sure exactly when. The CT race was posted in the group chat on one of my running groups. It was free at the time to sign up. For the first 100 people to sign up, or so. I hastily jumped on that bandwagon and signed up for the free half as soon as I could.

I posted a while ago about my new car that I bought as a birthday gift for myself, in July. A Red Tesla, Model 3. I got 3 months of Free Supercharging once I picked up the car out of factory. Well, at the start of August, I decided to put those Free Supercharging Miles to use, and put the pedal to the metal.

As the fuel cost for the trip was free anyway, my family decided to join me on the trip, because why not. I went to my parent’s home and I picked them up, and also our dog, a lab mix. Packing and getting ready took a long time, as there was a lot of luggage, including a bed for our dog, and putting everything in the car took a lot of effort and time – including using all available space such as the frunk, trunk, cabin interior, foot space, and even the glovebox I believe. I also made sure to get some must-have accessories for my new Tesla, such as all-weather floor mats and a handy wired charging hub for phones and other devices, so I was pretty well prepared. Anyway once we got loaded, we took off.

So the trip time to our Airbnb in New Haven, CT was estimated around 6 hours or 350 miles, if memory serves correct, but in reality with supercharging stops and breaks along the way, it took closer to 8 hours. I also had an included FSD (Full Self Driving) subscription that was expiring exactly a month after I got it, so it was a great time to put it to use — especially because I enjoy driving so much, and rarely would use FSD otherwise. I drove almost the entire way to CT, just myself (and FSD to alternate between). I learned a lot about road tripping and long-distance driving with a Tesla on my first road trip with my Tesla. For example, do you know how uncomfortable the driver’s seat gets after the first hour? Mad uncomfortable, and shooting back pain starts after an hour or two. Trust me, I just found about this the hard way. Also, I learned a lot about optimal supercharging for road tripping, and also how to use FSD for road tripping. It really helped in certain cases, like at the start when there just so much traffic, back to back traffic. No one wants to drive in those cases. It’s stressful. So that’s where FSD really shines — it handles all this perfectly, including slowing down when needed, such as when a frustrated driver switches abruptly to your lane. Even otherwise, after driving 3-4 hours straight, one gets a little tired. I would get tired after driving for an hour or two, my nerves a bit frayed and my brain a bit exhausted and hurting from seeing and navigating nothing but the road, and that’s when I switched to FSD with the press of a button. Essentially handing over the reigns to another driver — a non-human one! Harnessing the power of AI, I was able to use FSD as a “co-pilot” of sorts, and relegate the necessity and task of driving to it. I am glad to say, it performed extraordinary well! Only in certain edge cases on the eternal highway, such as roads converging and diverging especially nearing the toll booths, or construction areas, did I (or the driver) need to wrest control and take over the reigns abruptly from Supervised FSD! And yes, there’s a reason they call it “Supervised” FSD instead of Full Self Driving. Anyway, I did not drive on the whole drop. My dad also drove partway to and from Connecticut, and also pretty frequently in the meantime we were in Connecticut. It was his first time driving an EV, especially as my parents own fully gas-powered cars. We arrived at our Airbnb in New Haven, CT at around midnight on Friday or close to it, and we unpacked the necessary luggage and hit the bed almost immediately.

I’ll add on more to this section as time allows. We had two Airbnb’s in Connecticut, one in New Haven and another in Middletown. Supercharging was a bit difficult at times, as Tesla Superchargers were not in some areas in CT. In Middletown, it rained almost every day, at around the time of year we went, which was depressing. A good thing as we mostly used our Airbnb spot to bunk down for the night, and drove or traveled extensively otherwise.

The evening before my race, we ate out at an Italian restaurant that served pastas. It was called Consiglio’s, and I left a review for the spot on Google and Yelp.

The 62nd annual Ocean Beach/John & Jessie Kelley Half Marathon was in New London, CT on Saturday, August 3rd. I think we left around 6am from our place in New Haven, as it took close an hour to get there. I chose to wear my bright orange Hoka shoes for it. I’ll add more details to this race, but it went well, and I got a new PR of around 1 hour and 32 minutes. It took a lot out of me, and I stopped and rested or walked at least 3 times because I was too exhausted to run. Still, I am glad and proud of the PR and enjoyed the experience overall.

Afterwards my sister joined us, and along with her our family continued exploring Connecticut and nearby areas in our road trip. We visited Mystic, Old Saybrook, the Yale Campus and Wooster Street in New Haven, Hartford which is the Capitol of CT, other spots around Connecticut, and even drove up to Rhode Island and visited Newport, RI; also we separately drove up to Massachussets and visited a lot of beaches — especially dog-friendly beaches —and places there such as Provincetown, MA.

Overall, the road trip was a huge success and we enjoyed sightseeing Connecticut and places we had not been to before.

12 Minute RFD

I also got a PR on the 12-minute Run for Distance while in New Haven, CT and I forgot to post an update on this but will do so when time allows.

Catch Me If You Can

Google AI is now as strong as ever. In fact, AI itself is now as strong as ever.

I just asked Google, “when was last cmiyc” and here is what it responded with:

The last Catch Me If You Can (CMIYC) workout at Orangetheory Fitness (OTF) was on August 22, 2024. The next CMIYC is expected to take place around January 24, 2025, based on an average of 155 days between each CMIYC.

The CMIYC is a race against the clock workout at OTF. To avoid getting caught, you need to run at an average of 8.4 miles per hour for the entire 20-minute workout.

That’s pretty good, and mostly accurate. The only correction I’d add is that CMIYC is actually a 22 minute long treadmill run, not a 20-minute long workout. Of course, that is presuming that one runs an average of 8.4 MPH as mentioned, and achieves 2.8 miles at minute 20 — 8.4 MPH * 20 minutes / 60 minutes/hour. Given that condition’s satisfied, one gets an extra 2 minutes to rack up distance on the treadmill. All in all, it’s a pretty fun benchmark challenge. It’s actually my favorite challenge at OrangeTheory, all said and done.

Given that the last time I did CMIYC was a couple months ago, in August — it’s October now that I’m writing this down — there’s a lot that I’ve forgotten about when I attempted it. I guess that’s the curse with not writing about a challenge or a personal achievement, immediately after doing or attempting it. Still, I will attempt to hearken back and remember what transpired.

CMIYC which was near the end of August, a month that was designated as “marathon month” by the gym I go to. What is Marathon Month? Well, it’s a month where you challenge yourself against other members at OrangeTheory, by racking up distance on the treadmill. You can sign up to complete various distances throughout the timeframe of a month, such as a half-marathon, a marathon (26.2 miles) and even an ultra marathon which is 50+ miles. This was my first time attempting Marathon Month and I signed up for the Ultra, of course, since I enjoy running. I started preparing for CMIYC alongside racking up miles in MM, by basically taking at least one 2G class a day, and also signing up for as many Tread 50 classes as my legs could handle, and challenging myself to run the whole 45-minute block. The speed or pace didn’t matter as much a the fact that I could maintain a pace the entire block, without walking it out. At the end, I got about 120 miles for Marathon Month, and got 1st place at my gym.

The day before CMIYC, I did a prep or warm-up run as I usually do the day before a challenge. I went 0.2-0.3 mph below my goal or target speed for about 70% of the benchmark duration, which for me was about 10.9 mph for about 14-15 minutes. I trained at my usual 2% so that I can be ready for 1% which is what the challenge requires. Once I achieved that, I knew I was ready for the challenge the next day, or as ready as I could hope to be.

I believe I went in for CMIYC at lunch break, at around noon. Nutritionally, I prepared well with a well-rounded breakfast of oatmeal and berries, and made sure I was loaded up on caffeine. I alternated between 11 and 11.2 mph, that is 11.2 mph for a minute every 3rd minute and fall back to 11 mph for “recovery” — if memory serves correct — and I ended up with 4.08 miles down after 22 long minutes, and claimed first place on my gym’s leaderboard and ranking for the challenge. Super proud of that achievement!

Afterwards I was basking in the glory of having broken the personal barrier of 4 miles for the CMIYC distance, because that is something I had only dreamed of achieving, and thus fancied it as a pipe dream. The last time I had attempted to break 4 miles in CMIYC, I suffered a persistent knee injury, as I blogged about, which prevented me from running for about a week. Thus, I was understandably nervous and anxious about attempting it again this time around. Still, super proud and excited to have finally achieved my goal of breaking 4 miles on CMIYC! 🎉

Dri Tri

Oh yeah that reminds me, Dri Tri (Dry Triathlon) is another benchmark challenge at OrangeTheory, and I forgot to blog or post about that!

I got a PR, likely a lifetime PR, of 32-something minutes — 32:43 which easily beats my previous PR of 36-something minutes.

My secret likely was in good nutrition and planning, including signing up for the later time of 10:30am or so, which gave me necessary time to fuel and prepare, as well for my body to digest what I’d consumed.

Still, right shoes was also key! I wore my favorite running shoes for these types of benchmarks, and that also enabled me to run under a 17 minutes for the 5K distance!

Also, moving a bit faster on the rower and especially floor blocks /w the body weights really helped me.

Half Marathon in West Virginia

Going to add on to this when time allows lol, going to get some breakfast now.

1 Mile Run

TODO.