Viet’s Blog

  All race photos are from the Clark County Running Club. THANK YOU I love the Vancouver Lake Half Marathon because it manages to stay small and affordable. The park can only fit so many runners and there's limited parking, so the field is capped at around 300 runners and walkers. The thing I do not love about the course is that because its in the middle of winter, it's always usually cold and raining, and this year was no different. Because the parking lot is limited, most of us try to get there at least an hour early. Except there are no heaters and everyone is trying to keep dry and warm for almost an hour before the race starts. They did have a bag check so I kept my jacket on up until about 20 minutes before the race started. Next time I will bring a blanket to stay warm.  The last time I raced this course, I was modest and placed myself somewhere near the back half of the field. I was using up a lot of extra energy and honestly felt like kind of a jerk weaving arou...

Starting this winter, I needed to re-dedicate myself to structured training. Nothing too complicated. In the words of the great Frank Shorter  -    “Two hard interval sessions a week and one long run – 20 miles or two hours, whichever comes first. Every other run is aerobic, and you do as much of that for volume as you can handle. Do this for two or three years, and you’ll get good” That's basically the bones of my training. Structure, consistency, and a little math. I want to use this framework for the rest of 2026, adjusting the kinds of efforts I'll be doing, depending on the race I'm training for. Following up on my last post, the first task is to sharpen up my 5K. Sorry Frank Shorter, I'll do the 2 hour long runs, but with all due respect I'll be nowhere near 20 miles after 2 hours.  5K Time Trial Prep  After recovering from my  Marathon , I hit the roads again with an eye to do a mini 8 week training block with a time trial sometime near the...

    Hi everyone! Its been a minute. Work has been slow so I've been spending much of the summer running. The summer is going to come and go anyways, so might as well spend it building up a massive aerobic base 😎 In the interest of not being too long winded, I'll break this into parts. I've been meaning to post something about my Half Marathon anyways, so I'll start with a race report about the Foot Traffic Flat on July 4th.   My Training :    I didn't have any particular training for this race. I wanted to start incorporating track work , specifically 400m repeats when I can . Its summer but I guess the kids at the high school still do practice for sports on the field . If the track is being used , then I end up going the "Kofuzi " workout , which is 6x1 mile repeats with about 90 seconds of rest . (Kofuzi is this guy ) I wanted to train some speed in before I started slogging through marathon pace work .     Outside of the 400 m repeats or the 1 mi...