Viet’s Blog

Reflecting on this past weekend, I couldn’t get the image of Luke Skywalker out of my head. In Empire Strikes Back , Yoda tells Luke to go into the tree. Luke asks Yoda what’s inside. Yoda famously replies: “Only what you take with you.” If you knew you had to do a 200 mile relay race with 11 other runners, what are you going to bring? Our hopes, fears, anxieties all end up manifesting in the strangest ways during the Hood to Coast. The Physical Manifestations of Anxiety What if I get cold? Thirsty? Bored? I better have 2 more sets of clothes just in case. All the extra supplies we bring with us are manifestations of race anxiety. Not only does anxiety weigh us down mentally, it literally weighs down the van, costs more in fuel, and makes finding anything impossible since now you’re digging through a dozen different packs and bags because everyone else *also* packed everything in triplicate. I’m not advocating skimping on necessary items – things like safety and communication...

  TLDR I got a 04:09:41 time which means I averaged a 9:31 min/mile the entire way. Overall Place was 882 out of 2646 competitors, 661 out of 1650 males, and 99 out of 225 in my age group.  My goal was simply to PR for the course and to finish strong (which I did). My stretch goal was sub 4 hours. I got a little greedy towards the end and it probably cost me at least 10 minutes of time on the back end. I'm still salty about it, but sometimes you need to be a little greedy to reach for the stretch goals.  If you would like to read about it, here's how I got there:   Training Summary   Training was… sub-optimal. Had a health scare at the beginning of training (read about it here ), then dealt with mild runners’ knee for the better part of a month. Glad I took it easy during my minor injury, otherwise it could have gotten worse.   While not running , I learned to really emphasize PT exercises to resolve any muscle imbalances in my body. I figure those imbala...