I am at the peak of my marathon training and I'm feeling very accomplished and proud of myself! Last weekend I ran 22 miles, although I'm not gonna lie, it was really difficult. First, it was very hot and windy that day and I have been running most of my runs later in the day, so it was new for me to get used to the morning and midday heat. Second, the day before Keith and I were at the beach all day so I don't think I ate as many carbs that day as I should have. And then, third, because it was so hot I was drinking tons of water during my run...too much I think. So, my stomach was hurting a little and it made my run a challenge. Nevertheless, I did finish the 22 miles, and then collapsed on my bed for a nice long nap. ha
Yesterday, I ran 24 miles...the most I have ever ran before!! This run felt a lot better because I made sure to carb up the day before. I also only sipped water during my run but did it more frequently and I added lemon juice to my water which helped. I was so proud of myself because I felt strong by the end and it took me a little less than 4 hours. :)
It's pretty unbelievable when I think of it that I was running from 8:15 in the morning until 12pm! How did my legs do it? I would never have imagined in the past that I could actually run that long. But I did thanks to my consistency with my workouts and thanks to my lovely husband, aka my personal trainer! He helped me design my marathon training program and he is giving me advice almost daily each time I have a question or concern. He is amazing! One thing that helps is getting a lot of rest before and after my long runs, and making sure I stretch a lot by doing yoga a lot during the week (especially the day before and the day after my long runs). Plus, I have been doing weightlifting, doing shorter runs during the week which focus on increasing my speed and also I have been doing bootcamp workouts and running hills. All of the off-training days and shorter quick runs definitely help for the marathon training.
Now, it's all tapering from here. This means I begin to decrease my running distance so that I can repair my sore muscles and rest my body so that I can have full energy the day of the marathon. The marathon is on Sunday, June 12th, which means I only have 3 more weeks to go! I am so pumped and just want the day to arrive.
Next weekend we have the beach volleyball tournament. I'm really looking forward to it. My team's name is Spikes n Spam and we have 3 guys and 3 girls on the team. I don't know my team members too well but I am looking forward to meeting new people and socializing during the weekend. There will be games playing all day + food, drinks, music, little contests, camping all night, partying, etc. Good times ahead! I will try to take a bunch of pics.
Other things...only 6 more weeks of teaching for me! (but this is also sad because I have to say goodbye to my students and school after working there for 2 years). Also, Keith and I are currently looking into booking another trip to Japan for the summer. Our India/Sri Lanka trip didn't end up working out because it conflicts with the start time for our training for our new international job. However, this may be a blessing in disguise because we found a great deal to Japan and we still have to see Tokyo, a sumo wrestling match, and see the beautiful northern national parks. Oooh, I'm getting excited just thinking about it.
Ok, well that's all for now. Have a great week!
-T
F.Y.I The blog website hasn't been letting me upload photos, so I will be adding photos to "Children's Day" and "Jihee's dad's farm" soon!
The beginning of the big KT adventure!
I just got married to the most amazing man! Life is bliss!
Saturday, 21 May 2011
Thursday, 5 May 2011
Children's Day
Yesterday was Children's Day here in Korea, which is a national holiday so there was no school! (Why don't we have one of these in the US?) Also, instead of having Mother's and Father's Day in Korea, they just have Parent's Day. I'm not entirely sure what date that is though.
So, after ordering a special gift for my mom for the upcoming Mother's Day this weekend, I then went out with Keith for an adventure since we were home from work for Children's Day.
We had just read in the Jeju Weekly (English) newspaper about an article advertising the new Maze Land/Museum. We had been to the original Maze Park the past year and loved it! It was pretty difficult but small and took us 45 minutes to figure out. Since this new park showed that it was three mazes put together, including one huge stone wall maze, we were pumped to check it out!!
It was a beautiful day- sunny with a lil breeze- and we took a 45 min. bus, then a ten minute taxi ride to the museum. We were surprised (although we should have expected it since it was Children's Day) to see TONS of children there with their parents. We even ran into a family that we had met from Rho and Simon's fundraiser dinner.
Since it was a holiday, there was fun Korean pop music playing, balloons being handed out to the kids, many kids games, including the traditional Korean Yunari board game (but with HUGE toy sticks for them to throw), hoolahoop contests and limbo contests. They even had Winnie the Poo and Tigger costume characters walking around. Of course I had to get a picture with them! They also had ice-cream at every possible corner of the park. haha Keith and I felt like kids that day. It was so much fun! We walked through all of the mazes, although we felt like it was more of a walking path. It was definitely not as hard as the original maze park, but this didn't distract us from our exciting day. No, we just went through the maze quickly, then made it to the end where there was a kid's party going on...the hoolahoop and limbo contests. And the best part was that it was all being recorded by the popular TV program, KBS. So I'm sure all the students at our school, along with their parents, will see the funny tall looking foreigners walking quickly through the maze, then trying to hoolahoop around our necks! We tried it this way, since we had so much trouble hoolahooping around our waists. haha
After the hoolahooping, we saw a field near the surrounding forest, orum and beautiful plants/flowers. In the field there were about 5 HUGE colorful balls. They looked like balloons and even had the end of the ball tied like a balloon. Keith and I ran around and played gigantic soccer with them. Again, we felt like we had taken a trip back into our childhood. We then took a walk near the orum and bamboo trees. All around the park there were really interesting and traditional Korean statues. Take a look at my pictures.
The final thing we did at Maze Land was visit the museum. The museum was really interesting too. I was shocked. It was filled with information about Greek Mythology and explained the significance that it had with the story of the Labyrinth/ original maze. But what made the museum really unique was that each showcase that was set up had a display, which had sound playing telling the story, and then there also was a story illuminated onto the stage. It was as if a 3D animation movie was being played right in front of your eyes. The characters seemed so real life. It was really high-tech and cool!
There were also many 3D images/ artwork on the wall for you to try to figure out the images. Also, there were other mind-games/mazes for you to play or original games from different countries in display cases. Keith and I had fun playing "Where's Waldo?", except that they called him "Wally". haha That was hilarious to see. Well, there were about 10 of the pictures on the wall so we made it a race to see who can find him first. Keith won by 2 points! meh
The whole day was so much fun and one thing that I love about Keith and about Jeju is that Keith always plans and encourages us to take fun lil adventures around the island. And thanks to Jeju, there's ALWAYS some fun, new, random place to check out.
Ok, talk to you soon. I am currently reading the book, "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman. It is one of the books that KIS ordered us to discuss at our training. It's really interesting so far and is about the incredible improvements in technology that our world has made in the past few decades. I'll be reading the rest of my day since Fridays I have no classes! :)
Have a great day and a nice weekend! Keep in touch~
So, after ordering a special gift for my mom for the upcoming Mother's Day this weekend, I then went out with Keith for an adventure since we were home from work for Children's Day.
We had just read in the Jeju Weekly (English) newspaper about an article advertising the new Maze Land/Museum. We had been to the original Maze Park the past year and loved it! It was pretty difficult but small and took us 45 minutes to figure out. Since this new park showed that it was three mazes put together, including one huge stone wall maze, we were pumped to check it out!!
It was a beautiful day- sunny with a lil breeze- and we took a 45 min. bus, then a ten minute taxi ride to the museum. We were surprised (although we should have expected it since it was Children's Day) to see TONS of children there with their parents. We even ran into a family that we had met from Rho and Simon's fundraiser dinner.
Since it was a holiday, there was fun Korean pop music playing, balloons being handed out to the kids, many kids games, including the traditional Korean Yunari board game (but with HUGE toy sticks for them to throw), hoolahoop contests and limbo contests. They even had Winnie the Poo and Tigger costume characters walking around. Of course I had to get a picture with them! They also had ice-cream at every possible corner of the park. haha Keith and I felt like kids that day. It was so much fun! We walked through all of the mazes, although we felt like it was more of a walking path. It was definitely not as hard as the original maze park, but this didn't distract us from our exciting day. No, we just went through the maze quickly, then made it to the end where there was a kid's party going on...the hoolahoop and limbo contests. And the best part was that it was all being recorded by the popular TV program, KBS. So I'm sure all the students at our school, along with their parents, will see the funny tall looking foreigners walking quickly through the maze, then trying to hoolahoop around our necks! We tried it this way, since we had so much trouble hoolahooping around our waists. haha
After the hoolahooping, we saw a field near the surrounding forest, orum and beautiful plants/flowers. In the field there were about 5 HUGE colorful balls. They looked like balloons and even had the end of the ball tied like a balloon. Keith and I ran around and played gigantic soccer with them. Again, we felt like we had taken a trip back into our childhood. We then took a walk near the orum and bamboo trees. All around the park there were really interesting and traditional Korean statues. Take a look at my pictures.
The final thing we did at Maze Land was visit the museum. The museum was really interesting too. I was shocked. It was filled with information about Greek Mythology and explained the significance that it had with the story of the Labyrinth/ original maze. But what made the museum really unique was that each showcase that was set up had a display, which had sound playing telling the story, and then there also was a story illuminated onto the stage. It was as if a 3D animation movie was being played right in front of your eyes. The characters seemed so real life. It was really high-tech and cool!
There were also many 3D images/ artwork on the wall for you to try to figure out the images. Also, there were other mind-games/mazes for you to play or original games from different countries in display cases. Keith and I had fun playing "Where's Waldo?", except that they called him "Wally". haha That was hilarious to see. Well, there were about 10 of the pictures on the wall so we made it a race to see who can find him first. Keith won by 2 points! meh
The whole day was so much fun and one thing that I love about Keith and about Jeju is that Keith always plans and encourages us to take fun lil adventures around the island. And thanks to Jeju, there's ALWAYS some fun, new, random place to check out.
Ok, talk to you soon. I am currently reading the book, "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman. It is one of the books that KIS ordered us to discuss at our training. It's really interesting so far and is about the incredible improvements in technology that our world has made in the past few decades. I'll be reading the rest of my day since Fridays I have no classes! :)
Have a great day and a nice weekend! Keep in touch~
The evil yellow dust from China!!
Well, it's that time of the year. The time during spring season in which China's sand storms picks up toxic pollutants and showers them into areas in South Korea and parts of Japan. Jeju is one of the victims. We were hit pretty bad (the worst it has been in a few years) this past week by the yellow dust.
Let me describe to you what the experience is like. The sky looks yellowish gray, very polluted and foggy. There is also yellow dust on the streets and it gets blown into the stairway of our building. You see many Koreans wearing protective masks around their mouths/noses to help them to not breath in the air. It's actually a scary thing to see if you have not seen this before! Actually, I've seen it before but it was still a lil eery for me. I felt like I was in a horror movie or something when I was walking from the bus stop to my school and I couldn't see clearly in the air and then there were these people walking towards me with masks over their mouths! ha I will try to take a picture sometime, without feeling rude!
The yellow dust is really a horrible effect that South Korea gets from China. The worst part is though, they say you should not be outdoors much during this weather. And so, for the last few days, I have had to do my long marathon training indoors! It can be very mind-boggling to run around a small track 12 times just to reach 1 mile, then to do that 228 more times to reach 20 miles! haha It seems much longer than when you run outside.
Even though I took the safe route by running inside, I still think the yellow dust got me sick again. This week Keith and I have had a cold that just won't go away. I also have a sore throat (felt like a golf ball was in there!) and had a small fever. Keith made sure to go pick up ice-cream to help cure my sore throat though so I'm feeling about 90% better! :)
I had to take a few days off from training; however, I am still running strong and doing amazing with my schedule! I ran 16 miles on Monday inside, and will be running 20 miles this upcoming Sunday, hopefully outside. It is supposed to be really warm on Sunday- 24 degrees Celsius, which is about 77 degrees Fahrenheit and no rain. So although it's been rainy the last few days, I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed and hope for good weather so I can enjoy this ocean-view run outdoors.
I only have about 1 more month of training! I'm so excited for race day on June 12th and will be working my hardest this month...weightlifting, doing yoga (which is great for stretches before and after my long runs), bootcamps, running hills and of course doing my short, medium and long run days. My goal is to get stronger, faster and run up to 26 miles (a full marathon) 2 weeks before the race date. Then, the week before the race, I will take off my long run to rest my legs. This will give me SUPER speed for race day, I hope. :)
Let me describe to you what the experience is like. The sky looks yellowish gray, very polluted and foggy. There is also yellow dust on the streets and it gets blown into the stairway of our building. You see many Koreans wearing protective masks around their mouths/noses to help them to not breath in the air. It's actually a scary thing to see if you have not seen this before! Actually, I've seen it before but it was still a lil eery for me. I felt like I was in a horror movie or something when I was walking from the bus stop to my school and I couldn't see clearly in the air and then there were these people walking towards me with masks over their mouths! ha I will try to take a picture sometime, without feeling rude!
The yellow dust is really a horrible effect that South Korea gets from China. The worst part is though, they say you should not be outdoors much during this weather. And so, for the last few days, I have had to do my long marathon training indoors! It can be very mind-boggling to run around a small track 12 times just to reach 1 mile, then to do that 228 more times to reach 20 miles! haha It seems much longer than when you run outside.
Even though I took the safe route by running inside, I still think the yellow dust got me sick again. This week Keith and I have had a cold that just won't go away. I also have a sore throat (felt like a golf ball was in there!) and had a small fever. Keith made sure to go pick up ice-cream to help cure my sore throat though so I'm feeling about 90% better! :)
I had to take a few days off from training; however, I am still running strong and doing amazing with my schedule! I ran 16 miles on Monday inside, and will be running 20 miles this upcoming Sunday, hopefully outside. It is supposed to be really warm on Sunday- 24 degrees Celsius, which is about 77 degrees Fahrenheit and no rain. So although it's been rainy the last few days, I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed and hope for good weather so I can enjoy this ocean-view run outdoors.
I only have about 1 more month of training! I'm so excited for race day on June 12th and will be working my hardest this month...weightlifting, doing yoga (which is great for stretches before and after my long runs), bootcamps, running hills and of course doing my short, medium and long run days. My goal is to get stronger, faster and run up to 26 miles (a full marathon) 2 weeks before the race date. Then, the week before the race, I will take off my long run to rest my legs. This will give me SUPER speed for race day, I hope. :)
Jihee's father's farm
So this past Sunday, we went to our friend, Jihee's father's farm to celebrate her birthday. We were so surprised and we had not expected it, but her father apparently owns tons of beautiful land, pensions, a restaurant, a mushroom farm, animals and the list goes on!
We went to a beautiful area, very close to his house, right next to a restuarant that he owns. In the restaurant, there's a jijabong (a singing room)on the top floor, plus there's a huge inground pool surrounding the two parts of the restaurant. Then, if you look at the scenary around you, there are miles and miles of beautiful forest areas, mountains and flowers. In the distance, we could see deer near the forest. And in the yard of the restaurant, there was a horse, chickens and tons of cute lil white puppies. It was an amazing place to be if you wanted peace and quiet.
Our friends, Sean and Jihee had arranged a potluck style dinner, so everyone brought different dishes. Jihee's father was grilling meat on the grill right outside near all the picnic tables. Then, her extremely nice father had everyone get in a car and drive about 5 mins away where we walked in the forest and found a hidden mushroom farm! There were about 8 of us there and we all had a fun contest picking the biggest and most white mushrooms that we could find. It was a really cool experience considering I've never picked mushrooms right off the trees like that and it was interesting to see how big some of them were!
They were also extremely delicious. We took the mushrooms back to the restaurant and Jihee's father cooked them on the grill. IT was a lovely afternoon high up in the mountains in the open air surrounded by pure beauty!
We had to leave early though and wish Jihee a very happy birthday. Keith, Tim and I were then off to Rho and Simon's fundraiser dinner! We always look forward to our friend (and now my co-worker...he comes to my school this semester to teach each Friday) Simon's cooking. He is probably the best chef I have ever met! He is from England and learned to cook gormet meals from his mother. Unfortunately, Simon's mother passed away a few years ago from a rare disease called Motor Neuron Disease. Since last year, Rho and Simon started an annual memorial/fundraiser for his mother and for the MND organization. What a great idea for them to have. There were about 20 or so people that came, including Simon's father from England! I was surprised to learn that he has traveled to Jeju 4 times to visit the couple and their 2 year old daughter. It was a great dinner and great way to raise money for a good cause.
Next up...
I will talk about the deadly yellow dust that has invaded Jeju, leaving me to do my marathon running in the ...OH NO...indoor track!
We went to a beautiful area, very close to his house, right next to a restuarant that he owns. In the restaurant, there's a jijabong (a singing room)on the top floor, plus there's a huge inground pool surrounding the two parts of the restaurant. Then, if you look at the scenary around you, there are miles and miles of beautiful forest areas, mountains and flowers. In the distance, we could see deer near the forest. And in the yard of the restaurant, there was a horse, chickens and tons of cute lil white puppies. It was an amazing place to be if you wanted peace and quiet.
Our friends, Sean and Jihee had arranged a potluck style dinner, so everyone brought different dishes. Jihee's father was grilling meat on the grill right outside near all the picnic tables. Then, her extremely nice father had everyone get in a car and drive about 5 mins away where we walked in the forest and found a hidden mushroom farm! There were about 8 of us there and we all had a fun contest picking the biggest and most white mushrooms that we could find. It was a really cool experience considering I've never picked mushrooms right off the trees like that and it was interesting to see how big some of them were!
They were also extremely delicious. We took the mushrooms back to the restaurant and Jihee's father cooked them on the grill. IT was a lovely afternoon high up in the mountains in the open air surrounded by pure beauty!
We had to leave early though and wish Jihee a very happy birthday. Keith, Tim and I were then off to Rho and Simon's fundraiser dinner! We always look forward to our friend (and now my co-worker...he comes to my school this semester to teach each Friday) Simon's cooking. He is probably the best chef I have ever met! He is from England and learned to cook gormet meals from his mother. Unfortunately, Simon's mother passed away a few years ago from a rare disease called Motor Neuron Disease. Since last year, Rho and Simon started an annual memorial/fundraiser for his mother and for the MND organization. What a great idea for them to have. There were about 20 or so people that came, including Simon's father from England! I was surprised to learn that he has traveled to Jeju 4 times to visit the couple and their 2 year old daughter. It was a great dinner and great way to raise money for a good cause.
Next up...
I will talk about the deadly yellow dust that has invaded Jeju, leaving me to do my marathon running in the ...OH NO...indoor track!
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