Skip to main content

Unforgiving Minute

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it...
–Rudyard Kipling
Anne Dunivin
How true that is for the last couple days. First, it was the USMS Nationals swim meet from Friday to Sunday at Greensboro. Long story short, I came in last in almost all my events. But I've learned that I just have to take it all in, whatever life, day, or the moment brings. There were anxiety, nervousness, pain, and breathlessness, but there were also thrill, joy, and satisfaction. The unforgiving minute(s) will pass. What matters at the end is what you've filled it with. With that thought, I dove in to swim my 200 & 500 Free, 200 IM, and a couple relays. The picture on the left is 95-year-old Anne Dunivin. She just set the 1000 freestyle record for her age group and she shall be my inspiration.

Secondly, this week I'm doing three consecutive days of 2.5-hour treadmill run for the recovery supplement study at Appalachian State University. Yes, I volunteered. Yesterday was the first day. The five of us who are running for the study this week will run two hours and 15 minutes on the treadmill at 75% of our VO2 max. For the last 15 minutes, we have full control of our speed. After the first hour yesterday, they upped my speed a little. And today, after an hour of running and checking my VO2 max, they upped the speed a little again. I felt all of the 0.1 mph they added on. Who would have thought? At any rate, I survived two days -- a cumulative of 300 unforgiving minutes. Physically unforgiving, that is. I walked off the treadmill today like I just finished my first marathon.

Here's to another 150 unforgiving minutes to fill with 9000 seconds of distance run tomorrow.

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 3, 2012 at 11:40 AM

    wow, 95 years old - she looks great!!

    that treadmill experiment sounds like pure torture to me. congrats on getting through it.

    Emily

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WV Trilogy - Part 2

(If you haven't read Part 1, it's here .) (Sat) Oct 13 -  Sunrise at Spruce Knob 6 a.m. start in the dark. My legs surprised me by being happier than yesterday. My heart is in better place as well. The first 6.7 mile goes up to Spruce Knob, the highest point in West Virginia. Part of this section was on fire road and I welcomed the faster miles. Steady progress was made in the first 20 miles or so until the long, long descent into Aid Station 3. As I have decided yesterday, I'd start the race, go from aid station to aid station, and re-evaluate my condition at each. I left Aid station 2 feeling good but then the long descent once again put doubts in my mind. Running reduced to little steps on jello-legs. Compression socks helped to contain the injury and pain, but the strength to support the pounding was still lacking. Soon, my knees started to hurt as well. At aid station 3, they told me I had 2:45 to make it to the next aid station before the cut-off. At the pace I...
7 comments
more >>

New Year's resolution

Nine days into 2012 and a day before entering into a new age group is an opportune time to nail down some New Year's resolutions. 2011 was a good year, one that filled with transitions and norming --  be it moving from California to Charlotte, from being a student back to an architect, or starting fresh in a new territory to establishing roots and relationships. My new running and swimming communities had made the transition easy and welcoming, and partly because of that, much of my attention in the past year was on either sports, like running my first 50k and participating in my first swim meet. Having just graduated from seminary was probably the other half of the reason why I had been keeping a distance from structured studies / reading in 2011. With that said, my 2012 focus will be on balanced growth. While I still have a long list of goals in swimming and running, I need to make sure I allocate enough time and attention to spiritual and intellectual grow...
2 comments
more >>

Blue Ridge Marathon

Bill Rodgers After reading so many people's blog on their experience of America's toughest road marathon, the Blue Ridge Marathon, I'm starting to lose my own chain of thought/memory. Bottom line is I had a lot of fun and surprised myself with a sub-4 finish. My estimate was around five hours, or maybe even 5:30 if condition was tough like last year's monsoon. Here's my account of it: Three and a half hour drive from Charlotte straight to packet pickup at Roanoke's Taubman Museum of Art, a modern and iconic building in contrast with the rest of the historical railroad downtown. It was Friday evening and the streets were lively. People were on the patio and on the street with live music playing. I strolled around a little but not too much since I wanted to save my legs. My hotel was only about a mile away. I contemplated on just walking there from the hotel, but ended up driving half a mile or so to park at the Civic Center. Half a mile could be a haul af...
2 comments
more >>