Disney Marathon 2007

One word:  Disaster.  It was a disaster for a first timer like me.  Sure, I've done a half before this, but it does not compare to a full one.  I started the marathon like normal, slower pace than usual, ~9 min miles due to congestion.  Stuck to Vicente for a good 6 mile when he took off.  Staying behind, I could only try to keep a pace that I was accustumed to during training.  After passing the 13 mile marker, an old veteran, no stranger to the pavement, sweat, and pounding that accompanies such an event passes me.  Foolishly, I tag along, eventually asking him what his goal was,  "3:45" he said.  "I'll tag along" "You're more than welcome to do so."  So that was the beginning of my slow, ego demeaning struggle.  At mile 18, I finally caught up with my brother.  "DANG BOY!!!"  he says, catching me by surprise.  I looked back and was delighted that I was doing better than my bro.  At the time, the old guy was going at a 8:17 mile pace.  How did I know?  He had a Garmin GPS on him, telling him his exact speed. 

Passing my brother, Gary and I head for a long stretch, eventually going onto an overpass, where is the first time a trickle of doubt and worry came across my mind.  My right quad was reacting weird.  It was locking up.  Ignoring this, I foolishly pushed onward.  Mile 19, water and Powergel stop.  I load up crazy, and 'slam' down a three cups of powerade.  Mile 20, left quad started acting up.  "Fuck it" I said.  Gary, the old guy looks over, and tells me "Only a 10 k left...Let's do it."  We kept going.  Mile 21, my quads and hamstrings cramped up like a motherF&Cker.  I had to stop.  Looked at my watch to read 3:08 at mile 21.  "Wow, ok, at least I can break 4 hours"  ahhahah, what a fool I was.  My plan now was to walk 10 minutes and start again.  Gary had already taken off into the distance.  Ocassionally, he would look left and right to see if I was next to him.  But I wasn't.  THEN, Vicente limps passed me with a half assed jog that, to me, looked as if he was sprinting compared to my current condition.  "Hit a wall?"  he says, "I think so."  No shit, I realized,  I wasn't just cramping up, I was currently experiencing the concept of "hitting the wall."  Your muscle, fatigued, had ran out of electrolytes from the extended sweating of negatively charged nutrients that your body discharges when trying to cool itself down.  No longer are Na+, K+, Ca+ cations available for the muscle to use.  "Shit" 

Shuffling is the game

In desperation, I started to "Shuffle."  What is shuffle you say?  I'm very sure you know what the Shuffle is.  Sometimes, by chance, you come across a runner in the race that looks as if he's running baby steps that is no faster than the pace of a turtle chasing a female turtle who hasn't had sex in 30 years.  Thats right, slower than walking.  I started doing that.  People who were walking pass me.  I didn't care.  I wanted to run, but couldn't. Finally, Epcot, the last stretch.  Looking across the lake, I saw China, I was in freaking Paris.  I hated Paris because it was so far away from China and Mexico.  Its so far, I thought. Eventually I got to mile 25.  Loads of crowd at Epcot.  "Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, you can do it" the crowd chanted, as if feeling sorry for me after looking at my struggling face.  Its amazing how much power you can draw from the crowd.  

Miraculously, I was able to jog again, and finally reaching the Finish lane.  I received a Mickey Mouse Medal for finishing.  I was glad to finish.  My legs locked up the moment I stopped, and had to limp everywhere.  I finished with a time of 4:20:50, thirty five minutes slower than what I was hoping for.  Crud.

Next year, Next year. 

D.K.B.L.

Addendum: Hong Kong Summer 2006

How could I forget, thanks for reminding me V.  If there's anything that should be considered a sin, it is me forgetting the food I've eaten in HK.  By the way, I still wake up in the night thinking I had smelt the pugnaciously sweet smell of Durian and fried fishballs.

Food was exquisitely nice.........and CHEAP!  No, I didn't get to eat EVERYTHING I wanted while in HK.  I should have indulged in those kabobs of fishballs, curry squid, and octopus tentacles a little bit more.  Why didn't I?  Well, my uncle, a polite fellow, believes that these food are extremely dirty and should not be eaten in order to avoid any digestive illness.  Having him following us while also being our unofficial "tour guide" did not help either.  All the saliva that drooled out to the side of my mouth while walking past a fishball shack and seeing others enjoying them had to be sucked in, swallowed, and ignored .   

       Hum... words can't describe this.  

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Well, I did eat some towards the end of the trip.  But it could have been MORE!  The result?  We ate at freaking McDonalds three times as lunches.  Damn.  But it was different.  They had Korean Style beef wrap, rice cake instead of buns, different. But other than that, we had Korean barbecue, imitation Spanish food, Japan food, and rice!

I almost forgot! The DURIAN!!!!! V and I "visited" our third aunt and uncle at night because we missed them so much (actually, its because she can cook really good and we didn't wanna go back to eat grandma food).  Towards the end, my uncle had the idea of getting us to try a DURIAAAAAAANNNNNNN.  So he treated us to durian.  The smell of the sucker.. lemme tell you, its almost repulsive if you smell it from afar.  Put your nose close to it, and you'll smell the sweetness.  First step, as uncle said, eat a small piece, preferably from the ends.  So I did.  It was not bad.  Second step, take the main piece.  Ok, lemme pause and tell you one thing.  I handled the small piece like an expert, but when I took the main piece in my hand, I did not know what I got myself into.  I was stunned by its smell during the first bite.  Its smell is like wasabi, except wasabi only stings.  Durian not only stinks to high heaven but it makes sure the smell reaches your sinus just like wasabi does.  Ave Maria!!!  what in the animal kingdom eats this thing!  Wait, we do .  

One thing though.  Durian is not ALL bad.  After 5 minutes of having a chunk of it in my mouth, I was getting used to the smell.  In fact, after a while I couldn't smell it anymore.  That's when the sweetness started.  Its texture was like ice cream and was actually quite pleasant in my mouth.  But I stopped after one piece, only to have my uncle assure me that with time, the taste is acquired and things will taste much much better the second time around.

Wow, I talked too much about food. 

-D.K.B.L.

Hong Kong Summer 2006

Wow, aside from the constant cloudy and rainy weather, HK was fun!

Picture!  Heres a panorama I stiched from pictures I took with my bro's camera.  What a romantic place.  There were many couples hanging around here, leaning on the rail and enjoying the view.  I wish there were something like this here.  HK youngsters are so damn lucky.  They can just go there when they are bored at night!

Family was nice.  Met with aunts and cousins I've not seen in over 13 years!  Though, most of them did not recognize me, they only recognized my brother.  Their expression on their faces went something like  "er... so this is...*psst, thats Daniel* ... Daniel! yeah, Daniel how are you?!"  New small cousins were born since I last visited and these girls are an awesome bunch.   They acted like monkeys, hanging on my arm, running around, yelling, the fun stuff. 

Went to many places.  Went to visit the giant bronze statue of buddha.  I thought of the Ghostbusters movie, and wished I had that goo to make it move like they did to the Statue of Liberty.  Tai-O, a place I thought was different from the rest.  Though at the time I was like "how the hell do people live here?"  Went hiking after a freaking 15~25k run which was uncalled for.  My uncle dropped us off early in the tracks, and said "I'll take the taxi and you guys run from here to where I'll wait, which should be about10 k. *chuckles* which, upon reaching me, we will start hiking."  Damn.  That was hard. 

Girls were great.  Little girls were very cute.  They spoke tons of cantonese and were very verbose.  I was definitely not used to it.  As for great looking girls?  I was expecting more good looking girls, but was only met with a select few.  Though, there were tons of cute ones, I guess its the same way here.  It did, however, make me realize that girls I once thought were good looking here in the US, was no match or would be considered average in HK.  How stupid of me.  Now my standards has been upped to a higher tier  kekekke.   Well, this only means that I'll stay single for a very long time.   The style in clothing was different too.  I was amazed at what people could get away with, but realized that it was actually the norm.

Too many Asian people, and now that I'm back, I miss my populace.  I'm tired of going out seeing only about an average of 5-10 percent asians at the mall. Sometimes not at ALL!! 

Humid as hell.  My back was drenched after only walking 5 minutes outside.  I walk into a store to cool off, get nice and dry only to go back out to sweat again.  This was routine for me, however I did notice that my brother and I were the only ones with a drenched shirt.  Others were completely nice and dry.  Some even wearing long sleeve!   

Hong Kong, I'll be back someday.

-D.K.B.L.

Shut up. Run. Don't stop.  These are the words that loop around in my head to focus my mind when I'm trancing off during the last few miles of running. 

Shut up.  This isn't about him or her, or whoever it is you have in mind.  He may be good at running, but until you realize that it is all about you, yourself, and your ego, you will always end up chasing him, derailing any possibility of you surpassing him.  Surpass only yourself each and every single time, because you yourself is your one true opponent.  Be your own doppleganger.

Run.  Any other flamboyant action that you do will waste energy.  Stop it.  Don't waste your energy.  Just do whatever you're set to do and do it better with each passing second.  Your momentum should increase overtime or stay constant, never decreasing.  Don't even allow the notion of getting tired cross your mind.  Cardiovascular fatigue, most of which percieve it as pain, is only a simple signal from your muscles telling your brain that it is weak.  Smack that bitch-of-a-muscle and tell it to work harder.  Note: this step is not only applicable to running, but biking, swimming, or jumping can be replaced for the header.

Don't stop.  Simple as that.  Do not admit defeat.  Doing so will only make you feel sorry for yourself.  When you've reached your final point, and feel like you can do more, do more.  Finding the limits of your body today will open up new goals for tommorrow.  And when you've reached that goal, repeat the process.  You're body is built to learn newer and more efficient ways of doing a task.  When the autonomic system does not get any more shock from the level of intensity, it will stop recruiting your muscles.  Shock your body, put it into a state of frenzy, a state of confusion, make it say "what is going on?  why can't I fulfill the desires of this soul?"  Disassimilate your mind from your body and look at it as an instrument you're constantly fine tuning.  And in order to tune it, you have to stress it more and more.  Push it to the limit; its pain is not relative to your mind, but only the body.

Most accomplished athletes, Lance Armstrong for example, have noone to look up to except for themselves.  Lance fought with himself to get to where he is.  No one could have phased him.  He phased himself out and in doing so, fought and rose to the top.  All other athletes make the mistake of idolizing him, of putting him as the target, thus never being able to surpass him.  And, although true, we may not be able to witness any other athletes as good as him, most will only live to chase his dreams, to want to be like him, hence chasing him, hence the phrase "Chasing Lance."

Shut up. Run. Don't stop.

FUCK!! Its daylights Savings time.  It just went from 2 to 3 am.  Damn it