November started off with a great treat: more visitors! My good college friend Maren and her friend Patrice came a visited us. We had a fun time showing them around Taipei and catching up (it had been almost 8 years since Maren and I last saw each other).
They even came down with us to Hualien for the weekend for my marathon race.
It was really wonderful to see Maren again, and it was great to meet Patrice.
That Friday night, we hopped in the car and drove 4 hours to Taiwan's beautiful east coast for my marathon. It has been a challenge to train for this marathon. This race in particular goes through Taroko Gorge national park and is uphill for 11 miles before turning around and going back downhill. So I had to do a lot of hill training on my long runs to prep, and that was especially difficult. Interesting enough, the downhill portions were the hardest on my body, and I had to change several aspects of how I run and train so that my back and knees could handle the pounding.
But I was ready for the race. However, the night before, we found out that the race organizers canceled the full marathon due to an earthquake that happened the day before (it was a 6.3 earthquake and the epicenter was right at the race location). Although the route was still perfectly clear, the organizers were concerned about the possibility of rocks falling and mudslides (which is a real threat). I was more than a bit disappointed, but nothing I could do about it.
So we all had to run the half marathon instead. Still had a blast, though. A group of AIT folks all ran the race, so it was really nice to run with everyone. In particular, it was great to run with Cameron, my training partner. My final time was 1 hour 41 minutes. I was very happy with that, especially considering that the race had 8 miles or so of uphill portions.
1 comment:
Yahoo!! AMAZING DAY!!
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