Right now, (well actually as of a few seconds ago,) it's 93 days, 12 hours, 17 minutes and 27 seconds until the Philadelphia marathon.
As a math nerd, I can't help but look for a pattern among these digits from my random screenshot. Here's a lame one I found:
(Lame because of double usage of sqrt.) Let me know if you come up with a different one!
Anyhow, this will be my third marathon. Last year, I completed two marathons, one unofficial (Golden Driller marathon that got rained out) and one official (Route 66 marathon). People often ask why I signed up for these races, and to be honest, I can't tell you why. Perhaps it's because I didn't think I would ever be able to do it. For a long time, 42 km just seemed like an impossible distance, especially for a little Asian girl like me, until this random blog post from a food blogger. At the time, my longest run yet was a 2-miler, but the post impelled me to put finishing a 10K on my bucket list. After placing in my age group in a couple of short local races, I decided to up my distance. It was just over 3 months from my first 5K to half-marathon. And before I knew it (6 months after), I ran my first marathon.
I have to admit, running helped lighten up my some of my dark PhD days. I remember getting very depressed in the lab one Friday night and so I went for a 6-mile run at 9p. There's something about endurance training that makes it therapeutic. I also delight in training with my fellow runners, which includes running, talking and post-run drinking. We shared the most incredible times with stories like mistakenly swallowing vaseline on a stick during a race, and many beers were slain in the pursuit of camaraderie. To give you an idea of what our runs are like, here are some old photos from last year:
The Caboose on a long weekend run - credits to Marty Coleman
The Caboose at the Tulsa 15K 2017
Me and my PhD advisor after the Tulsa 15K 2017
The Caboose on long weekend runs
Inevitably, after the marathon, everyone experienced post-marathon blues. Hence, when I came back to Tulsa, almost all members of my Caboose met up again to run in 96F weather and revel in a long margarita session afterward.
In his talk at Google, Andrew Skurka categorized hikers into three types, with three types of fun. He described Type II Fun as "Not fun to do, but fun to talk about later." This is essentially Daniel Kahneman's concept of remembering self, one of our two mental operating systems, along with the experiencing self. The experiencing self lives the present moment, while the remembering self writes history. Andrew said there's nothing fun during a marathon race. The fun is when you sit at a bar with your friends later reminiscing your violent vomit at mile 22, or in my case, the intense quad cramps followed with plenty of cussing at mile 25. But I disagree. There was a lot of fun during the race with music and hilarious signs thanks to the volunteers and spectators and other runners. As difficult and time-consuming as marathon training often is, we running buddies make many good memories, pleasing both our remembering-self and experiencing-self. I hope I get to train and run one with 
I by no means consider myself a marathoner but would love to share more of my experience as a beginner, writing on training tips, strength exercises, race preparation and linking some good podcasts. Expect no inspirational videos like this one though. Just like how Daniel doesn't know why he enjoys hiking, I still don't know what motivates me to get up at 6a to run. People say running marathons is a fad nowadays. Maybe I'm just trying to claw my way into the Aspirational Class. Or maybe it's the thrill of getting out of my comfort zones. But for now, as Chris Hauth said, "An athlete is a mindset." So whatever your reason is, whether it's to connect with nature or for other health purposes, I'd say just get outside. Walk your dog. Pick up some trash. Ride your bike in the rain. Train Aikido in the park. Go hiking. Dance under the sun. Shower in waterfalls. Make memories. Have fun.
One of many Glen Onoko Falls - credits to
À plus tard!