A very Important Lesson

Dear friends

Are you surprised to read two updates in a row? I am. 

Being a teacher is not an easy job. Not to mention that it sucks all your time and energy into that vacuum of compositions marking and lessons planning. You are lucky if you can find a moment of peace at late night, before bed and reflect what you did the whole day. But, this year, my school administrators tried their very best to give us a 16-day Chinese New Year holiday, so here I am, having some extra time to type my blog and get myself fully-charged for my upcoming competitions and teaching.

I am not sure if I told you that before spring ends this year, I am going to participate in races such as SC Half Marathon, MSF Orienteering, TransLantau 50K and Streetathon 10K and skills based training courses like Basic Sculling courses 1&2, as well as Wilderness Training course 1. So, life will be more than hectic and I hope that I can handle all of them well. Actually, dragonboating for a fast team was also on my agenda. However, I have no luck in finding a team to join. Hopefully, after the sculling courses, opportunities will knock on the door.

As mentioned, in hopes of handling all the races gracefully, I have been engaged in some real hardcore training sessions with friends. Among all friends, T and A are the real blessings. Because these two marathletes are willing to be my pacers and mentors. They helped me pick up my instinct and taught me some valuable running and fast hiking skills, not to mention ways to boost my endurance. Even though I hit the wall today, they kept encouraging me and let me rest before I could start again. However, reading the Endomondo record, disappointment overwhelmed me.

5.57mins/km. It's like all my sweat within these few months went down the drain... Noticed my unusual quietness, the guys tried to cheer me up. T ran through my statistics on facebook and gave me this analysis and comment on my running performances:

statistical tendency min/km: (6.4, 6.2, 6.1, 6.9, 7.1, 6.0, 5.25, 5.57) your running speed is getting faster.

Indeed! How come I was so blind to my improvement? Apart from being faster, I am also able to run farther and for a longer time. When I was in Vadsø , I was only able to run 5-7km but now, I can run up to 12km with only 1 or no stop at all. So, perhaps just like T said, I must change my attitude and not be myopic and see what happens today only. 

This, is a very important lesson in life.

And a very important lesson that I want to share with you today.

Love
Happy feet/ Dumpling

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