Who dis? Alex!

My first official race was the Brooklyn Cyclones Take Your Base 5K on July 23rd, 2016. My time was 31:02, an average pace of 10:01/mile. My average heart rate was 171 (out of maybe 187-195?), I felt like I was about to pass out at the finish line. It was a huge win for me, physically and mentally, thanks to Microsoft's Band 2's Couch to 5K program.

I was very active when I was growing up, doing all kinds of activities from swimming to playing soccer to doing martial arts. I even joined Track & Field in high school during my senior year. Then college happened! I lived a sedentary life for a good 13 years, got extremely out of shape (like huff and puff doing 100m dashes), gained weight (160 lbs on a 5'7"+ frame).

It just happened that on a random day that summer I signed up for a 5K race. Fast forward 3.5 years, here I am. I have since done more than a few 5Ks (fav.), 10Ks, HMs, and 2 FMs. I even started cycling, and have done a few very long rides, including 2 Centuries and Boston-New York 2019 (highly recommended, I signed up for 2020 right after the tour). I also started swimming again to prepare for triathlons.

I have improved so much over the last 3+ years. I have gone through a few extended breaks due to injuries, have experienced the many ups and downs of an average runner. I have learned a lot and I feel there is still room for improvement that I could achieve.

I started this blog to document my training journey. My big running goal in the next year or two would probably be sub 20:00 for the 5K. It doesn't sound impressive, but remember I am just an (sometimes above) average runner. There are plenty of blogs and YT channels featuring elite runners and they are great (I watch/follow them too). But if you are a mid-pack, or slightly slower, runner like me, you might just find what I have found here in my training much more applicable to your own!

Outside of these training, I am a software engineer. I will write about that from time to time too, maybe.

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Al3x

Feature Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash