Dudes. In 4.5 weeks, I will be running the California International Marathon for a third time. This is where I ran my first full marathon. About a month after I ran that first marathon, I started this blog. I could not believe that my own body was capable of accomplishing something so amazing!

My friend’s aunt, Misty, took a lot of great photos from that time!

This is me around mile 22? I was on pace to finish in 3:40 (which I did! Yeeee~):

And there was this super awesome sign she made for me:

Well I returned the year after, finishing 3:58 (IT band issues, booo~)… (and it was raining sideways).

I had a lot of other great marathons since then, but I am really looking forward to going back to this one. I really love the course and all of the locals who come out to cheer for us along the course!

Training is going… weird. I run here and there, but I’m not “there” mentally (or physically) for any sort of PR. I would super love to get a course PR, but I won’t be too bummed if that doesn’t happen!

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In other amazing news, I have been selected to be an ambassador for the SA Modesto Marathon (I am a SAMMbassador!). It will be on Sunday, March 29th, and both the full and half marathons will be flat and fast.

Since it will take place in between Napa Marathon and Boston Marathon, my “coach” Amy D. (hehehe) suggested I do the half. Even better, there was an opportunity to pace the 2:00 group! YES, this is perfect. I love love love pacing, and I definitely love pacing 2:00! Can’t wait 😀

So I will be an ambassador AND pacer for the Modesto Marathon 2015. It’s going to be so much fun!

I will keep you posted on news about the race as we get closer to race day!

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For some reason, waking up super early in the middle of the week is tough (but walking up for a 6am or 6:30am run on the weekends come to me so easily, haha). BUT I woke up and arrived at the RunningAddicts track workout at 6:!5am this morning. There is no way I would make it out there that early if these cool people were not expecting me!

[Photo creds: Linh]:

You can tell who over-dressed (haha, me!). Since it was an early morning run, I imagined it would be super cold. Wrong-o! It was a cool morning 🙂

Anyways, the sunrise was so gorgeous that I couldn’t stop talking about it (though it’s hard to tell from this photo):

We did a warm up, 3 x 1600m (w/ 400m RI), and a cool down. I hadn’t done track in a long time, so I was going to run them at my “strength” (Hansons Marathon Method) pace, which is 7:50… but they ended up being 7:52, 7:32, 7:28. My fast running friends made me run faster without me noticing.

And we always finish the track workout with some kind of fun photo:

It was so weird to be done with the workout by 7:30am!

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Are you able to wake up early to workout on your own?

How many times do you press the snooze button in the morning? [I usually don’t snooze]

What does fall look like where you live? Is it getting super cold yet? [Northern California. Fall foliage, but still not that cold. Temp still gets up in the 70’s midday]