Nice article on Kevin Lin

I found a nice little article on ultra-runner Kevin Lin, here.

Anyone who has watched the film Running the Sahara knows of Kevin Lin, as one of the trio who ran across the entire Sahara in 2007. The film is one of my favorite running films, and in fact I've had the privilege to actually correspond a bit with Ray Zahab, (a very nice guy and a personal running hero to me), and with Charlie Engle's dad (also a nice guy) who responded to a post I wrote about his son Charlie's legal troubles.

Charlie's and Ray's various activities are fairly easy to track, since both men have websites, and Ray has written a book on his adventures. Kevin, however, seemed to sort of drop off he map. The above article caught me up a bit on what he's been doing, as did his Wikipedia site. After the Sahara project he's actually done quite a bit, including participation in the Gobi Desert ultra, and an amazing run across the Silk Road that's actually even more impressive than the Sahara run.

According to the above-linked article, Kevin has more-or-less retired from professional running, and is founding a counseling firm that will help people overcome obstacles and challenges in their lives--subjects upon which Kevin can certainly offer sound advice, I should think. Good for him.

May 22: new wrinkles in my suburi

Running: 6 miles. Fairly standard run along my Lantern Road/116th street route, late in the afternoon. Had to dodge a few stray raindrops here and there, but otherwise no worries.

Kendo: I put in extra time and effort with my suburi this morning, largely out of frustration from missing class last night. I'm also refining my target dummy work. My routine now is to begin and end with 10 large men, then do around 20 small men, then around 20 small men with kiai, and then tsuki, around 10 reps.

1. sonkyo
2. sayu-men: 50 reps
3. sayu-men with hiraki-ashi: 20 reps
4. katate-men: 55 reps
5. fumikomi drills: 20 reps.
6. haya-suburi: 65 reps.
7. large men: 100 reps
8. large men-kote-do: 20 reps.
9. small men and kote-men: 20 reps.
10. footwork drills (fumikomi)
11: target dummy: approx. 50 reps, big men, small men, tsuki.
12. sonkyo.

May 21: good run, bad lunch

Running: 7 miles. My weekly visit to campus, so I had the opportunity to do a run at Potter's Bridge (and Forest Hill). I had thought I might end up indoors because the morning was quite rainy, but by the time I had finished my various campus chores the rain had cleared away and I had a nearly perfect running day.

Kendo: on the hand....I ate a chopped salad for a late lunch, which sounds healthy enough, but ended up making me sick as a dog for most of the evening. I'm not sure exactly what the problem might have been--it felt a little like the case of food poisoning I picked up a few years ago--but it certainly scuttled my kendo class this evening. This seriously bummed me out, since, with my upcoming annual trip to Kentucky, I'll not have many more opportunities for kendo at Mudokwan for a while.

May 20: adding fumikomi drills

Running: off day. My original plan involved running today and moving both off days to Saturday and Sunday, but for various reasons I needed a day off today. This means I very definitely must run during the weekend.

Kendo: I'm adding some fumikomi drills to my daily routine. I want to work on stretching my footwork out further, and building strength in my lower body to do so. I'm starting light--10 reps--but I'll add a few more each week.

I'm also adding more reps for certain drills--haya-suburi and katate-suburi--because I see these activities as both building stamina and establishing technique:

1. sonkyo
2. sayu-men: 50 reps
3. sayu-men with hiraki-ashi: 20 reps
4. katate-men: 55 reps
5. fumikomi drills: 10 reps.
6. haya-suburi: 65 reps.
7. large men: 100 reps
8. large men-kote-do: 20 reps.
9. small men and kote-men: 20 reps.
10. footwork drills (fumikomi)
11: small men (target dummy): approx. 30 reps.
12. sonkyo.

Weekly plan, May 20-26

Running: (last week: 37 miles, 12/6 distance). Kicked off my 24 week training plan for the Bison 50 last week, and things went very well: I made every training goal. A good start.

This week will prove more of a challenge. The upcoming Memorial Day weekend is going to be super-busy for me, with family and a good friend visiting from out of town. My schedule will be crazy to the point of probably precluding any serious running at all.

This isn't an insurmountable problem, since my training plan carries two off days per week. But those days normally occur on Mondays and Fridays (or, in my case, Tuesdays and Fridays, taking into account my kendo schedule). This week I'll be forced by circumstances to shift one of my two off days to Saturday, meaning I'll need to cram a lot of miles into the weekdays.

My training plan for week two calls for 39 miles, with 14/6 distance runs. Right now, I think my running week should look something like this:

Mon.: off
Tue.: 5 miles
Wed. 6 miles
Thur.: 14 miles
Fri.: 7 miles
Sat: off
Sun.: 7 miles

This is not a great plan, but it's the best I can do under the circumstances. I don't much like the idea of doing my distance run right in the middle of the week, and I really don't care for the notion of running during my kendo days.

Kendo: on the whole, last week was a very good kendo week. While it is true that I had to miss Friday's Mudokwan class (and I unfortunately was unable to participate in a kendo demonstration performed by my dojo mates at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Fort Wayne on Sunday), I had a good class Tuesday, and some very solid, regular home suburi.

This week I should be able to make both classes (Friday's may be in jeopardy; I may need to make a trip to the airport during class time to pick up my friend who's visiting), and I really doubt my Memorial day weekend plans will allow for much suburi Saturday and Sunday. But otherwise, this should be a reasonably good kendo week.

May 19: long day on the Monon

Running: 12 miles. Distance day, and a warm one, too. The morning was busy for various family matters, so I didn't have an opportunity to run until the early afternoon, by which time the temp had hit the mid-eighties, with lots of humidity to boot. The Monon was absolutely packed, nonetheless.

I find as I get older, I need to be more careful about hydration. So not only did I carry my hydration pack (of course), I made it a point to stop every mile or so and take a drink. This seemed to work fairly well, and dehydration wasn't an issue. Sore muscles, however, were a problem--naturally enough, but I think it was worse than I would have thought, especially after around mile 9. Reflection of the fact that I haven't done this kind of daily or weekly mileage in a while.

So on the whole, a good run, just a bit more taxing than I would have thought.

Kendo: off day, my first day of the week with no kendo.

May 18: back on Lantern

Running: 6 miles. I was back out on Lantern Road again, for what proved to be a pretty warm and humid run. I'm not complaining, really, but I will need to get slowly re-acclimated to such things. I'm certainly bringing my hydration pack with me, even on relatively brief runs like today.

Kendo: I actually had an opportunity for full suburi practice at home on a Saturday; a rare thing.

1. sonkyo
2. sayu-men: 50 reps
3. sayu-men with hiraki-ashi: 20 reps
4. katate-men: 50 reps
5. haya-suburi: 60 reps.
6. large men: 100 reps
7. large men-kote-do: 20 reps.
8. small kote-men: 20 reps.
9. footwork drills (fumikomi)
10: small men (target dummy): approx. 30 reps.
11. sonkyo.

May 17: off day

Running: off day...

Kendo: ...and no class at Mudokwan, either (my son's last band concert of the year this evening). But I did put in some good home suburi work:

1. sonkyo
2. sayu-men: 50 reps
3. sayu-men with hiraki-ashi: 20 reps
4. katate-men: 50 reps
5. haya-suburi: 60 reps.
6. large men: 100 reps
7. large men-kote-do: 20 reps.
8. small kote-men: 20 reps.
9. footwork drills (fumikomi)
10: small men (target dummy): approx. 30 reps.
11. sonkyo.

May 16: out on the Monon

Running: 7 miles. Continuing my trend of running in places other than 1) the Wellness Center, 2) a treadmill, or 3) my regular neighborhood routes, today I found time to run out on the Monon Greenway. This included my first run over the new Rohrer street/146th street bridge just constructed to provide safer access to the new stretch of trail north of 146th. Always a pleasure to run the Monon, and today was no exception.

Kendo: Although I've added a do to my kendo target, I found today I need to make some modifications, because a few strikes cause the thing to slide around a bit too much. Otherwise, a good home practice session today.


1. sonkyo
2. sayu-men: 50 reps
3. sayu-men with hiraki-ashi: 20 reps
4. katate-men: 50 reps
5. haya-suburi: 60 reps.
6. large men: 100 reps
7. large men-kote-do: 20 reps.
8. small kote-men: 20 reps.
9. footwork drills (fumikomi)
10: small men (target dummy): approx. 30 reps.
11. sonkyo.

May 15: Potter's Bridge

Running: 5 miles. I found myself unexpectedly on the Noblesville side of town, so I took advantage and ran at an old favorite trail--Potter's Bridge. I don't often have the opportunity to do this, because I no longer live near that part of the county; which is unfortunate, because Potter's Bridge is a wonderful place to run.

It was an almost perfect running: "almost," in that the weather was again rather warm (not objectively warm, perhaps, but certainly more so than to what I'm accustomed), and there was a fairly stiff breeze. Potter's Bridge's trail compensated a bit on both counts, with its heavy trees that provided some shade and a bit of wind cover.

Kendo: More home suburi. I'm thinking still about footwork above all, which I think is showing some signs of improvement in my dojo work:

1. sonkyo
2. sayu-men: 50 reps
3. sayu-men with hiraki-ashi: 20 reps
4. katate-men: 50 reps
5. haya-suburi: 60 reps.
6. large men: 100 reps
7. large men-kote-do: 20 reps.
8. small kote-men: 20 reps.
9. footwork drills (fumikomi)
10: small men (target dummy): approx. 30 reps.
11. sonkyo.

May 14: taking center

Running: off day

Kendo: quite the warm and humid dojo this evening. We are segueing into summer kendo, which of course means lots of sweaty times encased in our bogu. This evening's class was a nice harbinger of things to come. I think we were all struggling with the heat, at least a bit.

Class went smoothly, although we were missing Nicholai and Andrew, so I ended up as senior ranking student (I think I remembered all of the commands, at least). We did our usual thirty minutes of kata, warmups, bogu drills and jigeiko. By the time we finished, I was pretty much wiped out from the heat, and my kiai was fading rather badly.

During my jigeiko with Imafuji-sensei, I did what has been my usual practice during our last couple of months of what sensei calls "hard practice"--intense kiai before everything else, projecting seme as much as possible, and zanshin. These things went well, I suppose, but sensei told me I was "just striking," rather than building up my kiai, taking center, and then striking.

I think I need to find some sort of balance here. When I do our "hard training" routine, and push my kiai to its limit, I tend to think about little else; subsequently, I'm not paying sufficient attention to other aspects of my kendo--like taking center. I need to find a way to both elevate my kiai (make my "blood boil," as one kenshi once told me) and maintain proper focus on other matters.