Hello and welcome to bonus episode number 74 of the Culips English podcast. I'm your host and your English study buddy for the day, Andrew, and it's great to be here with you for another week. I hope you're doing well.

And for those of you who are unfamiliar with the bonus episode series, what I do here is I just tell you some stories from my everyday life as a Canadian living abroad in South Korea and the goal here is that by listening to these stories you will be able to improve your knowledge of English vocabulary, your knowledge of the culture of English speakers, and also of course improve your English fluency.

And in today's episode, I'm going to recap and tell you my marathon story. Last week I did a marathon. I know I've been talking about it quite a bit here on Culips over the last three months or so as I was training for the event, but I finally finished and I'm going to give a recap of how that went down.

But before I tell you that story, I have three announcements for you. The first announcement is that there's a free interactive transcript for this episode. It's a great learning tool. You can follow along with the transcript while you listen to the episode and also use it for pronunciation or shadowing practice.

It's just really amazing. Trust me. Check it out. You'll love it. To get it, just follow the link that's in the description for this episode. Now the next announcement is about Culips membership.

Culips is 100% supported by our member community and without our members we wouldn't be able to keep making free audio lessons and free transcripts like the one that we give away for each bonus episode each and every week.

If you'd like to support the work we do then please sign up and become a member on our website Culips.com. Because when you're a member you'll get so many awesome benefits and bonuses. To name just a few you'll get full access to our study guide library.

You'll get to listen and learn with our Fluency Files series which is of course exclusive to Culips members. You'll get ad-free and announcement-free audio for all of our regular episodes plus invitations to our monthly member live streams and you'll get to join the member only channel on our Discord.

And of course, because we want to give as much back to our member community as we possibly can, we also allow our members to be the first people to be able to participate in any new experiments or features that we're testing out.

So, for example right now we have many of our Culips members who are participating in a weekly live conversation class at no extra charge just because they were Culips members already.

So, take advantage of these amazing opportunities for improving your English with us and support the work we do at the same time by becoming a Culips member today. The link to sign up is in the description for this episode.

Alright and finally announcement number three is about the Culips member live stream event which is happening very soon on October 31st at 8.30 pm Korean Standard Time. Alina, our Discord moderator, and I are hosting it and we're going to be playing a trivia game that will test your knowledge of our October episodes.

Plus, we'll be opening the stream to any members who would like to call in and talk with us directly. Now to participate in the stream you must be a verified Culips member on our Discord channel and that means that if you are a member out there, but you haven't filled out the Google form yet to become a verified member on the Discord, then you're gonna need to do that.

I'll put the link in the description for this episode and of course if you're having any problems becoming a verified member on the Discord channel then just send a DM to me or send a DM to Alina and we'll make sure to help you get sorted out and yeah, I'm really looking forward to this live stream.

Hope to see many members participate on October 31st at 8.30 pm Korean Standard Time. See you there.

And now it's time for the main event everyone. The story that I'm gonna share with you this week, as I mentioned a little earlier, is about the marathon that I completed last Saturday with my friend Jimmy. So, I hope you'll enjoy listening to this story. Let's get started with it now. Here we go.

I can't believe that this actually happened, that Jimmy and I actually finished a marathon. But it did and I'm really happy it did. And I essentially told all of the details about how Jimmy and I decided to run a marathon, why we decided to run a marathon together in bonus episode 61.

So, if you haven't heard that episode yet then maybe it's a good idea to go back and take a listen to it so you know all of the background information. I'll put the link to that episode in the description so you can find it easily.

But essentially, in a nutshell, my friend Jimmy and I decided to run a marathon together back in late June and we trained together, even though we live in different cities, throughout the summer.

We were in constant communication with each other, cheering each other on and encouraging each other as we trained. We ran a half marathon together back in September. And then finally here last week on Saturday October the 21st. We finally did it and we completed our marathon together.

So, I'll tell you the story of how things went down. The race happened in Kyeongju which is a city in the southeast corner of South Korea. And of course, I live in Seoul, so I had to travel to Kyeongju and it's a little bit difficult to get there.

I mean it's not really difficult to get there but one thing that is a little bit annoying when you're coming from Seoul is there's not a direct train from Seoul to Kyeongju. So, because of that I decided instead of taking the train I would just take a bus there. Now the race started early on Saturday morning.

The starting gun was fired at 8am so that means we started at 8am. So, it's too far to go from Seoul to Kyeongju on Saturday morning the day of the race. I probably would have had to leave Seoul at like 3am if I wanted to get there on time. So, there aren't even any buses or trains that leave at that time.

So, obviously I had to go down the day before. So, I took a bus to Kyeongju. I left Friday late afternoon around 3 O'clock and I guess that was a bad time to go because I got stuck in traffic.

So many people leaving Seoul on a Friday afternoon and it took almost about 5 hours to get from Seoul to Kyeongju on the bus. And there were many runners with me on the bus. It was kind of funny. I wear a brand of watch called Garmin and Garmin makes a really great runners watch that has a GPS built in and so many other features.

It's just a really helpful tool to use while you run. You can see your time and your pace and all of these other statistics. It's fantastic. And I noticed that there were 6 or 7 other people that were riding the same bus with me that had the same model of watch that I had.

So, I figured we're all going to run this marathon together. As far as I know the Kyeongju marathon in Korea is one of the top events in the country. One of the top 3 races as far as I understand. And it was a really popular event. There were over 9,000 people who participated.

So, it was quite a big race. Anyways, by the time that we arrived in Kyeongju, I have to say my butt was a little bit sore from sitting in that bus seat for about 5 hours. So, I was very happy to get off the bus. And as I mentioned earlier, my buddy Jimmy, who I ran the race with, he doesn't live in Seoul.

He lives in another city in the southern part of Korea called Gwangju. And he just drove his car to Kyeongju. So, by the time I arrived in Kyeongju, it was around 8 p.m. at night. Jimmy had already arrived and checked into the hotel. So as soon as I got into town, I rushed to the hotel, I dropped off my bag.

I met up with Jimmy and we went out to go grab some dinner together. We went to a restaurant that was just very close to our hotel. And we ate Korean food called gukbap. And in fact, we had dwaejigukbap, which is kind of like a pork meat soup that you can put rice into.

And it was a wonderful food to eat before a race because it's very clean. Not too oily, not too spicy, not too greasy. But at the same time, it has a lot of carbohydrates because you eat it with the rice.

And I have to be honest, I don't know too much about sports nutrition, but many of the expert runners that I follow on Instagram and YouTube, they all talk about this thing called carb loading that you're supposed to do before running a marathon.

And that's where you eat a lot of clean carbohydrates so that your muscles are ready and prepared for the race. Clean carbs like a bowl of rice is a great food to eat for this carb-loading technique. So anyways, we ate our dwaejigukbap, it was very good.

And then we went back to our hotel, and we were lights out and in bed by about 10-10:30 at night. And even though we both went to bed early, I don't think either of us slept very well. Of course, first of all, we were really excited and a little bit nervous for the upcoming race.

But then also, you know, never really know with hotel rooms, right? Is it going to be a good hotel with a comfortable bed and a good sleeping environment or not? And at least for me, this hotel wasn't great for me. There was a lot of ambient light in the hotel room.

And Jimmy said that this didn't bother him at all, but I'm super sensitive to ambient light. And what I mean by ambient light is like the little lights that are on like the box for the TV, you know, that say that it's powered off.

There's like a little red light and the thermostat, which is the controller that goes on the wall. So, you can adjust the temperature of the heating or the air conditioner. That also had some of these little lights inside. But the end result was that the room was really bright and that bothered me.

So, I didn't sleep very well that night, but it didn't really matter because I was so excited, so pumped up for the race that even though I didn't get a great sleep, I think I was just running off adrenaline and excitement. And Jimmy was in the same boat. Jimmy got up a little bit earlier than I did.

I think he was up and getting ready. Probably had about 4:45 in the morning. I got up at 5:30, just a little bit later to get ready for the race. Now, Jimmy was super prepared for this race, which made things really easy for me. He brought a big cooler of food with him.

He brought his own coffee press, his own coffee beans. So, he made some French press coffee and Jimmy brought bagels. So, I had a bagel with peanut butter and longtime Culips listeners will know that I love peanut butter. So, it was the perfect breakfast for me.

I also ate a piece of Korean style bread called patbbang. And that is like a red-bean bread. And that was awesome as well. So, I was still carb loading even in the morning eating all of these carbohydrates for breakfast.

I had maybe two or three cups of coffee and then quickly got on my running clothes and we left the hotel at about 7 or 7:15 in the morning. And then it was just a short walk from our hotel to where the shuttle bus was that we could pick up and ride for free to the marathon event itself.

And rather than trying to park Jimmy's car in this crazy busy area of the city, we just decided to take the free shuttle bus. After a short ride, we arrived at the area where the marathon was starting.

The marathon started in this area of the city where there's a big athletic stadium and some other, you know like, tennis courts and soccer fields.

This kind of athletic park. And interestingly enough, we didn't start in the athletic stadium. Most races that I run actually start in a stadium and then you kind of run out of the stadium onto the road.

But for whatever reason, even though there's this big track and amazing athletic stadium in Kyeongju, we didn't touch it. We ran beside it, but not inside it. Anyways, that doesn't matter. We arrived at the starting grounds, and it was just a great overall atmosphere.

There were thousands of people there, like I said, about 9,000 participants and just a really great vibe at the start of the race. We got blessed by the weather gods because there was nice clear weather. It was very windy and chilly in the morning, but the sun was out. There wasn't a cloud in the sky.

And I knew that pretty soon it would heat up and it looked like it was actually going to be a pretty warm day. So, although it was chilly at the start, I wasn't really worried about the weather at all.

And you know, when it is a little bit chilly early in the morning like that, the best way to warm yourself up is just to get your body moving. So that's what Jimmy and I decided to do. We did some warm-up laps, just running really slowly in this special area of the park that they had set up for doing some warm-ups.

And I did that still while I had my tracksuit on, so I made sure to get my body temperature up. And when I felt warmed up, then I did some light stretching, which is something I usually never ever do before I run, because I'm just kind of lazy like that.

I know it's a bad habit, but I saw all the other runners doing some stretching and I saw Jimmy doing some stretching, so I thought, "Ah, I should do some stretching as well." So, I did some light stretching and then I took my tracksuit off and I put it in my bag and then I checked my bag.

There was an area set up where some of the staff from the marathon event would take your bag and watch it while you ran, which was very, very convenient because obviously I didn't have a car with me and there weren't any lockers or anything like that. So, it was fantastic that they had the bag check set up.

So, I checked my bag and then it was pretty much time to head to the start line. So of course, when you have 9,000 people participating in an event like this, the start line is very, very crowded, but it was a staggered start. So, there were different distances of events happening.

The first group of runners that were allowed to start were the elite athletes. So, there were many professional runners from various countries that had come. This was an international marathon event.

So, it was kind of cool to see all these really elite, super-fast runners all up at the start and they were allowed to go about 5 minutes before everybody else. And of course, there's no way that we were going to catch up with them, right?

These are people, I think the winner of the race in the end finished in about 2 hours and 9 minutes. So yeah, that is like a very elite, elite time for a marathon.

So, when those professional runners took off, then yeah, they were gone and the only time I ever saw them again is when there was a turnaround part in the race, and they were coming back towards us as we were still having to go to the turnaround spot.

So yeah. The elite runners left first and then it was our turn as full marathon runners. And behind us were the half marathon runners, then the 10k runners and then the 5k runners. And so, Jimmy and I were working our way up to our area where we should start with the other full-course marathon runners.

And as we were approaching the starting line, Jimmy handed me a piece of gum and he said, "Chew this." And a little background information on Jimmy, compared to me, he's more interested in the nutrition side of things, and he knows a lot more about the kind of nutrition and supplements that you should take while you're running.

So, things like energy gels and sodium tablets, caffeine tablets, all of these things he knows more about, and he prepared and brought a lot of them with him. So, I just kind of put this gum in my mouth and started chewing without really thinking about it.

Just being like, OK, I thought it was almost like an energy gel or something. I didn't think it would just be a regular piece of gum, but it was just a regular piece of gum.

So suddenly with like 10 seconds before the race starts, I'm chewing this gum and I'm like, "Huh, I actually don't want to be chewing this gum right now. Like once the gun goes off and we start running, then I'm going to choke on this gum or something."

So as soon as I put it in my mouth and I started chewing it, I was like, "This was a bad idea. Why did I do this?" So, I had a decision to make about what to do with the gum, right? I could spit it out, which I quickly ruled out because I'm in the middle of this huge human sea with all of these other runners beside me.

And I didn't want to be the guy that just like spits his gum out on the floor in this area because some other runner would just immediately step in the gum and then you'd have this gum attached to your shoe right from the start of a race.

So, I didn't want to do that. I also didn't want to swallow the gum because that seemed like a really bad thing to put in my stomach at the start of a race is a piece of gum.

So, I decided to just kind of keep it in the side of my mouth until we started running and then once we passed the start line and we started going and there was a little bit of distance, then maybe I could find a garbage can or just spit it out to the side of the race, you know, in a bush or something.

So, the gun went off, we started the race, I've got this gum in my mouth and we're off and the sea of runners broke up a little bit, I had some space and as I passed a sewage drain on the side of the road, then I just tossed the gum into the sewage drain so it would be out of the way, and nobody would step in my gum.

And yeah, amazing, got rid of the gum and we were off, we started the race.

And the reason I'm telling you this story is because the marathon was televised on live television here in Korea and after we finished the race, Jimmy and I went back and found the YouTube video of the live television broadcast and we saw ourselves on the broadcast at the start line.

And the little bit of time that I am on the TV is that exact moment where I'm spitting the gum out into my hand and throwing it into the storm drain on the side of the road.

So, my brief moment of fame where I was on the TV, I didn't actually look very good, I was just spitting this gum out. So, lesson learned, don't accept a piece of gum right before you start a marathon, I think that was my first and last time doing that.

So, we started the race and as I mentioned before in the previous episode, the goal that we wanted to finish the race in was three hours and 30 minutes. So, a full marathon is 42 kilometers and a little bit of change, and our goal would be three hours and 30 minutes, which would break Jimmy's personal record.

That was our main goal of this race was to break Jimmy's personal record, which I think was around three hours and 40 or three hours and 45 minutes that he had completed in Seoul back in the spring in March, he set that record.

So our goal was to finish in three hours, 30 minutes, which meant keeping a pace of about four minutes and 59 seconds, a kilometer, which I think for both of us is a pretty comfortable pace, where we wouldn't really have to push ourselves to the breaking point.

And it's not really fast on a kilometer to kilometer basis, but keeping that pace for the full time can be difficult because it is a long race and it is a long run. And I have to say that the course itself was extremely beautiful.

Well, afterwards, when I was watching the replay of it, the TV announcers called the race "A museum like marathon" because the course went by a lot of important historical areas in the region. The city of Kyeongju itself was the capital of the ancient Shilla Dynasty way, way, way back when hundreds of years ago in Korean history.

And it was awesome because we were able to run by some of the huge royal tombs that are in the city. And actually, when I was doing a little bit of research into Kyeongju before I visited there, I learned a new English word.

And it's always exciting as a native speaker when you learn a new word in your own language. There are these huge royal burial mounds in Kyeongju, and they are called tumuli, tumuli. And the singular word of that is tumulus. So pretty cool. I learned some new words.

And there are many tumuli in Kyeongju that we ran by. We also ran by this ancient astronomical observatory. In fact, some archaeologists say that it might be even the oldest surviving astronomical observatory, at least in Asia and perhaps even the world. It was built in the seventh century, and it's called Cheomseongdae.

So that was really cool to run by that as well. Amazing scenery, amazing weather. And it just puts you in a really good mood when you're going by all these cool places. And there's great weather outside.

You're surrounded by other runners as well. It was really just a positive running environment to be in, and the kilometers just flew by. Before you knew it, we were at the 32K mark, with only 10 kilometers to go. And at that point, I was feeling so good. I was joking around with Jimmy the whole time.

We were ahead of schedule. We were going faster than we had to to hit our goal of three hours and 30 minutes. And I was talking with Jimmy and joking that I think I can do 60 kilometers today. I was just feeling really, really good. And we only had 10 kilometers to go.

So, it seemed like we were going to be able to hit our goal without any problems. And Jimmy also looked really good too. He was running strong. When I looked over at him to see how he was doing, he looked good. His breathing was good.

But at that point, he did start to say that his hamstring in his leg, one of the muscles in your leg, was starting to feel a little bit sore. And I know that when you're running in a long race like this, you can start to get some negative emotions in your head.

And it can be really easy to go from feeling great to feeling terrible. So, I was trying my best just to coach him a little bit and just to fight through the pain. And like, "Ah, don't worry about it. Tell your legs to shut up. We'll be finished this race before you know it. You're doing great!"

So, I was trying my best to keep things positive so that we could keep to our goal and finish the race in time. And yeah, we only had 10 kilometers left to go. We were over 75% of the way there. So, things were looking good.

That final 10 kilometers, that home stretch of the race, is also the most difficult mentally and also the most difficult physically because your body is starting to be like, “Hey, what are you doing to me? Stop running. Take a break.” I don't know. I've been running for many years now.

And it seems like running to 30 kilometers, usually, you can do without too much physical pain. But at least for me, once I cross that 30-kilometer point, then things do start to get a little more difficult and my knees start to hurt, and my hip starts to feel tight.

And that's exactly what started happening to me also at around kilometer 36. But I knew that we were almost there at the end at kilometer 36. There's only 6K left to go. And also, Jimmy was saying that his hamstring was acting up.

So even though I wasn't feeling perfect myself, I didn't want to complain or say anything. I just wanted to keep the atmosphere good and the positive thoughts and the positive vibes flowing as much as possible. So, I kept saying to Jimmy, like, "You look great. I'm feeling great. Let's go. Let's do this!"

And we were so close that even though we were both feeling a little bit uncomfortable at this point, we just kept going. And our pace was even. We were still on target for reaching our goal. We hadn't really slowed down or picked up at all. We were just running a really nice even race.

But then at the very end of the race, disaster almost struck. We were past the 41-kilometer mark. So, we probably only had like 800 or 900 meters to go. We could sniff the finish line. And that's a fun English expression to say that you can sense that something is really close.

When you can sniff it, sniff is like what you do. It's like this action when you smell through your nose. And you're like, OK? That is a sniff. What I just did. And when you can sniff something, it means you're like almost there, almost finished. So, we could sniff the finish line.

We were around 800 meters from the end. And Jimmy was saying, “Oh, my leg is acting up. I don't know if I can keep going.” And I was just telling him to fight through it. I was like, “Come on, Jimmy, we're almost there. Come on, man.”

But then he got a cramp in his leg and a cramp is when all of your muscles contract and are very tight. And we kept passing a bunch of other runners who had cramped up and were in agony on the side of the road with medical attention.

And the ambulance would come and some of the other medical workers and first aid workers on the course would have to go and massage them and help stretch their muscles out. It's just really, really painful when you get a cramp like that.

But then Jimmy with about 800 meters to go got one of these cramps in his leg and he let out a scream and he had to stop and try and work out this cramp in his leg. And as soon as I heard Jimmy scream out in pain, I looked beside me and noticed he wasn't there anymore.

So, I turned around and I saw him just stopped hunched over on the side of the road in agony with this terrible cramp in his leg. So, I stopped. I ran back to meet up with Jimmy and I tried my best to help him work out this cramp. I personally have never experienced a cramp like that well I've ran.

I've had cramps in my stomach. Sometimes I get a cramp in my stomach when running, but never in a muscle like that.

So, I didn't know really what to do to help him out, but I did remember one time I was running with another friend and that friend got a really bad cramp in his leg while we were running and that friend yelled at me like, “Punch my cramp, punch my cramp and try and work the tension out of the muscle!”

So, I did the same thing to Jimmy. I don't know if this is a good thing or not to do, but I just bent over and started punching his leg where the cramp was. I mean, I wasn't really like pounding his leg. I wasn't like trying to knock him out with a knockout punch or anything like that.

But I was kind of working the muscle, right, trying to get that muscle free and loose again. And I don't know if the punching helped or hurt, but thankfully, after only about 25 seconds, Jimmy was good to go again.

The cramp had led up and he was back and running after only taking a break for like 20 or 30 seconds. So that was incredible and we're both really thankful that that cramp led up and Jimmy was able to continue. So that did put us a little bit behind.

As we were approaching the finish line, it looked like we were going to be able to finish under three hours and 20 minutes. But because of the leg issue and the cramp, we decided, hey, let's not kill ourselves. Let's just go at a little bit of a slower pace down the home stretch here.

And we ended up finishing the race at three hours and 22 minutes and 31 seconds, which means that we smashed Jimmy's PR time. And we also achieved our goal of finishing under three hours and 30 minutes.

It was really funny. Actually, when we were running down the home stretch towards the finish line, I said, "Jimmy, this one's for you. You cross the finish line first." So, he finished a little bit before me, but then when we looked at our official race time, we both finished at exactly three hours and 22 minutes and 31 seconds.

So, I guess I probably crossed the start line before Jimmy. And then he crossed the finish line before me. And the end result is that we both achieved exactly the same time. So, it couldn't have been more perfect. I was so proud of Jimmy for absolutely smashing his PR time.

And really, when you're just an amateur runner, like we are, like I said, the winner of the event was like two hours and nine minutes. So, there's absolutely zero way that we can compete against the elite athletes in the world. But one thing that I love about running is that it's a competition with yourself.

You're always trying to beat your PR, your personal record, and go faster and just run better than you had in the past. And so, Jimmy was able to do that in a huge way, dropping like 10 or 15 minutes off of his original PR time.

So, I was so proud of him and happy for that. And he was proud of himself and happy of the hard work that he had done training for the event. So, all in all, just an amazing race. And we both finished just feeling so great. After we crossed the finish line, I felt like pretty good.

This was only my second full marathon that I have ever run. I did my first one back in 2019. And I remember after that first marathon, once I crossed the finish line, I almost died. I was so tired and could barely breathe and could barely move.

But when I crossed the finish line here in Kyeongju, I felt totally fine. Like I said that day and I was joking around that I could run 60 kilometers. But I think I probably could have almost run 60 kilometers that day. I was in tip-top shape, so that was great. Anyways, after we finished the race, we went and we got our completion medal.

And maybe I'll take a picture of that and upload it to our Instagram along with a couple of other photos from the marathon. So, you guys can check those out on the Culips Instagram page. But the medal was really beautiful that they gave us for completing the race. So, we picked up our medal.

We stopped and had some water, and I ate a banana and another piece of bread. And I think Jimmy did too. And we took a couple of pictures. There's this kind of photo zone set up where you could stand in front of this cool background that had a screen that displayed your finishing time.

So, we had to wait in line for that for like 30 minutes to get those pictures. But you know, it's nice to get the pictures and have that as a nice memory. So, we waited in line. We got our pictures and then we had to rush back to our hotel to check out in time.

So, we had a quick shower and just barely checked out of our hotel in time. It was down to the last minute. But we checked out and we got some lunch. And then we drove back to Jimmy's house in Kwangju. Our plan was to celebrate together in Kwangju. And then I would go back up to Seoul the next day.

You know, while we were training, Jimmy, and I, and I think Jimmy to a greater extent, but also myself as well. I tried to do this as much as I could. We tried to keep our diet clean and just not eat too much junk food or snacks or anything like that down towards the lead up of the race.

So, our plan was to celebrate and have a really great dinner together, have a couple of drinks together to celebrate the race after we finished. So, we drove from Kyeongju to Kwangju. I know for non-Korean listeners, it's going to be hard to remember the names of these places, but don't worry too much about that.

It was about a three-hour drive between the two cities. And when we arrived at Jimmy's house in Kwangju, it was around 6 p.m. or so in the evening. And we met up with Jimmy's wife and sat around and told her the story of the race and recapped the day's events.

And by that time, it was like dinner time. So, we were like, "Ah, we had to go out and celebrate." But we were both really exhausted. And I think neither of us felt like going out and celebrating really. So instead of doing that, we just decided to order a pizza and we went to the convenience store, and we got a couple of beers.

So, we had pizza, and we had a beer. And after that, we were just full and really exhausted. And I think both of us were in bed again by like 10 p.m. I slept over at Jimmy's place in his guest bedroom. And we were both laughing. Jimmy and I are both the same age. We're both 39.

And we were laughing and saying, "Ah, yeah, this is life in your late 30s, you know? Even when you plan and prepare and work towards doing something difficult and then you try to celebrate it after, you're still just too tired to go out and celebrate."

So yeah, that was perfect. You know, it was really nice just to hang out with Jimmy and hang out with his wife and chat and recap the events from the day and have some pizza and have a beer and then go to bed early. And I slept amazingly in Jimmy's spare bedroom.

It was the complete opposite of the hotel that we slept in the night before. The room was cool. It was completely dark. And it was quiet. And I slept for almost 11 hours. I think I went to bed at 10 p.m. and woke up at around 9 a.m. So yeah, 11 hours of sleep.

And usually, I wake up once or twice in the middle of the night, but I didn't wake up at all. It was like continuous sleep. And when I woke up, my Garmin watch that I told you about earlier said that I got an excellent sleep. It said that my body had really recovered well from the marathon because of my excellent sleep.

And that's the first time that I've ever seen my watch tell me that I've got an excellent sleep like that. So yeah, I felt amazing. And I woke up and Jimmy prepared another nice breakfast for us, and I had breakfast with him and his wife. And then it was time for me to take the train to go back home to Seoul.

So, I got on the train, and I went back and hung out with my wife and told my wife about the race. And yeah, that was the end of the weekend essentially. So, all in all, in summary, it was just an amazing experience, but it's not over yet because Jimmy and I have signed up for the solo marathon, which will be happening at the end of March next year, 2024.

And that's where I'm going to attempt to break my personal record. This race in Kyeongju was really for Jimmy and for breaking his personal record. But now I have to break my PR. And so, the next challenge awaits. You know, there's this expression in Korean in the Korean language.

And I think many of you listeners know that I study Korean. And if I were to translate the expression into English, it's like "After one mountain, there's another mountain." And I really feel like I've passed over one of these mountains, but now there's another mountain behind it.

So now really essentially the real training for me begins because I'm going to try and break my own PR in March at the Seoul Marathon. And my goal is to run a sub three. Runners call finishing a marathon in under three hours, a sub three. And my record right now is three hours and seven minutes.

So, I have to cut seven minutes off of my marathon time. I think I can do it. If I stay focused in my training and especially in the little things that are difficult to do. It's those little things that make the difference. Going outside and running is easy to do because I love it. I just enjoy being outside and running.

It's always awesome. But it's the little things that aren't so fun to do that will take me to the next level. Being disciplined in my stretching, being disciplined in my diet, doing some cross training like weightlifting, or cycling, being disciplined with my sleep, being disciplined with doing some difficult runs, like running uphill or doing interval training.

I have to do all of those things that are not as fun and things that I don't really like to do because those things are the difference makers. And I think if I can stay disciplined with doing them, then I'll hit my goal. And I think there's a lesson here for language learning as well, for learning English as well.

Because we can be passive with learning English. You could just throw on an episode of Culips and listen to it while you're doing the dishes or walking your dog. And don't get me wrong. That's a super helpful thing to do. I think, in fact, it's one of the best things that you can do to improve your English fluency.

But if you're really serious about hitting the next level, if you're serious about hitting your own English, PR, so to speak, then we have to be disciplined and do those little things that maybe aren't as easy or aren't as fun as just listening to a Culips episode. We have to be productive with our language.

We have to actually use it to communicate with others through writing or through speaking. We have to dig into new content that's challenging for us, and we have to learn new vocabulary and expressions and see how they're used by English speakers.

We have to do shadowing and pronunciation practice in a controlled way. And just like with running, when we're learning English, we also have to take care of our health. I think this is something that's not talked about too often in the language-learning community, but it's super important as well.

You'll learn faster, you'll learn better if you're healthy, if you're sleeping well, if you're eating well, if you're in control of your stress, then you'll just be a better English learner. There's no doubt in my mind about that. And I know all of these things are easier said than done. We all have busy lives.

We all have a lot of things going on, but that doesn't make them less true. They're still true. So anyways, that was my marathon experience. All in all, it was a 10 out of 10 time, and I can't wait to do it again next year. But now the real work begins as I start to gear up for beating my own personal record.

Please wish me luck. So, that brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to my marathon story. I hope that you found it interesting and more importantly helpful for building your English fluency.

And hey, if you're here all the way at the end of this episode, then you're doing so great with your English study, you're putting in the time, you're putting in the effort, and you are an elite English learner. You know, I can see the statistics about how long people listen to Culips episodes for.

And I think it follows a pattern that's similar to most kinds of content that you can find on the Internet. I think every podcast, every YouTube channel, every Netflix show has a kind of similar pattern where listeners tune out over time.

Maybe at the start of the episode, 100% of people are listening, but after 10 minutes, only 50% are listening. And then at the end, there's a smaller amount of people who are listening. So, for you still to be listening right now at the end of the show, that means you are elite.

That means that you have the endurance and the patience and the motivation to really improve your English. So, I'm proud of you for that, and I want you to keep going, because that's the only way we can improve our English everyone, is to not give up, is to stay consistent, and to keep going.

So great work today, and happy English studies for the week up ahead. Take care, and I'll talk to you in the next Culips episode. Bye!