Another 26 miles I was on the phone with my friend Ro one night and she asked me about my trip to Japan. I told her its not a big deal, but I'm running the marathon. It will be my 6th world major and then I will have completed them all. I get a cool medal, that looks like the infinity gaunlet and just like Thanos i can snap my fingers and life as we know it will cease to exist. Ro than asked me, why do you always downgrade your accomplishment? Arn't you proud of what your doing? Didn't you work hard for this? Ro always tells me the truth and she always calls me out on my BS. I never really though of running as any big accomplishment because ive been doing it for so long. This 6 star journey that people call it, didnt happen in 2010 running Chicago, this journey started in 1998. When like any good asian boy in HS, I was just trying to get an extra curriculer activities for my college apps. You know what running was like in 1998, it was running in cotton shirts, walkmans, watches with no gps, and being laughed at, with lame jokes such as run forest run. I know I'm dating myself here but it gets better. To be an asian boy running at that time in NYC, you could only imagine amount of ridicule i got running pass people on the streets. I've basically been running in some form or another for the past 26 years. So when Ro asked me all these questions, I realized I'm damm proud of what I accomplished. There is not an ounce of god given talent in this body, i just worked my ass off, physically, emotionally, financially, for this... So I had to think really hard about why I downgraded this accomplishment in the first place. It was October of 1998, the Yankees had just won another world series. Our HS had this office for the track team where all the runners hungout, i went into that office for the first time and it was filled with medals, trophys, plaques, this team was good. I was never fascinated with the shiny objects, what i gravitated towards were the team photos on the wall. [continue in comments]