Hello, everybody.
Welcome to bonus episode number 162 of the Q-Lips English Podcast.
How is it going?
I hope you're doing well.
Thank you for clicking play and joining me for this English study session today.
My name is Andrew and what I do here in our bonus episode series is I tell you some stories from my everyday life.
I'm a Canadian, but I live abroad, in Seoul, South Korea, and I hope that by listening to my stories, you will be able to build your English fluency and to grow your vocabulary and to become a clearer and better communicator.
If those are some of your goals with your English, then you're in the right place.
And I think you will enjoy this story.
Today, I'm going to tell you the story of running in the 2025 JTBC Marathon, a very big marathon event here in Seoul.
And actually originally I wasn't intending to tell this story, but in a recent Q-Lips small group speaking class some of our members encouraged me to tell the story and they wanted to hear about it.
So this one's for you guys.
I'm telling the story for all of our awesome Q-Lips members out there who join me each and every week for our small group speaking classes.
And, by the way, for this episode there's a free transcript, interactive transcript, I should say, even better than just a regular transcript.
Although we do provide that as well.
If you want to download a PDF, that option is available for you.
So there's the interactive transcript and also a vocabulary glossary that will help explain some of the difficult vocabulary or useful vocabulary that you hear me use in this episode today.
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So thank you so much.
All right, let's jump into my story here for this week, talking about the 2025 JTBC Marathon that happened here in Seoul, South Korea.
And now over a month has passed since I participated in the race.
So I think I've collected my thoughts and i've had time to settle down from the runner's high that i experienced after completing the event.
So, just to give you a very quick backstory, i've been running for over 10 years 11 years, i think.
I started around 2014 running and now i've completed five full marathons I believe five or six, I think five.
And last year in October of 2024, I injured myself during a marathon attempt.
I only made it around halfway and I had to stop because I developed some severe knee pain that was preventing me from finishing the race.
And that was just a really disappointing moment, not being able to finish that race.
I disappointed myself by not training properly to be prepared for the full length marathon.
So I was disappointed in myself.
I was disappointed in my preparation.
I was disappointed that I spent time and money to go to a different city in a different place and just fail in that event.
So it was really embarrassing and disappointing to not be able to complete that marathon.
That was my first ever DNF.
And I told the full story here on QLIP.
So if you'd like to go back, maybe I can put the link in the description for this episode to that story.
So you could go back and listen to it if you want.
But ever since that DNF, I have had revenge on my mind.
And so, slowly but surely, I've been building up to revenge.
Doing well on a marathon.
That's what i wanted to do.
So, of course, after that dnf, it took me a little while to recover and be back into running condition, and then i slowly but surely built my fitness back up again.
And then this year, in 2025, i ran in the seoul marathon and i was able to finish in about three hours and three minutes, which i thought was pretty good considering i had been injured.
And then, since then, my training has just been really great.
And throughout the spring, I ran three half marathons.
And each half marathon I ran, I broke my new personal record.
So I smashed 30. three personal records in a row, which was amazing.
I did one in April here in Seoul.
And guys, I had the same half marathon record for years and years.
It was always one hour and 26 minutes and some odd seconds.
And I could just not beat that for whatever reason, I guess.
Uh, that number and me were just attached at the hip, like several times probably.
I ran five or six half marathons and every time was one hour and 26 minutes.
However, I was finally able to break through and beat that this year.
So in April, I ran a one 23 and And then I think it was in May, early May, I ran a 1.21.
And then in the fall here, I ran a 1.19.58.
So just under an hour and 20 minutes.
So that was like so amazing.
That really boosted my confidence and really motivated me and also motivated was a nice sign that I think I was doing the right kind of training and doing the right kind of workouts to really up my fitness and increase my level of running speed and endurance and all of these things that you need for a marathon.
So because I had those three half marathon PRs, I felt pretty confident going into the JTBC marathon here, which actually took place on November the 2nd.
That's actually pretty late in the fall, but that was great news because the weather was really really warm here this summer and into the fall as well.
So I think if it were any earlier in the fall, it would have been too hot.
When you run a marathon.
Ideally, you would like the temperature to be I don't know like five to seven degrees Celsius.
That would be the sweet spot.
So having it a little bit later in the fall actually turned out to be amazing.
And I'll get to that in a little while.
But yeah, because of those PRs, I felt like I was in great shape.
I felt like my training was going really well.
I unfortunately, just with my busy schedule and life and all of these things, I don't have too much time to dedicate to actually running, compared to somebody who's all in.
When you look at people who are really really fast and really great runners, usually they're running close to 150 kilometers a week or more.
And those are the people who really inspire me.
And I wish I could do that.
I wish I had the time in my life to really do that kind of all in effort and dedicate like 12 to 15 to 20 hours of running per week.
But unfortunately, I just can't do that at this stage in my life.
And so I was training about seven to eight to nine hours a week.
Maybe on a good week I could find nine hours a week run for like maybe 45 minutes to an hour each day.
And then on the weekend maybe on a Saturday or Sunday I could go for a longer run of like two hours or two and a half hours or something like that.
So my training, I think, was pretty effective for the amount of time that I was able to invest into it.
And I did some workouts before the marathon.
That really kind of signaled to me that I was in a good place and that maybe I would be able to take revenge and break a new PR in the marathon and just wash away all of those negative memories, that trauma that I had from Gyeongju Marathon in 2024.
So the week of the marathon, I got my race package in the mail from JTBC.
And just to set the scene for you guys, JTBC is probably one of the biggest races in the country.
I would say it's one of the more prestigious races in the country.
And I don't know the number, but I think it was around 40000.
Maybe 35 to 40000 runners participated in And there were two different lengths.
There was the full marathon length and the 10 kilometer length.
And I did the full marathon 42 kilometer length.
So yeah, I don't know.
I think probably it was around 30000 25, 30000 feet full course runners and then the remaining were the 10K.
I think the 10K was a little bit smaller.
So it's a big event, right?
This is like a big race here in Seoul.
And the week of the race, I got my race package in the mail.
It was actually very cool, very beautiful.
There were lots of goodies in there, some snacks, some energy gels.
They gave me a racing singlet.
A singlet is like one of those sports uniforms that doesn't have any sleeves, like a sleeveless running shirt.
So I got a singlet in there as well.
And yeah, just lots of goodies.
And I also got my racing bib.
And this is where I started to panic because I saw on my race bib that I was in group D, group D.
And when you do the marathon, there are these different starting groups, because if you just let thousands and thousands of runners go at the exact same time, all start at the same time, it's going to be chaos, right.
You're going to have people running into each other and bottlenecks and all of these different issues.
So the racers are staggered and each group maybe has...
2,000, 3,000 people in it.
I think there were groups from A all the way to G or H, like several different groups.
Each one would have maybe a few thousand runners in it and they're staggered every five minutes.
The idea is that the fastest runners go first and then the slowest runners go last.
And then that way you have nobody running into each other or anything like this.
So I don't know why I was placed in group D.
Now, just to give a little bit of context.
Like I said, I finished the half marathon in about an hour and 19 minutes and 58 seconds.
That's my PR.
And guys, it's a big difference.
Believe me, those two seconds between being sub 120 and over 120.
In my mind, at least, that's a big psychological difference.
So I know it's only two seconds, but I really hold on to those two seconds.
So that's my speed, which is like not bad, I think, for a 41-year-old.
I'm 41 years old.
And also my PR in the marathon, my full marathon PR is two hours was and maybe this is spoiling the story, but at this point it was two hours and 57 minutes and, I believe, 38 seconds.
So I was expecting the elite racers.
They go in A, So I was expecting that I should at least be in B, and that would probably be the most appropriate place for me to be, given the competition is in B, but I was in D.
And we were given a little manual as well, like a little program to talk about some of the details of the race.
And there were pacers in group D And, by the way, pacers are volunteer runners who run at a specific speed and tempo that you can follow and sort of run in a group with them to obtain a certain result.
And so the pacers for group D were running at a speed where they would try and finish the race in four hours and 30 minutes.
However, my goal was to beat my PR and run.
My old PR was two hours, 57 minutes, right?
So I wanted to try and just go a little bit faster and at least beat it.
And I wanted to do under two hours and 55 minutes.
So you can imagine I was a little bit panicked because I thought wow, this is only a couple of days before the race.
I got my package in the mail and I had been all pumped up to really try and break my new record.
Good training all summer, all of these PRs leading up to the race, and then tragedy strikes and I'm in D group.
Oh, what's gonna happen?
And I don't know why I ended up there.
Probably it was my fault.
Like probably sometime when I registered for the race, I was supposed to submit my time certificates or my record proof of my previous record, so I could go in a higher up group.
Probably I forgot that.
Or maybe it's random.
But...
That doesn't make sense because it just seems like people would get injured if it were random.
So I'm going to blame myself for this one.
And I didn't want to be one of those annoying people who complains or tries to get it changed at the very last moment.
I imagined that the organizers of the race were very busy and it would have been just a total clown show in the head office a couple of days before the race.
So I decided, okay, I just have to accept my fate.
I'm in D and hopefully I can just get to the front of the D corral is what we call it.
The D corral corral is like an area where the runners can stand.
And yeah, that was my strategy.
Just get to the front of the D corral and then hopefully I can just sneak around many other runners and get close to like the B or the A runners and run with them.
So I accepted my fate.
That is what the universe threw at me.
That's what I would have to deal with.
I was in D.
My friend Jimmy, my running buddy Jimmy, who I run a lot of races with.
He was in B, so he was lucky.
He was up there in the right spot, but I was in D for some reason.
So yeah, we arrived at the marathon early in the morning to get ready for the race.
And the subway was absolutely packed with runners.
It was pretty fun to ride on the subway down to the World Cup Stadium is where the event started.
It was just packed with runners.
We got there.
We got ready.
We got into our corrals.
It was beautiful, sunny weather.
Lovely day.
Just an amazing fall day.
The vibes were good.
The energy was good.
I was feeling excellent.
I hadn't slept too well the night before the race, but it didn't seem to matter.
I felt really good.
And I got into my D corral and tried to get up as close as I could to the front.
And...
Get into a good position.
Thousands of other runners, just a really amazing atmosphere and vibe.
And before you knew it, the starting gun went off and the race was on.
And so, yeah, just like what I expected would happen actually did happen.
And there were so many thousands of runners everywhere that at the first little part of the race I was pretty stressed out about how to get free of all of the people around me.
In a way, it's kind of fun because I was running at a much faster pace, much faster goal pace than the other runners in the D group.
So I'm kind of just like passing everybody, right?
It's really good for your ego.
You're just like passing people, passing people, blowing by.
However, I did feel that my pace was a little bit slower than I would have wanted to go, just because of that fact.
And there were certain areas where the street would narrow or bottleneck and it was just impossible to pass people.
Like there would be too many runners on like a single lane stretch of the race.
And we did have some areas where...
It was like a highway overpass or underpass where it was quite narrow, or we crossed a bridge where it was quite narrow and I just couldn't pass anybody in those moments and I had to slow down.
However, in retrospect I think maybe that is a good thing, because I have the tendency to go out a little bit too hot and I get so into it and so excited and, to be honest, the first little piece of a marathon maybe like the first half, maybe as much as the first half they feel pretty easy just because you're like riding the adrenaline and the energy.
There's people cheering for you.
The other runners are there and you're all in it together.
So even though you're doing this kind of difficult thing, It doesn't feel so hard.
And now that catches up to you and it's like running into a brick wall around the 30 kilometer mark.
That's when the real race starts, because all of those good vibes start to wear off, and then it actually feels very difficult.
But for the first half of the race, it's not so bad.
And I think because of that, sometimes I tend to go out too fast for the first half of the race.
But because I was in that D group and because there were some spots where I had to slow down just because of the human traffic jam, then yeah, that just like naturally slowed me down a little bit.
So maybe in the end, that was a good thing.
However, I would say, after around 10 kilometers, maybe even less than that, 5 kilometers, 10 kilometers it really started to become quite open.
And I had a lot of space.
I passed most of the slower runners who I started with.
And I caught up to the faster runners.
And at that point, I had no problems at all.
There was lots of space on the road.
And we worked our way from...
I guess it would be the northwest part of the city all the way to the southeast part of the city.
And we had to cross the Han River, the big river that divides Seoul into two parts.
We crossed over that three times.
So it was really cool.
We got to do this big tour of all of Seoul and run through the old downtown.
And then finally we ended south of the river.
So...
Yeah, most of the race was pretty good, I have to say.
It was hillier than I was imagining.
And there were several uphill sections that were rough, and I didn't like those very much.
And there were, yeah, the downhill sections also, which kind of suck.
Like, I don't like running downhill.
It's hard on your knees.
And those were difficult.
But overall, I felt pretty good most of the race.
One kind of crazy thing that happened in the middle of the race, maybe around the 23 24 kilometer mark.
At this point in the race, the road that we were running on was quite wide.
It was probably five or six lanes on either side.
So maybe like a 10 lane road, 12 lane road, something like this.
And one side was closed down for the marathoners.
The other side just had traffic driving per usual.
And this is a really crazy thing, what happened.
I was running on the closed down side, but I was near the left-hand side of that closed down side.
So I was like kind of a little bit close to the traffic that was flowing the other way.
And there was this big Volvo truck, like a construction truck.
I think it was... maybe a dump truck or a cement truck.
You know your memory gets foggy about these things after a while, but it was a big construction truck.
And I remember it was a Volvo trucks and the big Volvo logo on the front.
So that truck was driving in traffic.
And then some other car was just like.
I guess there was a bit of a traffic jam because of the marathon right.
Like half of the road is closed down and the traffic is altered and Yeah, you have all these detours and stuff that you have to take.
You can't go your regular way.
So there was this other car that decided just to like get out of there.
And he quickly made a turn to try and get off of the road, like that main road.
And he smashed right into the Volvo truck.
There was actually an accident there.
Now, thankfully it wasn't too too bad, but it was a collision and it happened right as I was running past and it like scared the bejesus out of me.
I was like, oh my God, this like huge traffic accident with this big Volvo truck not too far from where I was running.
So...
Very scary.
And thankfully, it looked like nobody was hurt.
Nobody was injured.
None of the runners were injured, but I was running right beside this other guy.
We were kind of running together and we both jumped back and we're like, oh, geez, like scary stuff.
So there were some police officers right there and they attended to the accident right away, thankfully.
But yeah, that was wild.
Probably around the 24 or 25 kilometer mark.
What else?
The rest of the race, like I said, was very smooth until the 30 kilometer mark.
And, as I mentioned earlier, at 30 kilometers.
That is where the race really gets started, because that's when the fatigue sets in.
That's when your muscles start to get tired.
That's when it starts to get mentally draining as well.
And those final 12 kilometers to the finish line seem like a very, very far away away, even though maybe it's only like 40 minutes, 45 minutes, 50 minutes, depending on your running speed.
But that is like, at that moment, it seems like forever.
It might as well be forever.
So because I have a little bit of experience now running marathons, I would still say I'm a beginner.
I'm a novice.
I still have a lot to learn.
However, I know that at that 30 kilometer point, that's where things get difficult.
So I was actually talking to myself when I hit the 30 kilometer point.
I was like, come on, Andrew.
Okay, the race is on.
Let's go. trying to pump myself up.
I was my own cheerleader and there were actually the fan support on this race was great.
There were lots of people out there cheering and I got to give a shout out to my wife as well.
My beautiful wife came out to cheer and she appeared three times.
She came to three different spots in the race to cheer me on.
So She would take the subway and then appear on the side of the road and cheer me on.
And then, as I passed, she'd get back on the subway and go to a different part in the race and cheer me on again.
And then she was at the finish line as well.
And I knew she was going to come out and support me, but I didn't know that she was going to do all of that.
I thought she was just going to be there once.
However, she surprised me three times.
And especially at the finish line, I wasn't expecting her to be there.
So that was amazing as well.
So yeah, as you can imagine, I did finish the race kind of spoiler there.
But yeah, I was able to finish the race.
But those final 12 kilometers were tough and rough.
And I was feeling pretty bad probably or probably until kilometer 32.
I was okay, things started to fall apart.
At kilometer 32.
I started to get Just sore legs and a little bit of a sore back.
And it just got progressively worse and worse.
And we had to go up hills and down hills.
And it wasn't like getting any easier.
Just please give me a kilometer, at least a kilometer of flat land to run on.
But no, everything was like up and down and up and down.
And that was really tough.
And by the end, my legs, I called them lightning legs because I was not cramping.
I...
I don't want to say I wasn't cramping.
I was getting cramps, but they were these little micro cramps that would appear for like a second, and then they would be released.
And I called them lightning legs because it felt like almost I was getting electrocuted.
Like I was sitting in an electric chair and somebody was turning on the electricity and my whole legs would be like for a second, but then they would clear up.
So thankfully they weren't seizing up to the point where I had to stop running, but I was just so stressed out.
Like every step that I take, is this gonna be the step that I take that ends my race?
Is this gonna be the step that I take that ends my race?
Because I was just pushing the limits of what I could handle.
And my legs were just cramping and cramping and then releasing and releasing.
And it was just so rough and so stressful because I was just so worried that they would seize up and I would have to stop.
But thankfully, that never happened.
I was able to finish the race.
Another thing that was super stressful was my watch, my Garmin running watch, which I've had for years and years.
And I swear by this watch.
I think it's a great product and I really do love Love Garmin.
I'm going to give them a shout out because yeah, their watches are excellent.
However, I guess mine is just old and the battery was dying.
So at about the 35 kilometer mark I got a low battery indicator saying you only have 10 battery or something something like that.
And that stressed me out as well, because if you're a runner, you know that the record is so important, and I'm a data geek.
I love to see all of the stats from my watch once I finish, about my paces, about my cadence, about my heart rate, about all of these things, all of the different data that you can get from your watch.
So I was just totally stressed out, like, oh no, my watch is gonna die.
Oh no, my legs are going to explode.
However, I just kept moving throughout all of this and finally, after what seemed like forever, I saw the finish line 500 meters away and I just gave it my all and I was able to finish the race in 2 hours 49 minutes and again 58 seconds.
2 hours, 49 minutes, 58 seconds.
So this year that 58 that's the number that followed me around but just like that half marathon record that I set, that was like two seconds under one hour and 20 minutes.
I was two seconds under two hours and 50 minutes.
And that difference between seeing the five like two hours 50 minutes and two hours 49 minutes with the four, that's priceless.
That means the world to me.
So I was able to finish the race smashed my record.
Okay, I was going for two hours and 55 minutes, but I got two hours and 49 minutes.
So I smashed my PR, which was 257 before, now down to 249, smashed the goal that I wanted to do and just had an amazing race.
Once I crossed the finish line, I was finally able to get some relief in my legs.
And yeah, I wasn't expecting my wife to be there, but she shouted at me and I saw my wife there and I was so excited to see her.
I was like, yeah, finished.
Sweet relief.
And actually, I got a little bit emotional, guys.
I started to cry a little bit once I finished, because it was just so difficult that last little bit.
And then to break my record, to have a successful race, to get revenge on that disappointment that I had in 2024, all of the emotions just sort of flooded over me.
And I think your mental state is not too strong.
After giving all that you can for for almost three hours, your mental state is not too strong.
So I was a little bit emotional.
I finished though, and just just happy, right.
And it's actually nice.
I think that we can do something that makes us emotional like that.
I love it when I can get moved to extreme emotions.
I think Yeah, it's, it's a good thing.
It's a good thing.
So I enjoyed that moment.
And yeah, that was pretty much my JTBC race for 2025.
So it went so much better than I ever could have anticipated and really pumped me up and fired me up for my next marathon, which will be happening again in March of 2026.
I'm doing the Seoul Marathon in So currently training for that.
To be honest, I've had a pretty slow month of running after doing JTBC.
It really beat me up and I feel like my condition isn't so good these days.
I'm slowly trying to get back into running shape, but I've been taking it slow and taking it easy.
And now we've had a massive snowstorm in Seoul here over the last couple of days.
So it's icy and snowy outside, which also makes it hard to run.
But hopefully I'll be able to get back into training shape and get back into form for the spring when I run the Seoul Marathon.
So maybe after I finish that race, hopefully with a new PR, we'll see.
I don't want to put any promises out there, but I'll try my best.
And if I do, I'll be sure to tell you the story then.
But for now, everyone, I think I should probably sign off.
So thank you for listening all the way to the end of this episode.
If you made it, don't forget to check out the interactive transcript and vocabulary glossary that's available for everyone for free.
And if you're a Q-Lips member, you can also do the comprehension quiz.
We also have an amazing Q-Lips Discord server where our community gathers.
We hang out, we practice our English each and every day together and it's a great way to build your skills, to get some easy practice in and to make some friends at the same time.
Again, it's free for everyone to join, and you can do it by clicking the link in the description for this episode.
So guys, thanks for listening again.
Please take care, and I'll be back soon with another brand new Q-Lips episode.
Until then, goodbye.
