Breathing Through the Sky: My Imogene Pass Run

This weekend I had the privilege of lining up at the 52nd annual Imogene Pass Run, one of the most beautiful, brutal, and humbling races I’ve ever attempted.

The Start: Breathless From the First Steps

From the very first few miles, the altitude grabbed hold of me. I was breathing hard right away, trying to find rhythm while surrounded by so many strong runners. The biggest contingent came from Flagstaff, a town that clearly knows how to send mountain-ready athletes.

The route itself is deceptive. People say there’s “only one big hill.” But that hill stretches for 10 relentless miles, climbing 5,500 feet straight up to the summit at 13,000 feet.

The Cutoff: A Race Within the Race

One of the toughest mental battles came at the 7.65-mile aid station, where there’s a hard cutoff at 2 hours 30 minutes. This year, 296 runners—about 24% of participants—didn’t make it. That knowledge was heavy as I approached the station, pushing through fatigue to make sure I’d be allowed to continue.

It reminded me so much of the Kendall Mountain Run and Crown King Scramble—steep climbs, thin air, and that gnawing question in the back of your mind: Can I really make it?

The Summit and the Storms

At the top, the air felt razor-thin. Every step demanded focus. But the payoff—mountain views stretching forever—made every labored breath worthwhile.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather. Blue skies carried us over the pass, but by late afternoon, the mountains did what mountains do: a thunderstorm rolled in. Just like at Kendall, I was grateful to have finished before the skies opened.

The Finish: Walking Like a Baby Giraffe

When it was all over, I was part of the 934 finishers out of 1,230 starters. My quads, however, might argue otherwise. They were so tight I could barely walk without looking like a wobbly baby giraffe.

But even in soreness, I felt nothing but gratitude—for the mountain, for the chance to run it, and for the incredible volunteers who filled the course with energy and support. Aid stations were frequent and full of smiles, a lifeline when I needed it most.

Looking Ahead

Would I do Imogene again? Absolutely—but next time, I’d want to be more acclimated to the altitude. The mountain doesn’t give an inch, but I’d like to meet it with a little more air in my lungs.

For now, I’ll hold onto the memory of a beautiful run that tested and taught me in equal measure.

You might be reading this because you are told that Hysterectomy is the best option for removing uterine fibroids which has been bothering you a lot … but your biggest concern is how soon you can get back to your beloved activity - running.

It’s a bit of a dilemma, isn’t it? On one hand, you want to take care of your health and get the surgery done, but on the other hand, the thought of being sidelined from running can be a tough pill to swallow. In fact I postponed for a year or two myself but so glad I got it done.

Recovery time after laparoscopic hysterectomy varies from person to person, depending on factors like age, overall health, and the extent of surgery. I read may other’s and compared with my healing process and was encourging. So I wanted to share mine.

I went underwent laparoscopic hysterectomy - a minimally invasive surgical procedure that removes the uterus through small incisions in the abdomen - on January 2021. I was in late 40s.

By day four after surgery and three days after hospital discharge, I was able to walk about 2k steps with some discomfort. Walking around the house for more than five minutes would give me some discomfort.

Day 14 post-surgery: I was able to start biking and walking. I experienced lower back pain and discomfort resembling constipation or diarrhea, which I was told can be normal for some during the recovery process.

Week 4 post-surgery: I was able to run / walk (mostly walking). Slowly increased distance and pace.

Week 6 post-surgery: I was able to run at a recovery run pace though I experienced some discomfort and tightness in my abdomen.

Week 8 post-surgery: I felt more comfortable and was able to increase pace and distance.

Week 12 post-surgery, I was back to running 20-25 miles per week, just like before the surgery.

During the recovery period, I embraced activities like biking and yoga, which helped me stay active and motivated. I am sure my fellow runners will also find new activities to embrace as they navigate their own recovery journey.

Happy running and healing!

realtor.com has great tool to show mortage trend here

Then there is this nerdwallet refinance calculator can give you precisely what might be your saving etc by entering your current mortgae and projected morgage rate.

from there you can click “Get Started” link at the bottom to see rates offered.

I locked rate at 1.75 with points (APR 2.0) last week. You should check it out and see how much you will be saving! Make sure to consider:

1. How long you will be keeping your home etc rather than overall saving for life of the loan.
2. What is your primary goal (total saving, monthly saving or both)

Cheers!

If you want your terminal prompt to look like this every time you sodo, please continue reading. note: i did on ubuntu so for other flavor, file path might be slightly different

step 1. download this amazing ascii art text and move to /etc/sudoers.d/sudoers.lecture

❯ curl -O https://caferock.org/chris/groot.txt
❯ sudo cp groot.txt /etc/sudoers.d/sudoers.lecture

step 2. edit /etc/sudoers (or /etc/sudoers.d/privacy)

Defaults     lecture = always
Defaults     lecture_file = /etc/sudoers.d/sudoers.lecture    

Let’s see this magnificent art <3

# reset timestamp
❯ sudo -k  
# some sudo command
❯ sudo -l

Cheers!

You loos your money if you have your money in saving account

What? How? The best saving rate today is like 0.5%. So if I have $10,000 then you will earn $50 a year so how that is loosing money?

Because currency devalued over time (cause of an increase in the money supply is one of the biggest reason) and its rate is shown below:

You see no year has inflation rate below 0.5% thus you are loosing money although you maybe earning 0.5%.

So let’s make your money earn at the rate of higher than inflation rate

Below graph is showing historical S&P performance of last 90 years. There are bad years but eventually come back.

Historical Annual Returns

DJIA, S&P 500, NASDAQ

Do you feel safe to invest in S&P 500? If the answer is Yes, let’s move on to next section otherwise your money can stay in the Saving account.

Where do I start? What are the options?

You can start small. Like as little as $1!

There are mainly 2 types of investment method:

• Robo-Advisor Investing (Automated investment)
• Self Directed Investing (pick your own)

We do robo-advisor but still do self-directed because:

• We have self-directed accounts that are pre-dates Robo-Advisor investing
• It is fun to hand pick individual stocks for ones you believe in

Platforms

Here are some platforms and its features:

Robinhood

• no comission for self-directed investment
• no robo-advisor investing

SoFi

• no comission for self-directed investment
• no management fee for robo-advisor investing
• offsers Individual and IRA
• No *tax-loss harviesting
• Handle crypto investing
• 10 portfolios
• **Rebalancing (do not offer tax efficient porffolio)

Betterment

• 0.25% management fee for robo-advisor investing
• no self-directed investment
• Tax loss harvesting (annual benefit of 0.48%)
• Socially responsible investing
• Goal based investment strategy (we have sub-account like travel, big-purchase etc)
• 101 portfolios
• offsers Individual and IRA
• Smart rebalancing (tax efficient)

What do we use

Robinhood, Acorns and Betterment are the ones we use (addition to TD Ameritrade for legacy reason) but while I was writing this blog, I learned SoFi so just started.

• We maxmize 401K - if you can and haven’t done so, you should
• We use Robinhood for just have fun - buy individual stock for small amount of money. Moving $50 a month and buy favorite stock here and there. Especially when market is tanked
• We use Acorns for money that we don’t even pay attention to. This is the platform that automatically invest your spare change
• We use Betterment for everything else. I like this platform because I can trust that when we withdraw money for some big puchases, its tax loss harvesting will minimize our tax responsiblity.
• We are keeping TD-Ameritrade cause we don’t want to sell anything to cause tax responsibility and it did the best this year because we bet on Tesla while ago ;)
• Lastly, we use Personal Capital to keep track of all the accounts. It is super powerful and easy to use. I said good-bye to mint many years ago
  • You can view your net worth, cash flow, portfolio balance, debt-paydown up to one year
  • Retireuemnt tools to guestimate when you can retire and projection of monthly income
  • and more!

*Tax-loss harvesting: The selling of securities at a loss to offset a capital gains tax liability

**Rebalancing: a process of realigning the weightings of a portfolio of assets.

Cheers!

Reference:

• https://www.macrotrends.net/2324/sp-500-historical-chart-data
• https://www.macrotrends.net/2526/sp-500-historical-annual-returns