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Interview

The Full Story

Interviewee: Dounan 330

"330 runner squad" is a group of runners who lives in Dounan and love to participate in marathon competitions. Each member has different jobs, including bosses, civil servants, general employees of the government, and even students. The age dimension also ranges from 20 to 5 or 60 years old to be seen from teenagers to middle-aged and senior communities. Their weekly group practice time is Tuesday night in the Dounan track field. Although not everyone can take the time to participate in the group practice, the captain mentioned that the core members would participate in each group practice hope to strive for good results in the marathon. Every team member is a good runner who loves and is good at running and has achieved good results in various marathon events. Some members suffered from respiratory system problems such as allergies and asthma. After running marathons for 3 or 4 years, the respiratory diseases did not occur again.

 

Their most famous achievement is running from Dounan in Central Taiwan to Pingtung Kenting in the south of Taiwan. According to Jiang Zhida, "Members of the League ride bicycles from Dounan to Kenting almost every year. In July 2016, after the group practice, they chatted. One of the members suggested, "Do you want to be crazy for one time and run from Dounan to Kenting?" A total of 8 people decided to challenge themselves." With a total length of 230 kilometers, how can an ordinary person run for this long? Jiang Zhida said that the eight people would be divided into four groups and run for one hour in a relay for 24 hours. They are expected to arrive in Kenting at 6:30 p.m. on October 22, 2016. According to Runner Li Changhongs, running from Dounan to Kenting is a self-challenge and self-transcendence. Although it is a relay way, it is a great challenge not to sleep. He also mentioned that although they are confident that they can complete the challenge, they are worried that the rain will be too heavy to achieve their goal. Fortunately, the weather was fine all the way, and they arrived in front of the archway in Kenting National Forest Recreation Area at 3:59 p.m. on 2016/10/22. The 330 runner squad first challenged a 24-hour continuous marathon in 2016 and went straight from Yunlin Dounan to Kenting archway, about 230 kilometers away. As a result, it took only more than 21 hours to complete. In 2017, they challenged their skills from Yunlin Dounan to Eluanbi lighthouse, about 240 kilometers away and located even 10 kilometers southern than Kenting. However, they only took 22 hours to complete. In 2018, the continuous marathon event was suspended because the league members were busy recording and couldn't get together. In 2019, they challenged themselves from Yunlin Dounan to the south of Taiwan again. In addition, one of the members once represented Yunlin to attend the National High School Games, which is the largest multi-sport event for junior and senior high school players in Taiwan. Even though they didn't win a prize, being a representative is honorable enough for the 330 runner squad and the county they represented. 

 

They started their journey of marathons in 2009, which is 13 years from now. The captain of the 330 runner squad says that they will never stop running unless their body does not allow them to do so. "We are born to run, and we will achieve our goals with all of our strength.", he said. 

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Video summary

  1. Last October, the National Games burst halfway through the run and then returned in great pain. 

  2. Also bursting out of the condition, on the fixed dry, no way to walk and no way to run, and finally came out almost lost temperature.

  3.  I started running marathons in 2006 when I was still in the military. Later on, when I joined the 330 teams, our goal was to break three and break three means to break 7/4 of a second per kilometer and run 42 kilometers continuously. The fastest race I ever ran was a race in Tainan in 3 hours and 2 minutes, almost breaking 3, but I got injured in the end and have been working towards that goal ever since.

  4.  It also helps with work.

  5.  I started running when I quit smoking, and then I got into the habit of doing it, and I felt weird when I didn't go out to exercise. 

  6. The main attraction of running is the feeling of speed, which is suitable for health and can also maintain the body's health, metabolism will also get better and better. 

  7. The fact is that you will be able to get a good deal on your own. 

  8. Schedule classes, run a few times a week, rest, and do a new schedule.

  9.  If there is a race, the distance will be longer. If not, the length will be shorter.

  10. I usually run 350~400 kilometers a month and almost 450 kilometers on average.

  11.  It will be 25-30 km in winter, and in summer, it will be 20 km.

  12.  A week will be five to six days, and 12k will be a half-marathon. 

  13. Before the epidemic, I might have been injured and was lazy, and my muscle strength deteriorated if I stopped. Last December, I had to race, so I started training. I now maintain a monthly running practice of more than 300, five days per week. 

  14. Warm-up before running, stretch after running.

  15.  I eat high-quality protein, like chicken breast milk, and other members drink high protein.

  16.  It is more important to collect the exercise after the run. 

  17. Depending on the intensity of the run, if you want to run relaxingly, you should run slowly in one go. If you're going to run fast, you should have a 2-3km warm-up exercise in front. 

  18. After the run will stretch to do core training to strengthen the muscle strength deficiency. Run-on the road because it is close to the race. 

  19. I'm not particularly eager to run in the same place because I get tired. If I run the playground on the first two days, I may run the road on the third day. But the road I choose will be less traffic, or like holidays we will go running hills, will change the venue. 

  20. The primary watch, shoes, winter colder in Taipei will also add sleeves gloves. 

  21. Running shoes must be. 

  22. Will buy fascia gun to relax the muscles, some people will purchase jump rope or retraining things. 

  23. Promote the new metabolism, the body becomes better, and sleep better. 

  24. The body becomes healthier, the heart and lung capacity improve, the immune system becomes better, more afraid of the cold. 

  25. Now we all have a family and job, so it is vital to balance the two.

  26. Interviewer: you guys mentioned earlier that you ran to Kenting, was there anything out of the ordinary that happened on the way there? 

  27. 330 was a group activity that involved around 12 people, six groups of two. Every group had to run for an hour, and we alternated in that pattern. 

  28. Interviewer: just to Kenting? Or around all of Taiwan? 

  29. We do it in sections, from dounan to Kenting, or sometimes other routes that also lead to that general area. The end goal is to travel all around Taiwan. But we only do a section a year. This activity is held once a year, so the plan takes five years to execute. We plan that when we all retire, then we can make one round trip. 

  30. Interviewer: you guys run such a long distance, so you ever, at any point, feel the urge to give up? 

  31. Yes, especially during the first trip when we weren’t genuinely sure what we were in for. We were inexperienced and made mistakes such as drinking cold drinks instead of sticking to water. We went from running as a team to a mess. Instead of switching teams every hour, we switched every 20 minutes. 

  32. Interviewer: how much experience do you all have with this exercise? How long have you all been running? 

  33. The earliest of us has to be around 2009; some started a bit later than that. But we all had the same goal, to reach the three-hour mark. Currently, we already have these two members that have achieved that goal. 

  34. As a marathon runner, there is always a goal to be better. As you get better, your wish to get better only increases. The ultimate goal is to achieve running 42k in three hours. It is a very demanding path to get to that level of fitness. It requires a lot of training, but we found that even after working so hard to achieve this goal, there wasn’t any prize in the end. It was more of a feeling of “oh, we got here, now what?” 

  35. It truly isn’t easy, though. It is still hard to get to that mark as a long-term runner. But it is a dream for many marathon runners to reach this goal. To professional runners, this might not be a big goal, but to us ordinary runners, it is a significant achievement to have. 

  36. A roadblock to achieving the school is that we all have day jobs and families to look after. So this cuts down our time to be able to train. We are not professionals doing this as a job, which makes the school harder to achieve. If you have the will and then time, you will achieve your goal. 

  37. Interviewer: is it better to do marathon running during the winter?

  38. Yes, because our heartbeats will be slower in the winter than in the summer.

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