🇺🇸 Patriotic Writing from An Unlikely American
Immigrants Make America Better, So I Believed...
Pool parties ⛱️ hot dogs 🌭 and fireworks 🎆, Thursday till Sunday! Americans love celebrating the 4th of July with the staples! If you like beer and follow business news, you might know that Mexican brands such as Modelo Especial (sales up +11% vs. last quarter) and Pacifico (+21%, wow!) are kicking butt while Budweiser is still recovering from an influencer blow-back. (Source: Snacks) While there's a lot to say about brands' activism and Americans' changing taste buds, one thing is clear: immigrants and immigrant brands make America great.
On this July 4th weekend, I wish I could say that I voted in very single local and federal election. I wish I could say how proud I feel every time the Star-Spangled Banner plays before a race. I wish I could recount the thrill of paying 10% of state and local sales tax every time I swipe my Sapphire card, let alone California’s income tax. The truth is that as an immigrant, I struggle deeply about living in a country that sees me as a perpetual foreigner (Read this fantastic report, STAATUS Index, 2024, from The Asian American Foundation). It pains me to see the heavy price we have to pay (family separation, sense of alienation) in order to achieve an impossible American dream: Asian American women account for 6.5% of entry-level corporate positions but less than 1% of SVP to C-suite roles. We are the least likely to get promoted. (See this great McKinsey report: Asian American workers: Diverse outcomes and hidden challenges)
While you can argue that American dreams take many shapes and forms, and not everyone wants to be a corporate executive, we - Asian American women - still earn 80 cents to every dollar by White men.
On this July 4th weekend, a quote from Ibram X. Kendi resonates with me. "We should be celebrating our disobedience, turbulence, insolence, and discontent about inequities and injustices in all forms... This is our American project."
This week's post is the first runner's profile story I have published, on one of the best of us: YiOu Wang: After Racing the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials, YiOu Wang Is Chasing New Trails.
I'm also excited to announce some upcoming projects, as I will attempt to put more structure here.
You'll see a series of stories called You Do What?! on runners with fascinating day jobs. How many runners juggle their competitive (or not) running with their job and parenting responsibilities have been a source of inspiration for me. I hope you'll find this series both uplifting and relatable.
You can expect to see more Book Reviews! I have a list of published books on running, feminism and leadership coming up. Some are waiting for their publication dates! Stay tuned.
There will be a few pieces on Dispatch from China, as we take a trip soon and deep dive into the running scene in China.
Who's looking forward to the Olympics in Paris? I will have some interviews coming up with past Olympians!
After Racing the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials, YiOu Wang Is Chasing New Trails
She ran her first marathon in 2005, and now hopes to be a top-10 woman at an international ultra.
On February 29, 2020, YiOu Wang reached the final stretch of the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials. After making her way through Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward neighborhood, she ran under the Olympic rings and torch structure from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, before sprinting to the Centennial Olympic Park and crossing the finish line with joy and relief. Even though this race was not close to her best time—a calf strain took away two weeks of her training—Wang knew she had given it her all.
Having previously run the Olympic Marathons Trials in 2012, Wang knew this race was special. Also, this would likely be her last road marathon for the foreseeable future, since she was planning to transition fully to trail running.
Wang had already raked up several national titles on the trails, including winning the Lake Sonoma 50-mile race in 2016 and 2017 and The North Face 50 Mile in 2019. Now, she was chasing a bigger goal: to be one of the top 10 women at an ultramarathon on the world stage.
However, little did Wang know that days after the Olympic Marathon Trials, the world would come to a pause because of the coronavirus pandemic. The top three finishers at the Trials—Aliphine Tuliamuk, Molly Seidel, and Sally Kipyego—would not race the Olympics in Tokyo in 2020. Wang had to put her audacious trail racing goals on pause, and she didn’t expect that she would explore an unknown path of training with no goals or races.
Starting on her first unknown path many years earlier
Wang is not a stranger to complicated, lesser-known paths. Born and raised in China until she was 5 years old, she moved with her parents to the United States, settling in a small town in Maryland called Frederick, which was overwhelmingly white. According to the Maryland State Data Center, Asian Americans were just one percent of Frederick County’s population in 1990, the year when Wang’s family immigrated.
As the child of immigrants in a Chinese American family, she charted a little-known path of moving through two very different environments: home and school. At home, her parents spoke Mandarin with the occasional Shanghai dialect mixed in. At school, Wang spoke English; she had to quickly pick up the language by watching American television shows. However, unlike most immigrants who adopt an American name, Wang kept her Chinese name, even though she frequently faced the question, “How do you say your name?”
Wang’s parents worked very hard, and she applied that same work ethic at school. She got straight A’s and participated in as many extracurriculars as she could. Yet she admitted that P.E. was the hardest class for her in high school.
“I wasn’t a standout athlete by any means,” Wang said on the Morning Shakeout podcast with her coach Mario Fraioli. “Sports were never a focus. Playing in sports is something you are supposed to do, as part of getting into college.”
After high school, Wang went to college at MIT to study biochemistry. Though she had followed her family into a STEM career, she knew that she was a distinct minority in the field. At her time of her graduation in 2007, only 7.5 percent of biological science degrees were earned by Asian women.
Discovering running
Before Wang left for college, she still saw running as an extracurricular activity, something other students do to boost their college applications. She had no connection to running—until she went out to spectate the Boston Marathon with friends. Wang was immediately captivated by the energy of the race and decided that she, too, wanted to run the Boston Marathon one day. Wang didn’t waste any time; she did some research on the Internet and downloaded a training plan. Not long after, she crossed the finish line of the 2005 Cape Cod Marathon in 3:33:37, and then completed her first Boston Marathon in 3:28:36 in 2006. Just four years later, she broke three hours at the 2010 Napa Marathon, running 2:54:59.
With her confidence increasing, she hired a coach and snatched a 2:38:46 marathon time at Grandma’s Marathon in 2011, earning her a spot at the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials. Increased mileage, speed workouts, and a fierce commitment to her goals all contributed to her success. Though she did not finish at the trials due to a hamstring injury, she continued over the next several years to improve her overall time.
However, her running wasn’t always smooth. In 2013, Wang had an ankle surgery, which forced her to take a whole year off. After she recovered, Wang thought it was the right time to get more into trail running, both to build back endurance and agility, and to become more competitive. She started training with Coach Mario Fraioli in 2016 to gain competitive advantage on the trails. Along with winning the Lake Sonoma 50-Mile race twice, she became the 2017 Trail 50K national champion, and she was named one of the top ultrarunners of 2019 by Ultra Running Magazine.
“Road racing is extremely competitive and difficult,” Wang told Runner’s World. In road racing, the high mileage, core strengths, mobility, recovery, nutrition, and sleep all need to add up together on a perfectly executed day. Trail running, because of its greater variability and unpredictability, offers something more experimental and with more promises for Wang, who has always been a pilot navigating lesser-known paths.
“There will always be younger and faster runners coming along… I do like to race and to win. I also love the process of preparing for a race and pushing yourself frequently.”
Wang ran her second OTQ at the 2018 California International Marathon in 2:39:37, and saw the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials as a “chance to celebrate with the best marathoners in the country,” as she said to The Run Experience. The community aspect was more important than her performance. Despite the tough day in Atlanta, she bounced back quickly and was ready to go back to the mountains again.
Until the pandemic happened. Until everything shut down. Though Wang had no race on the calendar to train for in 2020, she was able to put in consistent mileage. Building off the fitness from the consistent training block, Wang won the Trials of Miles Chase the Throne tournament in San Francisco in January, and the Take the Bridge at Golden Gate Bridge in Feburary 2021.
Fully focusing on the trails
Since those races, Wang had been implementing specificity in her training as much she can. She has been heading to the mountains with sustained climbing (3000 meters over three to four miles) and steep decline. She summited Mount Maclure and Mount Lyell, both of which are in California; descended across the remnants of the Lyell Glacier; and ran through the drainage basin to Lyell Canyon. She spent time in Mammoth Lake for altitude training, and she went to the Pacific Northwest to experience the Cascade Mountain Range.
Though Wang doesn’t often feel altitude sickness, she admits that running in high altitude is very challenging. A 60- to 70-mile week on the mountain looks and feels very different than the same mileage on the road.
“Mountain training is more about time on your feet than miles.” Wang said. “It is very hard running.”
Yet with all her competitiveness and her goal to be one of the top 10 women at an international ultra, Wang keeps balance as a key part of her training and life in general. Perhaps a year of running during the pandemic has given her a new perspective. She admits to no longer holding herself to an impossible standard and giving herself a break when she hits the snooze button on certain days.
“I am 36. I feel the biological process of aging.” Wang said. “There will always be younger and faster runners coming along… I do like to race and to win. I also love the process of preparing for a race and pushing yourself frequently.”
The process of exploring a trail running career is what gives Wang the most joy. “When you race, you expend your effort for 10+ hours. When you train and prepare, you spend hundreds of hours.” This long process allows Wang to be at one with nature and with her trail running community even if the broader running community ignores them.
“I think instead of being results-oriented, I am more process- and preparation-oriented now. Doing the necessary work alone is what’s important. I can be satisfied with any results.”
Love the plan 💪🏽
Go fast. Take chances!