(원어민 실제 속도)1500일 달린 비결, 영어로 배워보세요 | 친구들끼리 매일 사용하는 생활영어표현(텍사스 출신)

I'm gonna run Seoul to Busan. I might have lost it. They're gonna catch me. We didn't come this far just to come this far.

Hello everybody and welcome back to Lunch Hour English. As you can see, we are already enjoying some Korean barbecue and it is fantastic. And I have a very special guest with me here today. I'm with my friend Zae. Zae, can you introduce yourself a little bit?

Hey, my name is Zae. I'm from the States, originally Texas, grew up in South Carolina. I've been in Korea for about about 6 or 7 years now. I teach, I do a little bit of modeling, sports coaching a little bit. I do a lot of running. I live by the motto or the mantra of an active life is a healthy life, and healthy life is a happy life. And so I try to spread that with all my friends and my community.

I love that motto. So I've got to ask you, since you're originally from Texas, Texas barbecue or Korean barbecue?

I'm actually part Korean. I'm a fourth Korean, so I grew up with the Texas barbecue from my grandpa. He'd grill out, do brisket and all that stuff. And my grandma would bring like galbi and stuff and they'd like mix it up. So I'm a huge fan of galbi, but I do love a good brisket. I think each culture has its own really good barbecue.

Okay, skirted that question.

Smart, smart.

Wow, I didn't know that, that you're fourth generation Korean too. So the way I met Zae is he does like running events. He hosts events once a month.

Yeah.

Can you talk about that?

I've been running consecutively for about a little over 3 years. Now. So I started planning kind of more social runs. I did a color run, a costume run, just kind of runs more focused on community and kind of meeting people and stuff like that.

So I actually got to know about Tae on Instagram because at the time you were running from Seoul to Busan. I've never really heard of someone doing that before. It's unbelievable, really.

I believe the total ended up being like 456 kilometers, and it averaged to be about 50 or so a day.

Oh my god.

I started this run streak And it was really just a run challenge at the time. I was in quarantine twice back to back for close contact through COVID. And so I'm in quarantine, and when you're stuck inside for 24 hours, 7 days a week, you know, you're like, "Dang, that's a lot of time in the day." I was like, "You know what? I'm gonna challenge myself to do a 5K for the month of March." So I did it. I started— I got out March 1st, I started March 2nd. As I'm running, I don't feel like I'm done. I feel like I could do more. Even though I accomplished the goal I set, if I stopped now, I feel like I would be limited.

Limiting myself.

So I was like, you know what, let's see what April's like. And after I got to April, same thing. Then I was like, you know what, 60 days—

you want to push yourself—

60 days is kind of close to 100 days, you know? I was like, let's see what 100 feels like. So I get to day 365 of me running. I'm very intentional about the things that I say to myself because your body is always listening. Your body is taking a record whether you realize it or not. And if you say you're gonna do something enough times and you don't do it, your body's like, ah, you want to actually do it this And so your body will give out on you, but if your body knows that no matter how hard it is, your body's not gonna give up on you because it's like, "Nah, he needs it. We got to find a way to make it happen." You're super inspiring.

I'm like getting all these thoughts in my head right now.

Then I was like, "You know what? I'm gonna run Seoul to Busan." And then it came the process of like kind of planning it out and figuring out how to get it done.

It seems like a lot of logistics actually, like where are you gonna stay? How did— like did you run on the highway?

There were moments where I'm running on the highway, there are moments where I'm running running on like country roads, um, getting chased by dogs early in the morning.

Oh my gosh.

But more importantly, getting attacked by bugs.

Oh no.

And it's like not even like the regular bugs that you think of. So like your bug spray that you got doesn't work, and so you've got like these big masks and stuff. I knew it was going to be really hot, but that was something I didn't plan for. Yeah, it was like 34, 35 degrees most days. And as we're running on this like country road, someone's honking at me, and I was like, oh crap, who's honking at me? I look back and this random ajusshi has a fresh ice-cold bottle of water. He's like, "Do shimhe, do shimhe," like, "Be careful," you know, and he's like gives it to me and I'm like, "What?" And so we get to this coffee shop, we go in, she's like, "Oh yeah, yeah, I'm open," and I sit down on this table, order coffee, and I'm looking around trying to find something I can put my feet up on because the socks I was wearing at the time weren't compression socks, so they weren't really circulating the blood in my feet well, so there's a huge buildup of blood in my front two toenails.

I saw your stories.

Yeah, I've got a bunch of blood built up in my two toenails, and the only way to get it down was to like kind of prop my feet up and let the blood just go. She's like, "Weo, like, why are you sitting like that?" And I was like, "Uh, piga, isoyo, down, down, down." She goes, comes back, has these two ice packs, and she puts them down on the ground. She's like, "You know, step on them." I'm taking my shoes off, and I put my feet on ice packs. Like, okay, cool, cool. She gets down and starts barehand massaging my feet, trying to help circulate the blood. It was an amazing experience because one, I felt so awkward. Yeah, yeah. Because like I was so grateful for her kindness, but at the same time my socks were soaked. I'm smelly, I'm stinky, and she's there bare hands, massaging my feet. It was just— I was so moved by her kindness. The trip itself reminded me of a lot of things, but more importantly it reminded me of how kind Korea is. Like I think being in Seoul, you kind of forget that sometimes. Everyone's got their own agenda, and just because everything's moving so fast.

Yeah, it's incredible. Even for me, I watch the news and it's a lot of like bad things happening, and it's easy to get into your mindset like, oh, the world is, you know, such an ugly place and there's bad people. There is still so many like kind people and nice people.

From Gumi to Daegu, the worst bugs I've ever seen. Swarms of bugs, just like swarms of gnats. They're just trying to get in your ears, trying to get in your nose, trying to get in your eyes.

I can't run away fast enough.

When we were kind of prepping stuff, I mean, I was like, yo, do you think we need bug spray? I look at And I'm like, bro, I'm fast. They ain't gonna catch me. Yeah, man, they might catch you on the bike, they're gonna catch me because it's like country country, you know. But luckily he had bought like 3 like masks and they kind of like, they pull over here. And without that, you would have— I, I might have lost it. Yeah, mentally I would have lost because you put your hand back, you feel a handful of them in your hands. Honestly, I would have much preferred if they were like mosquitoes.

So you've been going for roughly 1,300.

Yeah, so today, um, it's day 1,310. Wow, 1,310 days straight of running outside, outside in the rain, blistering heat, all that.

How long do you plan on continuing this, or is there a plan? I'm sure you get asked this a lot.

Yeah, I get asked that a lot, but I feel like every day is day zero. And I say that because no matter how hard yesterday was, no matter how much you did, no matter how hard you worked or how successful you were in that, you have to do things that intrinsically that basically move you, give you passion, that give you life, that give you energy, that help move you forward. Yeah. And one of my favorite quotes is like, "We didn't come this far just to come this far." Taking accountability. Yeah, exactly. Taking accountability for your life.

I canceled on our last run.

I didn't mean to point at you, my bad.

No, I'm just shrinking a little. That was a good lesson though. We have a lot of people here watching that are like trying to learn a new language, which is not an easy task, right? It's— Me too. It's a journey and it's easy to give up. For people embarking on this journey learning English. If you can just give like one practical tip for maintaining that discipline, because I think you're a very disciplined person.

Do it as long as you think that you can do it, as, as much as you think you can do it, whether it's 2, 3 days, 4 days, 5 days a week, and then just do one day more, and you'll surprise yourself what doing one day more will do for you. People don't realize that goals and excuses can be just as limiting, because I think a lot of times goals are often made based in your realm of comfort. A lot of times we set goals that are just outside of our comfort level, but when you reach that goal, you can't let that be the limiting factor in your life. You have to train yourself of pushing to that limit and, and going a little bit further and seeing what you can do. I'm nowhere near perfect. There's some parts of my life where I really struggling, but at the same time, that's not going to make me quit.

Zae, thank you so much for eating with me today, inspiring me. Thank you. And I will see you next time!