Green Silence: Unsealed

I was hoping to clock a long run today and decided to give my errant pair of Green Silence a shot. It was bought to be my long distance racer, but after a couple of underwhelming runs which resulted in my calves tightening up, I temporarily shelved them. Hopefully, they will prove their worth in today's run.

Botanical Gardens - medium long run

Jog to the gardens

Light drills

10 x small loop + 4 x big loop

Light drills and exercises

Bonus lap

Shoes: Brooks Green Silence

I actually woke up with sore leg muscles despite taking yesterday off. During the jog to the gardens, I did suffer a bit. Thankfully, the soreness subsided by the time I was ready to begin the long run. My pacers for the day were Yeoh and Neoh. My initial plan was to do 20 small loops from the other direction. Regardless of direction, the sheer number of laps meant we would have to be mindful of the pace.

Whatever plans for careful pacing quickly went out the window. Neoh's loud footsteps were messing up my rhythm. Imagine someone scratching their nails on a blackboard, loud and jarring footsteps probably have a similar effect on me, especially when they are shadowing me throughout my run. I was getting agitated and annoyed. Normally if this was a race situation I would have just put in a hard surge and dropped the offender, but doing that now might have toasted my training. I needed a plan fast.

Subconsciously I was already cranking up the pace, perhaps in hopes of getting away from the nasty sound. That didn't work, so by the third lap, I decided to switch things up. I turned towards the large loop. Hopefully I can gain some rhythm. And so it went, I alternated 2 small loops with a big one. Somehow, doing the big loop from the other direction helped. The long downhill at the end of the loop helped a bit in recovery. Since each big loop is about twice as long as a small loop, I was starting to feel the strain at the equivalent of lap 16. I decided to do 2 more, with the last lap being a fast but relaxed effort.

By this point, only Yeoh stuck around, in fact he was still right on my heels halfway through the last lap. The competitive side of me panicked a bit, I didn't wanna get outkicked. Somehow, I managed to widen the gap a bit after that as his footsteps fell away. I was able to relax a bit. To his credit, he surged again near the end but I managed to hang on.

Since this was my longest run since my 21k in KL, I am quite pleased with today's effort. Other than that, my Green Silence finally came through! They felt much better than both the Launches. It might be my marathon shoe yet, that is if it survives the training...