On the Edge

Today's weather was simply the best by far since I started this training plan. While it was slightly hazy in the morning, early afternoon showers came to the rescue. As a welcome side effect, the temperatures felt slightly cooler. With such nice conditions, I was looking forward to putting in some good miles today. Alas, training is like walking a fine line between soaring or crashing and I am probably close to the edge now.

Medium aerobic run - Botanical Gardens

Jog to Botanical Gardens

Easy drills

17x small loop

Light exercises

Jog back

Shoes: Brooks Launch (newer)

Despite being a bit fatigued from the previous workout, I was shooting for 20 small loops. To shake things up, I wanted to run counter to the usual direction. Joining me for this run is once again Ah Yeoh. However, there will be more company too in the form of Ah Wong, Ah Choon and Ah Neoh. The pace was supposed to be slow but I was quite worried some of the guys would get impatient. 5 laps in, the pace noticeably picked up. Before that, I noticed Ah Wong was speeding up a bit on the downhills and sure enough he initiated the surge. I managed to control myself and tried to stick to the plan.

A couple of laps later, Wong dropped out. He was followed by Choon and Neoh respectively. At least Ah Yeoh was still going strong. He flagged a little at the start of lap 12 and signaled for me to go on. I knew it would be tough to hit 20 laps then. I revised my target to a minimum of 17, which would at least my personal record for the highest number of loops completed. Unlike Tuesday, I didn't feel like I was being choked. Instead, my legs were weakening. Fortunately, lap 17 did not drag on forever and I even managed to turn my legs over a bit. Overall, it was an ok run and I felt that doing the small loop in this direction would be more even in terms of effort exerted. You can't really rest that much on the gradual downhills.

There were some minor aches and niggles in my legs, but the worse was yet to come. Once I got home, I was feeling a bit sick. Perhaps some bugs sensing a weakened immune system? Fortunately, I swiftly felt better after lying down a while.