Make Hay While the Sun Shines...

... or rather run while the sun ain't shining that brightly. The decent rainfall yesterday night did help after all. Today's weather wasn't that hazy and got less so when it was time to run. In any case, I left the house a bit earlier than normal in a bid to get in some extra strength work. That plan wasn't entirely successful.

Hilly medium long run - Botanical Gardens

Jog to Youth Park, 5x short strides, proceed to the gardens

Light drills

10x big loops - 1.35.41

Light exercises

Jog back

Shoes: Brooks Green Silence

I had planned to follow up my strides at the Youth Park with some exercises, but ran out of time. As for the strides themselves, I didn't really feel smooth or fast. Oh well, the main work was still to come. At the gardens, I found out that I was going to have more pacers than usual with Siao Tieh and Ah Choon joining me and Ah Yeoh for the run.

For once, I managed to complete my run as planned. To give myself a better chance of finishing the punishing 10 laps, I decided to designate a few hydration breaks. It would be wise anyway to practise that for raceday. I had planned to drink up every 3 laps or so, but in the end we decided to drink every 4 laps as it just felt 'right'.

Mindful of the long road ahead, I was focused on running easy. With the super-fast Siao Tieh along, I needed to keep reminding myself to run easy. Even after he stepped off after the sixth lap, the pace threatened to get out of control. That's just the momentum at work. Still, we will probably pay for that at the latter stages.

Yeoh managed to hang on till the 2nd hydration break at the end of lap 8. After that, I had to make a monumental decision, one that will make history or collapse and fold instead. Nah, not really. The choice was whether to suffer alone for 2 more laps or give in and shoot the wind with the rest of the guys. Of course I chose to suffer. The lap immediately after rehydrating wasn't that hard. But as the gardens got darker and lonelier, the last lap felt like forever. Once again at this point, I didn't really sweat much anymore. I wasn't lying when I said this would be monumental though, since this is the first time I have done that many big loops. With that in mind, I forged on.

All in all, I was really pleased with this run. Nevertheless, there are much longer training runs up ahead. For now though, I prefer not too think too much about them. They are scary.