Start of Hell Week: Raya Run

In the nearly 1 month period since the last post, many things have happened in my running. My fitness had really picked up, only to plunge after holidaying in Taiwan for 9 days. The long road back to form was compounded by a bout of fever after arriving back home with a few new additions to my shoe arsenal. Still, I have to be grateful that the expected long journey back to my previous fitness turned out to be much shorter after the initial jolt to my body.

Easy steady run - Botanical Gardens, morning

Jog to the gardens

Light drills

14 small loops - 1.02.40

Shoes: Brooks Launch (newer, older pair retired)

With this week consisting of national and school holidays and rainy season wreaking havoc in the late afternoons, I decided to shift the main workouts to the morning. This way, the rains and holiday crowds can be avoided, somewhat. We avoided neither this morning, but they were still at a manageable level.

I woke up this morning to chilly temperatures with biting winds every now and then. It was a real struggle to get out of the door but the conditions were quite nice once I got warmed up a bit. I reached the gate of the gardens expecting an odd morning walker or two. Surprise, surprise the place was filled, especially considering it was 6am in the morning and it was dark as night.

Hoping to take advantage of this holiday week to log some serious mileage, I had early issued a clarion call to all my running buddies, but only 2 showed up today, Kok Leong and Andrew. Never mind, we just got on with the day's plan, at least 1 hour of easy steady running. This will be my longest run since before I left for Taiwan, so I was careful to not overextend myself.

The guys must have felt quite good though, as I constantly have to rein them in and remind them to control the pace a bit. A few laps in, it started to drizzled, but thankfully did not turn into a full blown downpour and stopped a couple of laps later. Right around this point, Boon, the veteran marathoner with a lifetime PR of 2.3x steamed by us. The temptation to ramp up the pace was really great at this point but I held myself back. There will be a time for that.

The pace got a bit faster the last few laps but still within relaxed levels. I threw in a few short surges as planned to break up the monotony. The last lap was supposed to be run as fast as possible while relaxed. Unfortunately, I felt my left calf start to twitch towards the end of the penultimate lap. That developed into jolts whenever I tried to extend my ankle forcefully on the last lap. Kok Leong took the lead and maintained a steady rhythm. Damage control was in order and I tried not to limp too much to the end. After we finished, Andrew told me that he was also suffering from similar twitchiness in his calf. I guess the cold conditions played a part.

All in all, it was an enjoyable run, as I told the guys halfway through, just like riding a bus.

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.

Suffocation and Suffering

The skyline from my apartment looked a bit blurry and I feared the worse. Luckily, the haze cleared up a bit by the time it's time to run. Or so I thought, I was greeted with smoky looking air when I approached the gardens. To compound things, the bright sunlight and sweltering humidity did not abate.

Medium run - Botanical Gardens

Jog to the gardens

Light drills

17 small loops - 1.17.08

Light exercises

Jog back

Shoes: Brooks Launch (newer)

The original plan was to do 16 small loops with the last 7 at 15k to half marathon pace. Barely halfway through the first lap however, I decided to scratch that. The heat and humidity coupled with Ah Yeoh feeling the effects from yesterday's run made me change the run into a medium run of 20 small loops. Throughout the run, I kept the pace quite slow. Still, I found myself running into a heat wall for the last few laps. Ultimately, I cut the run short at 17 laps. By the end, I wasn't even sweating much, a sign that I need to hydrate.

The weather seems like it will hang around a bit and that's surely not welcome news. Nevertheless, training must go on, I just gotta slot some hydration in my runs.

Short and Sweet

After taking the past 2 days off, I decided to turn today's rest day into an easy day with some speed thrown in. The effort level wasn't supposed to be too hard and it's supposed to be a prep for tomorrow's harder workout.

Fartlek+Hill strides - Botanical Gardens

Jog to the gardens

Light drills

3 small loops - easy-fast-easy

5 small loops+lilly pond - fartlek

8 short hill strides/sprints

Light exercises

Shoes: Nike Zoom Speed Lite ST+

While the workout got broken up into a few parts, I actually wanted to follow up the 3 small loops with a fartlek. The plan was to do the first lap easy, something like a warmup, then run the second fast with the third lap a bit slower but still fast. In other words, laps 2 and 3 were meant to simulate a race, partly done because there will be a race this Sunday. For this part of the workout, I have my usual pacer Ah Yeoh for company. Things didn't exactly go to plan. I ran the fast lap too fast, or rather my engine hasn't fully started up, and then tanked the third lap. I had to pause after those 3 laps before continuing the fartlek.

Siao Tieh joined us for this portion. Since I didn't wanna do anything too killer, I kept the fast parts short with each lap having only 2 or 3 of them. Recovery between those fast stretches was an easy jog. There were a few instances where I was tempted to blast the fast stretches, especially when Siao Tieh ramped up the pace, but I was able to rein myself in.

The final part of the workout were the hill sprints. Again, nothing too hard. The length of each rep was probably about 50 metres with generous recovery in between. The idea is to be able to run fast but relaxed. I gradually increased the speed of each rep, beginning with something like a stride to near all out sprints for the last few.

Overall, I was quite satisfied with the day's training. Hopefully this is the sign of things to come for this week's training.