crazy thoughts of 7m/d

Hills. Definitely not for me. At best, they are to be tolerated, a part
of running that you sometimes have to do to be gooooooood (drag the
word out for emphasis). At worse…, ok let’s not go there. So if they
already so hostile when part of a run, why the hell am I doing running
a race that is all hill??? That’s question I was  trying to answer
while taking part in the annual race up Penang Hill organised by Kwong
Wah Jit Poh, amidst curses and gritted teeth.

The answer was none too obvious during that self-prescribed torture
session, my body simply refusing to devote more energy to cogitating.
Frankly speaking I don’t blame it, I have long had a love hate
relationship of epic proportions with hiking and hills in general.
Normally, I avoid them like the plague, but for 1 special day each
year, the planets align, the feng shui energies are at full blast, and
I cast aside my hill aversion to enter this event. And just as sure
that I would take part, I will regret that decision, usually at the
point where I just made it up the first crest looking like a wreck.

This year was no different. To boot, I had done ZERO hiking in the run
up to the event. Regardless, annual rituals are to be respected, and
besides I am technically a member of a hiking team, so what the heck,
crashing and burning can still be kinda fun, I hope. I started out
quite well, but then the beginning is a run of about more than 2k, so
there was not much consolation there. Things began to look grim as I
was getting passed by runners I have no problem beating in my sleep.
Come on! We haven’t even left the ground yet!

My body soon clicked into normal hiking mode soon after the flat part
ended. Long buried curses were dredged up and flowed easily. The long
forgotten feeling of burning calfs only hiking could give started to
introduce itself. Long story short, it was an uphill battle, pun
intended. To stave off the grim outlook, I resorted to pumping in
reinforcements. In my near catatonic state, the best I could muster
were stuff like, "Pain is temporary, glory is forever" and "No guts, no
glory". Creative huh.

Thankfully, I did get stronger in the 1 year since the last edition of
this hike, and my pain was felt for a shorter time. About 3 minutes
less in fact for a time of 53.39 mins, good enough for 7th place if I
am not mistaken. Ah well, considering the circumstances, I don’t have
much to complain about. Most of the complainin’ was done on the way up
anyway. Would I WANT to try again next year? I doubt it. Would I
actually try it again next year? Yea, pretty much.

I can’t help it, go blame Penang Hill.

I spent the past week holed up with about 2100 fellow newbie undergrads
at the sprawling USM campus. While initially filled with trepidation,
the huge and intimidating grounds gradually shrunk and felt more like
home. Of course, getting lost is still part of the daily itinerary, but
in a perverse way, it’s kinda fun too. I bet even the seniors don’t
fully know the ins and outs of the place 100%, so I guess for us
freshies it’s forgivable. The grounds might be impressive and the
facilities more than adequate, but the best part about getting into
university is meeting new people. No joke. There are seriously some
colourful characters even in my hostel. As for the girls, I am still
thanking the heavens for the sheer number of attractive young females
present. Who said a guy/girl ratio of 30/70 is a bad thing?

Of course this is already the weekend, and I was among the fortunate
few who reside in Penang, which means I get to go home fairly often.
For this weekend however, there will not be much homely respite. I will
be leaving for Ipoh tomorrow. It will be my first time taking running
in the Ipoh International Run, and the interruption to training because
of my orientation week is definitely a concern for me in tackling the
21ks. Regardless, these are exciting times, and hopefully this buoyant
feeling I have now will be an adequate substitute for the loss of
training. Of course, I cannot fail, since my big mouth told quite a few
people about this trip. So for my ego among my uni mates, and for my
own self belief, let’s hope I achieve a breakthrough.

Anyway, whatever happens, this has been a week for many firsts.

In my previous post, I joyfully proclaimed about breaking through a
barrier in training. When something like that happens, I naturally
expect more progress to be forthcoming. But then I fail to take into
account that it’s me I was talking about, and when something good
happens, something else really really sucky will come along to balance
it out. The latter couldn’t be truer.

Since that fateful run on the treadmill, my optimism has been rewarded
with failure upon failure. I don’t know whether that run itself took a
lot more out of me than I thought, or that it was purely mental, since
I didn’t really feel worse from my efforts. The fact of the matter is
that I couldn’t even manage ONE run longer than 20 minutes, a bare
minimum to me to be considered an aerobic effort. Paces I can maintain
in my sleep for 45 minutes have me labouring already at 15 minutes, and
I find myself abandoning runs even before I got done with my warm-up
run, instead working on sprints and hill charges. Well, I guess at
least my speed won’t be declining, some consolation that is.

Oh before I sign off, I just remembered that the track meet mentioned
last time around is this weekend, and to compound my training
difficulties, I am still scrambling for the forms. Now if anyone
doesn’t believe in the adage "when it rains, it pours", kindly direct
them to me. Of course, I will willingly take the rain though, or even a
drizzle, or maybe just a few raindrops, heck anything but the friggin’
humid and hot weather…

It’s really been a while since my last post, I can even see the cobwebs
left by Google’s spiders hanging all over the place. Ok enough of the
cliched back-after-long-hiatus response. While I really haven’t posted
for a long time, I will have you guys know that I have been putting my
time to busting my ass in training, and this break was pretty much
required. Alright that wasn’t entirely true, the truth is I got a bit
sick of posting (again), and instead drowned myself in backbreaking
training to cure myself of this funk (see the training was really
needed!).

As far as training has been concerned, things have
been going quite well, with small breakthroughs in training common. On
the other hand, I haven’t exactly been able to reach my desired
mileage, being unable to break past the 65k mark I reached in my last
cycle. I put this down mainly to motivation and determination. This is
not to say I am weakening in my desire, but more of a mental barrier
that I face every time I train, a testament of sorts to the degree of
difficulty of the training. To put things into perspective, even if I
manage to hit my old mileage, it will still be less than what is
required to really move on to the next level. Ah well, I believe that
when I do finally beat that mileage mark the floodgates will open.
Besides, I am improving so mileage isn’t a big concern yet.

Mileage
aside, I am quite satisfied with my training. In fact on the treadmill,
I have been besting my training records on a weekly basis, the latest
being set this very evening. And since this particular mark and
distance holds some significance to me, I am going to regale you guys
with some personal history. For those of you with a narcoleptic
history, it will be the proper time to get your coffee :).

*Turns back the clock by ermmmm, a few years*

The
year was 2005, I had only become a member of the school team a few
months before, and I was about to represent my school at the island
level track championships. To top it off, I will be in 3 events,
4×400m, 1500m and the longest event on the programme the 5000m. My only
previous experience of track was at the 1500m and 800m and that being
on the school grass track. Still, I was confident. While I have only
ever run middle distance before, I felt that my chances lay with the
5000m. As brash and noob as I was, I knew I wasn’t even the best in the
1500m in my own school and in terms of personal best times, technically
I really really suck. Of course, the fact that I had no previous
experience at all with the 5000m never really occurred to me. On
hindsight, I have no yardstick to give me an idea on my relative
ability, but I just had the gut feeling that I was good.

I
was set up for failure though, again on hindsight. My very first day of
track racing I had to do a "double", run 2 events, even better yet, 1
right after the other. Yup, it sucked. Of course, I didn’t know it
then, instead I cast myself as the martyr since I had to run on the
relay then run the 1500m. Still, things would have turned out ok if
everything went to plan as my school’s 4×400 was quite badass. Heck, it
was probably my most concrete chance at a medal. As it turned out,
after so many years of going to plan, fate decided to have a laugh just
when I got to run on the relay. Rest assured I didn’t screw up, but
even then the dropped baton didn’t seem significant as we still managed
to make up time and qualify for the final. Or so we though, as we were
adjudged to have committed a mistake when picking up the baton. To call
this a freak accident would be an understatement.

I didn’t have
much time to dwell on it though, since I had about 30 minutes until my
1500. As it happened, I didn’t stand a chance. My legs felt sore the
first lap and I was literally bringing up the rear. There were some
noob runners of course, but in typical noob fashion they sprinted the
first few hundred metres. As for the favourites, needless to say they
were already flying ahead. The whole field had about 20 runners so I
looked really bad. The soreness subsided a bit and some of the noobs
"pancit-ed" so I was able to move up in position. In the end, I did
something like 5:19, while not good was still technically a personal
best. Regardless, my hopes of progressing to the state championships
went down in flames.

With the stage set, everything boiled down
to my last event the 5000. With no prior benchmark, I set 20 minutes as
my target. Hopefully that would enable me to win too. In the actual
race though, my target proved to be 1 step too far and I finished in
20:26. As for the win, well, let’s just say it was a few more steps
further away. I did make the state championships though, but that race
turned out to be total failure with me getting a stitch halfway and
running way under par. All my subsequent 5000m races since then more or
less turned out similarly, leaving the 20:26 still standing as my
personal best.

So much for gut instinct

*Back to the present*

Of
course, at my current level, the 20:26 would be easy meat, but since
track races are not exactly a dime a dozen, I have had very few chances
to update that mark, try something like perhaps 1 or 2 track races a
year. With some luck, I hope to be able to run at the Penang Open soon.
On second thought, change that to a whole shitload of luck, because as
it stands, I have no idea when it will be held, even though I have been
hearing about it from my juniors. I wouldn’t put it past the
notoriously high tech, accessible and efficient Penang association (the
PAAA) to disseminate the news at the very last minute (like say 5
minutes before registration closes) to a very small audience (something
like a 3 line notice at the bottom corner in the newspapers). Can’t
blame them really, what with them not having a website OR a blog, and
being based in an area faaaaaaaar away from the city centre, totally
reasonable in this day and age.

Rant aside, because after
today’s training run it won’t hit me as much even if I miss the track
event. Even though I am confident to break the 20 minute barrier, there
is always still a small piece of doubt at the back of my mind, since I
don’t have something concrete to back it up. Those days of doubt are
over though, for I managed to do 19:34. Granted the time is nothing to
shout about, and it was on a treadmill, but hey, I finally managed to
break past my personal milestone, so I will take this as a morale
booster. The fact that it was a second half of a 40:46 10k was a nice
touch too ;). So yes guys, basically I subjected you to a long ass
story to tell you about this, so sue me.

Anyway, next up is to
break 40 minutes in the 10k. And like the 5k, I am confident I can do
it, just a little nagging doubt at the back of my mind though…

I took part in a run yesterday morning, and in a first for myself, I
was not registered beforehand. Nevertheless, I decided to go because I
was told that this was a free run by the people from my running group
and even if I don’t get to register myself, it will still be a chance
to do some speedwork. On the other hand, I am going in totally without
a clue, whether it is the course, the organisation, the prizes(if any),
or even the name, which by the way is Larian Harmoni something
something.

Anyhow, last minute registration entailed some extra
measures, like waking up early, since I also didn’t know what the
starting time was, which I nearly failed to do. Thankfully though, I
got there with more than half an hour to spare, or so I thought.
Getting there on time was the least of my troubles, as there was a huge
crowd in front of the registration desks. Thinking that there sure was
a lot of latecomers, I quickly took my turn at the queue, only to find
that they were doing the t-shirt distribution on race morning itself.
Definitely a total faux pas and a sign of a noob organiser. After much
waiting and watch-glancing I did manage to put my name on a sheet of
paper, by which time I also gleaned some important information like who
the organisers were and what kind of runners I was up against. The race
was organised by Keadilan and yes, thoughts about being arrested for
whatever reason did crop up but thankfully the dozen or so police
officers there were just to help with traffic direction. As for my
rivals, I did not really see any lethal runners except for a state 800
meter runner who I have beaten over the longer distances, other random
state runners and of course a couple of speedsters from my own team.

After
the customary pre-race speech by a dignitary which in this case was a
state assemblyman we were set off. As expected the young tykes from the
state team took off like rockets, but sticking to my mentality of
approaching this race for speedwork, I never let them get too far and
sure enough, most of them ran out of fuel. All except for two. They
were able to sustain their pace and were taking a toll to stick close.
Having got among the front of the race, my immediate next thought was
the length of this race, since I had expended a lot of energy in the
early surge and was deliberating whether to surge again to gain ground
on the leader. Just around this moment, I heard some footsteps
approaching from behind along with a feeling of dread. It turns out
that the owner of this killer aura was one of my fast teammates (the
other way already in front stalking the two youngsters). He had started
slowly, but had been rapidly closing the gap. As he was faster than me,
I couldn’t hold him back for long and was overtaken. The excitement
didn’t stop though as I was engaged in a skirmish with another runner
of similar calibre. My initial overtaking move was countered soon
after. To make things worse, the course took us near the starting area,
and my lack of knowledge about the route ensured that I am not sure
whether we will finish there. Once again, doubt crept into my mind
whether to push hard to regain that position of to be patient. For
better or worse, I elected to do the latter.

My gamble paid off,
it seems we will in fact not be ending where we started, which is quite
rare for a local road run. No wonder too, my watch showed less than 10
minutes had elapsed. Even for a funrun-ish race, that is still too
short. That worry resolved and with a huge gap to the next runner, I
bode my time while wondering where the race will end. In the meantime,
my teammate had taken over the lead and was pulling ahead, having run
with him countless times in practice, I knew it would be next to futile
to chase him down. The next option was to target the state junior
runners who were starting to flag a little. The runner I was tussling
with earlier slowed down a bit, and I was able to overtake him for good
this time. Soon after that we had to turn into a small street, only to
be confronted by the finish less than 500 meters ahead. I swore under
my breath as that would mean I had too short of the race left to make
up the gap to the juniors. I still kicked hard, though maintaining an
intense pace throughout the run took a lot out of me and I would guess
my efforts looked as bad as it felt. I finished in 5th place behind my
teammates and the juniors, though it was not an official race and there
were no medals or prizes. Not long after, my erstwhile rival finished
followed by… noone. Seriously, the few of us were waiting there at
the finish with the officials and for a long time there was no runners
crossing the finish. I mean I knew the gap between the leading group
and the rest was big, but surely not this BIG.

Our confusion was
answered though, as it turned out that the rest of the runners weren’t
directed into the junction and the police mistakenly directed them to
continue along the road instead. As for us, we were lead by a
motorcycle so there were no troubles. Most of the runners took it in
good humour since the run was pretty short anyway, barely 4km, and they
took it as getting some extra exercise. I couldn’t say that though for
one particular junior runner whom I knew though. He was always the
arrogant sort and his attitude does not befit his ability and true to
form, he was quite pissed and criticised the organisers, not openly of
course, just to fellow runners who he deems to be worthy. Inwardly, I
was just glad that I was able to comprehensively clean him up in the
run instead.

The minor hiccups aside, the race was quite fun and
water bottles and buns were generously distributed and there was also a
lucky draw. For the first time in a long while or maybe ever, I won a
lucky draw prize. It was only a bell like paperweight thingy but still
it was something. Oh and it was my adidas Chiba Pro’s race debut. So
all in all a good effort.

The past few weeks have been tough, as far as training is concerned. In less than a month, I managed to lose my fire, find it again, and it’s burning brighter to boot. Unfortunately, a perfect parade is just asking to be rained on, and my renewed vigour was countered by a nagging ankle injury. Despite my often flippant replies to injury worries raised by family and friends, getting injured is a real boogeyman at the back of my brain. I might have been more callous about this kind of thing when I was younger (heck, I sound so old saying this), but the knowledge gained made me realise that injuries are not to be trifled with and I naturally think the worse whenever I feel any pain.

A usual scenario the past few weeks have been something like this. I would be about to go out for a run and then the moment I take a few strides, the pain in my ankle would be like a warning klaxon on a sinking ship. Basically that is the point where I would have to make a decision whether to suck it up and just press on or just quit. The outcome has been about 50-50 and dependent on my state of mind. Anyway, I chose the suck it up option for my past 2 runs, lo and behold, I discovered that my pain actually goes away when I run. It’s just that I have to get past the initial moments of discomfort. Of course, I have completely no idea whether I am actually doing more harm than good but what the heck, the time has come for me to just throw caution to the wind if I am to achieve any of my goals.

The big day finally arrived, and not a minute soon enough I would say. I had been training my ass off since the very beginning of the year (and I mean very, I started that afternoon barely after shaking off my New Year’s tipple). Trust me, in my entire career as a runner, I have never trained continuously for such a long time, and with no other competition in the mean time to boot. My body might have been getting fitter, but my mind was getting fatigued and antsy. I was itching to race.

Besides being probably my biggest race so far, topping the Penang Bridge Run, it was also my first race of the year, and also the first since my ‘train focused’ approach started. Talk about triple the pressure. A lot of things happened while I was in KL too, but since this is a race report I will leave running unrelated stuff for another post. Maybe.

Anyway, some background information. For the 3 months of training, the 5 hours of back-breaking boredom in a bus, and the fear of running in an alien course, I decided to set my targets high, very high in hindsight. To be exact, I aimed to finish in under 90 minutes.

On race morning, I basically went with familiar routine, since it’s not wise to try new stuff on race day. I wore my trusty Brooks T4 racers, and my usual Brooks 02 hiking team vest and Asics shorts ensemble. I did bring along my adidas KOTR vest, but I decided to wear the Brooks because it was a badge of honour to represent my team all the way here in KL, not to mention the fact that I will probably be the only one wearing that vest. Yes I am a stickler for individuality, so sue me.

I reached Dataran Merdeka, which was the starting  and ending area, at about 5.15am, plenty of time to spare before the 6 am start. I whiled away my time doing some lacklustre jogging and halfhearted strides and looking around for familiar faces. I guess my 3 hours plus of sleep didn’t help and my Red Bull had not kicked in yet. I then wisely decided to visit the loo, in mind of a probable rush for the toilet by the other runners just before the start. Thus relieved, I sautered over to the starting area. Yup, my race mood started to fire up. I also bumped into a familiar face, one of the regulars in Botanicals. I even joined him in a long run 2 weeks before, though that was interrupted by some untimely bowel movement. May history do not repeat itself here, was my fervent wish.

By the time I reported to the starting line, there was already quite a crowd ahead, which means they were between me and the starting line, definitely not good. Using my slight build to maximum effect I managed to weasel my self forward, though my efforts still left me with a crowd ahead of me, just smaller. Now it was just a matter of time. Then "BOOM!!".

My mid-pack status hindered my progress  in those initial stages. Thoughts going through my mind involved words like ‘fuck’, ‘why do slow people insist on standing in f front??!!’,  ‘move outta my way, slowpoke’. After annoyingly long seconds of shuffling to the start line, the jam loosened up a lot. I immediately zeroed in on a runner zooming by, deciding to use him as a pacer. In contrast to my usual tactic for half marathons, I decided not to go out slow any more and resolutely stuck with my pacer. To my shock, my body was already feeling the effects, with my legs feeling sore and my right ankle feeling very painful. Keep in mind that was within about 2km after the start. Honestly though, those have always been old problems of mine, but usually in shorter races. My mind was blaring at me to take a break or walk rather loudly, but my experience told me to just shrug it off.

The first few km of scrambling soon settled into a calmer rhythm. The course made things tough though, with small uphills and downhills and many turns. Surprisingly I coped quite well with that, even though hills were never my strong point. About 5 km in, I managed to lose my pacer. Almost around this point a pair of female runners overtook me and left me in my dust. I managed to limit the damage, and instead used them to pace myself. Forgive me for being a bit sexist, but it does hurt to be beaten by a girl, what more two at once.

The race soon settled into a steady pattern, with flyovers providing the pain factor. As expected, my problem ankle went numb a few more km afterwards, allowing me to cruise along at a comfortable pace. My hopes for some guide for checking my pace were wrecked though, with the idiotic placing of drinking stations. No way in hell will I run 30 minutes for 5 km, which basically screwed up my pace plan. The trouble was that they did not take into account the changes in this year’s route and placed the stations at the same spot but did not make the resulting changes to the distance marking.

After some time in the outskirt region of the city, the course took us back into the city centre. In other words, I was as confused as hell with more twists and turns. At least I know that it will be about 2.5 km between each drink station so I just focused on getting to the next one, slow down, grab a drink them gradually pick up again. Eventually I managed to overtake 1 of the female runners, but the other one was just increasing the gap. From about a few metres ahead, she was just flying out of sight by the time I approached the finishing straight. I consider myself a fast finisher, but it was humbling to be dusted by her. In my defense though, that lady was from Singapore and finished in 5th in the women’s open category.

I gave it my all, and I can’t complain about that. Still, I only managed to clock 1:36.29, for 32nd place, waaaay off my target time. The redeeming factor was that I managed to beat my previous best by about 3 minutes. That kinda put things in perspective about the standards I have to reach to achieve my goals.

Since my handful of readers have been rather persistent in asking for updates to this blog, and I have run out of excuses, I think I will oblige them for once. Of course, this is also a good chance to reflect on all the training I did for the KLIM, what with it being just 2 weeks away.

Anyway, for the first time since I started running, I started a running log. That was 11 weeks ago. It was no coincidence that it was right smack in the New Year season, where I felt that I needed not only a change in my training, but also my approach towards it, if I were to really improve in my running. I needed to be more systematic, hence the creation of my running log. That was also when I had gotten a new pair of running shoes, and I don’t know better motivation for running than a new pair of kicks, for me at least. Even though, the KLIM wasn’t confirmed yet at that time, I more or less expected it to happen around March, thus giving me about 12 weeks or so, perfect for the training cycle I was about to undergo.

Enough of time traveling. Since then, I have logged 495km, welcomed a new pair of racers, spent countless lonely hours in the gym and busted in a water bottle and a bag. The mileage totted up includes significant mileage only though, and does not include stuff like speed work and hill work. They are listed just as strides, sprints, or hill depending on their type in the log along with the number I did. The main reason I do not include their distance is simply because I can’t. I don’t have an accurate measuring device for that, and at the relatively short distances the variation in accuracy makes a big difference. And I also do not want to kid myself by claiming I ran a longer distance in a shorter time. In running, it’s just better to be honest to yourself or at least err on the side of caution, rather than fuel your ego.

After looking through my log, I also noticed a trend, an unintended one. For the first two months, I did a huge chunk of my training on the treadmill at my gym and the grass field near my house. Don’t get me wrong, this is actually a good thing. Those months are more or less my base building months, and those surfaces are better in the respect that they lessen they beating my body takes. In contrast, I did more of my runs on the road the past few weeks, which is wise because my body needs to adjust to the pounding since the race will be on tarmac. All in all I am satisfied with that aspect of training.

As for regrets, there are plenty. Chief among them is that I could have done more mileage, even though I am already at my highest ever. There will always be the run I could have squeezed in, the morning I should have woke up earlier, the week that was lost to Chinese New Year. Whenever sloth takes over my mind, and I am left with the pieces of a missed opportunity, I always console myself with the excuse that my body needed the rest. Still, that nagging feeling of guilt will always lurk in the shadows.

Anyway, that’s it for my review of my training. Despite all the troubles though, I am pretty glad I made it this far, with no real injury to boot. Let’s just hope the last two weeks before the big day will be even better.

With my search for a running partner mirroring my search for a girlfriend, I have to continue soldiering on solo in my runs. And like a broken record, I will continue to reiterate the hardships of such a solo quest. There is a real danger of a wire or two short-circuiting upstairs. Boundaries tend to get blurred and impossible things seem possible. Heck this might even get mistaken as runners’ high by a lot of those hippie jogger types. After all euphoria and agony are easily confused for each other even in normal circumstances, what more by a semi-catatonic runner on his 10th loop of a boring course.

Anyway, I have a secret weapon when the going gets tough. As cheesy as it sounds, I always draw up those pseudo morale lifting songs from sports movies, more specifically the songs from the Rocky series. Going uphill, hearing the theme to the movie really helps. The song ‘Eye of the tiger’ also comes up every so often, especially when I am left to do some catch up with the frontrunners. I imagine myself as a tiger bearing down on them.

So after all that, I will leave it up to you whether running is all about inspiration or hapless delusion.

This past week I have been attempting to lengthen my runs. I felt that endurance was one of the key areas that I could really improve on, but then again that wouldn’t be a problem in the first place if I could just run long at the snap of my fingers.

The thing is that distance running is veeeeeery boring if done alone. So boring, in fact, that I have taken to counting footsteps, counting down time, trying to calculate the times I need to hit, among other things to keep myself occupied. It’s not so much the body but the mind that gets tired after a while.

Then there’s the body, like it or not, running long is going to hurt, one way or another. There might be some minor niggles or maybe the socks didn’t fit right or the shoelaces are too tight, either way they will all throw a king-sized  spanner into the works. External factors aside, the legs or lungs might not feel right, and when things don’t go right, it’s easy to get demoralised. With your motivation gone, it’s only a matter of time before you fall to the temptation of quitting your run.

With all of that in mind, I had already had about 2 or 3 aborted 1 hour runs. Due to a combination of the above reasons, they have all been scaled back to about 40 minute runs. Considering my previous runs though, they have been an improvement, heck they might even have passed for my long runs in the bad old days. Still, I got a target to hit, and that target requires a new kind of bullet, the long range kind.

One of the stumbling blocks to me running long is my refusal to slow down to a shuffle. At the very least, I must have some semblance of being a runner not a jogger. Besides that, I have taken the words of my ex-coach to heart. He told me that when you are falling way short of your target times in a workout, it’s often better to not struggle on and do it just for the sake of it. So yeah, I am a picky runner.

Ok enough of the rambling and back to today. I was on the verge of setting a new record for my weekly mileage until my aversion to running long did me in. Still, the situation was still salvageable if I really stuck to my Sunday plan for a long run. In my kiasu-ness, I even did a morning run at the gym too. This was a modestly paced 7.3k, since my projected long run was in the back of my mind. In a way, this run decreased some of the pressure, as running it allowed me to hit my regular mileage of 50km.

I went out for my long run with the late afternoon run still searing overhead, as if daring me to come challenge it’s wilting powers. I refused to be cowed though, even if I had been defeated by it in the past. My plan was to do a 10k, not really a long run, but I decided to see how things felt before proceeding further. My itinerary this time was simple, run to Botanical Gardens, then do loops inside until I feel dizzy or pass out.

The run there was uneventful, an aside from some residual lower leg tightness, relatively pain free. I kept my rhythm constant and tried to keep relaxed. After doing some mental calculations (another way to stave boredom), I determined that I had to do another 9 laps on top of my run there. That number scared me a bit though, so I tried not to dwell on that. After shaking off my soreness, I actually felt great and was able to enjoy my loops. I was quite pleased to find that I could just relax and enjoy the ride, this is what I really signed up for, too bad it’s few and very far between (pun unintended). Whenever boredom threatened to creep in, I tried to calculate the splits for each loop, and how far I had run. I found that I was still going strong even as I was approaching my targeted distance, so I decided to try to tack on a few more loops and hit the hour mark.

The hour mark came and went, and I decided to go for another couple of loops. In the end, I managed 14 laps in addition to my run there. Hell the great feeling was just unreal, I felt that I really made a breakthrough. I could even remember my split times. To top it off, I blew right past my previous weekly mileage and did 65km in total. Just amazing.

P.s. I still need running partners. Boredom will be back for double payback after today.