Mizuno Run 2009

It was a very productive week both in work and running.

I managed to get the mileage up again and hopefully can maintain it there for the next 3 weeks despite the knee problem.

My knee started acting up again after the 10k run on Monday. I managed to run through the slight pain throughout the week and the good thing is it didn't worsen.

The problem shifted to the right knee this time and it's quite different from the injury I had before SCKLM. This time the pain occur every time I stretch out my leg. So in order to prevent the pain, I have to land my leg as softly as possible and push it back further than usual to compensate.

Luckily this hasn't caused any big imbalance to the running style so far.

At first I wasn't quite sure whether this style of running will enable me to run at 6 mins pace until I tested it out in the Mizuno Run this morning. I has tested it at 7.5 to 8 mins pace before and it was working fine.

More about the Mizuno Run.

I started the run this morning among the big crowd and wasn't even aware that the race has been flagged off until I saw the front runners sped off the starting line.

Then it was 2-3km of runners sardine. I had to run off the road many times to get ahead of slower runners. The track started to clear out after 3km and that's when I started to pick up the pace slightly into my cruising speed.

According to my GPS, I reached 5km mark at 28:38 with average pace of 5:43 per km. Way beyond my initial expectation:)

I reached the 8km mark at 44:56 and average pace improved to 5:37 per km after the crowd clear out.

The route become more hilly after that. Despite that I managed to maintain the steady pace and reached the 10km mark at 56:43, still keeping the pace up at 5:40 per km.

The biggest challenge of this run is the last 1km before returning to the stadium. I think the organiser meant to make it the "heart-break hill" for this run. I had to walk some 200m up this hill to catch my breath before speeding all the way to the finishing line.

My race time: 64:14. Average pace 5:43.

Total mileage this week: 46km

Balancing Act

(This was posted last sunday - 1¹Oct but somehow didn't go through. This is the last post from Shozu)

Work has taken a lot of my waking hours in the last 2 weeks.

As a result, I have to skip a lot of my morning run to get enough sleeping hours.

However this wasn't such a bad thing after all since my knees is starting to give problem and I needed the rest anyway.

I started my run again this friday with a 12km run and it felt good. I did 11km more yesterday and another 7km this morning without any uncomfortable sign.

I had to cut short this morning's run due to late start and rain. Hope to catch up on the mileage tomorrow morning.

Overall I'm happy with the pace that I'm able to put in right now which is about 65 mins per 10km. The challenge will be to maintain it to at least 25km. That will be my goal pace in the Penang Bridge Marathon.

More training to go and I need to start hitting the distance of 25km or more..

No more excuses

Less than 35 days to go for the Penang Bridge Marathon.

You could be interested to know how is my training going so far?

Two words could summarized the whole situation - "No good".

It has been 3 weeks since I did any serious running. What I have done so far is only patches of 10 to 15km runs.

Time seems to be flying past and suddenly I found myself in a situation no better than when I was training for KLIM. At least during that training I had a valid "excuse" to skip some of the runs. I was hurt with knee injury.

I must give myself no more excuses starting from next week. Marathon training is not something that can be cramped into the last 2 weeks or one will suffer greatly during the run.

Here I come..

Test post from CellSpin

Test

Another low mileage week

Had another low mileage week last week. Total mileage is only 24km.

Both my knees are feeling the pressure of running frequently again. I had to take it easy to not repeat the injury on the left knee I encountered during the KL Marathon training.

It's still more than 6 weeks to go before the race and I plan to only train up to 30km distance once this time.

My goal this time is to run a sub-5 hours marathon. This is achievable if I can maintained a 7 min/km pace throughout the run. Looks easy but things could get very tough after 30 or 35km.