One for record’s sake.

I was kinda excited about this year’s run. Last year’s race wasn’t disastrous considering how little/late I trained for it, but I knew there is plenty of room for improvement. And I started real early this year so I am curious to see the exact difference it made, even if it’s a bit strange to need to have an official race to verify how far I have come, but oh well. There’s no change to the format this year except that the starting time is half an hour earlier, and it’s the exact same course as well so there’s a good basis for comparison.

I don’t think my preparations were super ideal considering that I managed to hit 10km only one month before and actually hit the roads for the first time two weeks before (and eventually only did it twice). Running on concrete is very different from running on treadmill as I found out the hard way last year, it’s a lot more punishing to the knees I feel. But felt quite optimistic after my two runs on road because physically the body held up after that.

Planned my runs during the week leading up to the race so that I don’t over exert myself and die during the race lol. So slowly build up the distances, get in one rest day just before race day, hoping to peak during the race. Didn’t manage to sleep as early as I wanted to and I think I only managed like 5 hours sleep, woke up slightly earlier than I have to coz I was worried about not being able to get a cab at those hours (had to cab this year coz starting time was brought forward to 6.30am and first train is only at 6am).

And I don’t remember this but I moved myself up a pen this year when I signed up (Pen C for an expected finishing time between 1h-1h15m as compared to Pen D) so C and I got to start the race in the same pen this year. Though I did tell him that he didn’t have to wait for me and can just run off if he need to which is what happened immediately after we flagged off lol.

Because it’s the same course I was able to recall what happened at each stage of the race last year and just kept feeling good about this year’s run throughout the race. For instance, early on in the race there’s this part where you run down into an underpass, come up, U-turn, go back into the underpass and up again, and last year the multiple gradient changes exhausted me early on in the race that I stopped to walk immediately after that. This year I felt physically okay to carry on. I had energy to spot photographers and pose for them as I run past ahahahah (even if the photos turned out terrible). And I didn’t think about stopping for a walk till about 7km mark, but pushed on for another 1.5km before giving up.

But my running buddy whom I thought was very far ahead was actually behind me lol. Don’t even know when I overtook him but about 2-3 minutes after I stopped to walk he caught up and spotted me, and urged me to continue. So I did, and we crossed the line together. Managed to wave to cameras as I crossed this year hahaha.

So results? It took me 65mins on a treadmill so I was hoping for about 67 on roads, but since I slowed down to walk I thought it would be a miracle to do it under 70 at all which is my base target. But surprise surprise I still made it in 67 which is a 15min improvement from last year’s 82. And had I not stopped to walk I would probably have finished ahead of C lolol (but he ran with minimal training la). Heh heh excuse me while I glow in pride.



1 minute of improvement for each kg I lost this year, pretty consistent lol. And to top it up I wasn’t all that exhausted after the run, AND two days after the run I felt physically well enough to continue hitting the treadmill (day after the run I felt aches on my thigh and slight difficulty standing up from a sitting position but it only lasted for a day and half). So that’s really encouraging.

Gym sessions have since resumed after that because have adjusted weight loss goals to a more lofty one since I have achieved my earlier goal, and if this goes on I shouldn’t have much problems if I decide to join the race again next year. A colleague asked if I would want to upgrade to half marathon next year but erm no thanks I guess. Running for an hour straight is pretty boring enough already I cannot imagine running for two hours and god forbid 6 hours.

But you never know heh.

Labels: milestones, thoughts