8 wks to go SCKLIM Easy 19km

Where : Kota Kemuning
Time : 0619
Weather : Great, even when the sun came out, it was pretty cloudy.
Hydration: 500ml mineral water only.

I wasn't very confident if I could do 19k today, what with the calf cramp I suffered after trying to drive without properly warming down on Friday.

I started off cautiously, thinking it would be better to be safe than sorry. After the first km, I felt no pain at all in the left calf, which was great. Still, I opted to keep it steady at about 6:15 min/km pace until the 10k mark.

The weather was wonderful, as it rained until up to about 4.30am in the morning. It was a cool 26 deg (I think!) and did not get past 28 deg when I finished the run.

After the 10k mark, I picked up the pace to about a 5:50 pace, and with no problems cropping up, I maintained a 5:40 pace until the last km, where I finished it off with a 4:48 pace.

I felt great after the run, and it was really out of my expectations. The hours of training on the longer distance seemed to be really paying off. A massage on the calves by my better half was icing on the cake!

My thoughts fell back to 9 months ago, when I was literally crawling back after a 15km training run....

All in all, I logged in almost 66k for this week, 3k more than the highest logged 2 weeks ago.

However, I'm still a long way from finishing a 42km strongly, but I might be able to eke out a sub 5 hour marathon under the current circumstances.

With another 4 long runs in the pipeline, I hope to steadily increase my endurance over the next 6 weeks.

Food for thought

- Longer distance running does help in the shorter distance events - as what I've seen in the 10k Orange run (5 min pace) and the Bidor half marathon (11.4km/hr pace). I will hope to maintain 30k runs after the SCKLIM.
- I haven't done much sprints or tempos - I need to incorporate these workouts if I would really like to speed up to a 13km/hr for the 10k by end of year. Don't think I need it for the marathon though.

Anyway, I've scheduled 72k over 4 runs next week, with the LSD at 32km. As I will be traveling to JB and Sg over the week, I will need to get up pretty early on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday to get the mileage in.

God willing, I'll get this done....

30k LSD run (SCKLM 11 wks to go)

Time : 6.30am
Place : Kota Kemuning
Duration : 3hr 9min
Weather : Sunny after 8.15am

I was feeling quite ok in the morning with a minor ache in my right heel. Probably due to golf yesterday.

Didn't have breakfast, only a coffee. Packed a 500ml bottle of mineral water and my usual mix of Red Bull (250ml) and 500ml of fruit juice. I was guessing it would be sufficient to carry me through. On top of that I had another bottle outside the house just in case I need it for the final loop.

Mechanically, everything was in their proper working order, so I decided to stick to the plan and go for 30km, with no particular pace as a goal and focus on finishing the run.

Things went well until 23km at a 9.8km/hr pace, when the fatigue started to set in. I held on until the 25km, then the energy levels started to wane. Guess I was hitting the famous WALL. Still managed to run/walk to complete the 30km, but the pace really fell off quickly.

I finished my water supply by 24km and headed back home to have a drink before heading out again to complete the last 2km.

All in all, it's good experience and looking forward to the next LSD run 2 weeks from now. The plan was to cap it at 30km at this point.

The increased mileage to 55km did really pay off as I could maintain a 10km/hr without too much trouble.

Next week will the Orange Run (11km), so I would need to complete a couple of longer runs during the week, probably 10k for Monday evening, 15km for Wednesday morning, 10k for Thurs evening and an easy 8k for Saturday evening.