Newton Challenge 30 km

Strategy was run an easy 5:30 pace for 18km and push up speed for next 7km and a blast at the last 5km.

Fell splat on the face.

Never quite took off. At 20km mark, I was at 1:51:14.4 and ended the run in 2:46:56. Ok, it wasnt too shabby. This was a vast improvement compared to the same run last year. But I was gunning for a good 5 min pace during the last 5km but I was not even close to it. And was hoping for a sub 2:45.

Enrico did well in 2:33 and Muscle Poon did 2:37. Sumiko won the 30km in 2:20.

Why not too shabby? Because the lead between me and them is now less than half an hour and I think I probably can still cut it down further. Of course, the law of diminishing returns will come soon. I am just crossing my fingers that it wont come too soon. I still have my Standard Chartered Marathon to run.

So much for time trial for the marathon. I am hoping that the reason for the tired legs was due to TNF – which is said to have recovery time of 1 month for an ultramarathon. And it has been only 2 weeks.

Wilson told me he would pace me for the returning 6km – he was suppose to have done his 2x10km in the morning before the race – and paced me he did. I was just in no shape to amp it up to 5min pace. Legs had so much difficulty lifting. It was a tough 4km to the end point. I only managed to push it during the last km. Did I leave it all in the run? No blood, no tears were shed, just loads of sweat. Yes, I think tried the best I could to do an average 5:30 pace which was the target Andrew gave me. He was expecting me to go lower than that, this I know. It was an achievement for me to do a 5:32 pace on average. I shall have to go with that. And enjoy the moment of a PB.

For now.

I will be back again next year. After all, the medal was pretty unique!

*Photo credit: Tan Kim Lai and Le Giang

***

It had been another week of recovery. Just a bike session on Wednesday morning and a light stroke swim on Friday evening after the rain. No more than 1km I think? To quote Sheila Taormina, to get a feel of the water.

Saturday was rest day too. Watched Lion King with the family. Reminded me why I loved musicals and plays but just didnt have the time to catch them while my kids were young. Lion King had great costumes and set. The vocals of Rafiki – the babbon – and Mufasa – Simba’s father – were simply AWESOME! And I simply enjoyed the day with the family!

Still Recovering

Newton 30 on coming Sunday. So that means not riding on Saturday – to rest for the race. Decided to ride on Wednesday and did a 12x200m striding on Tuesday.

Tuesday’s recovery – yes, under advise from Andrew – went quite well. Compared to last Thursday’s similar workout. I was clocking sub 50s then but Tuesday was 6 laps of sub 50s, next 5 in 45s and last in 40s. So that was good. What didnt go well was Wednesday’s bike. Went horrificly wrong. Either that, or Andrew just was too fast. I should have been able to follow him through the route but I lost him within 3min. And by 40km, I was quite expanded and I could feel that I had nothing left in the legs. Even he was surprised. But he was doing resistance training for his vertical marathon so he could have pushed on very heavy gears and knowing his power output in climbing, that could have explained why he dropped me so fast. It still didnt explained why I couldnt last the distance of 95km.

The only explanation was that I had yet to recover from TNF 100 run. When I did Sundown marathon in 2009, I was biking at low 20kph on the bike after 2 weeks. I was slightly better this time and could go above 30kph still. However, endurance was clearly missing. I can only hope that it was due to the 50km trail run and not due to the run sessions I had been doing.

***

Somebody directed me to Kilian Jornet’s video on YouTube. His agility, stamina, sense of balance was awesome. And yes, his background in ski mountaineering and mountain biking definitely would have helped him to what he was now. It was so inspiring that it made me want to go out there to run the mountains – JUST KIDDING! I know I wont be able to survive 5min. Even Hill 265 during TNF I was slowly walking up – and that was a 100m hill only?

He is world champ at climathon, winner of Mt Kinabalu 21km run 2011. A fraction of his ability would suffice for me…

Coincidentally, am reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. About how a hidden tribe that has super athletic ability to run. Tribe Tarahumara or Raramuri is found deep in the Copper Canyons in Mexico. This running tribe can run for 2 days non stop, covering distances of 300 miles, or nearly 12 full marathons back to back! It’s simply amazing!

The Dash by Linda Ellis

My preacher spoke about this before and happened to speak to my friend about it. She shared this poem with me and it was a very powerful one. Catch the short clip on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsY6UrFIsNs

I read of a man who stood to speak

At the funeral of a friend.

He referred to the dates on her tombstone

From the beginning to the end.

He noted that first came the date of her birth

And spoke of the following date with tears,

But he said what mattered most of all

Was the dash between those years.

For that dash represents all the time

That she spent alive on earth

And now only those who loved her

Know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not, how much we own,

The cars, the house, the cash,

What matters is how we live and love

And how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard;

Are there things you’d like to change?

For you never know how much time is left

That can still be rearranged.

If we could just slow down enough

To consider what’s true and real

And always try to understand

The way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger

And show appreciation more

And love the people in our lives

Like we’ve never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect

And more often wear a smile,

Remembering that this special dash

Might only last a little while.

So when your eulogy is being read

With your life’s actions to rehash

Would you be proud of the things they say

About how you spent your dash?

© 1996 Linda Ellis

15km Run

Andrew ran the distance with me this morning. I did a 2km warm up while waiting for him to turn up. Started the run at sub 4:50 pace for 1st 2 km! From then, everything started to go downhill. I was just not ready to run after TNF as well as the 75km bike on Saturday. Took me so long to reach the uturn point. 38:28.0.

I told myself to clear the slopes and hopefully tackle the returning flats at a better pace. Managed a negative split. 37:48.2. Total time taken: 1:16:16.2. Off the mark by 1:16. Was suppose to run at 5min pace. But off by 5s per km. Darn!

While giving sets out to my kids, I tried out the new stroke techniques learnt to correct what I saw was wrong in the video footage taken by Sheila. A lot of concentration on the feel and grabbing of water. Maybe, just maybe, I will be able to match my Coach’s swim speed…

Swimming Clinic With Sheila Taormina

Sheila Taormina was a gold medalist in 1996 Atlanta Olympics in the 4x200m relay, ITU World Champion in 2004 and Modern Pentathlete in 2008 Beijing Olympics, just to name a few of the accolade of titles under her belt. She was on her world tour and had stopped over in Singapore for a series of swimming clinic, brought in by Elite Custom. Group of us had the good fortune to undergo the clinic with her last night and it was an eye opening session. The clinic consisted of an hour of theory as well as a 2 hour pool session.

But as Sheila said, she can only squeeze as much of her 25 years of swimming experience into 3 hours and hopefully will benefit everyone of us. I thought it was beneficial. My greatest take away was that for swimming, which we all already knew was highly technical, we needed to have a better feel of the water. It was not so much of arm power powering through the fluid, but using the core to drive through the fluid instead. During my conversation with her, she told me that during her college days, she use to swim 10km butterfly nonstop. Yes, 10000m! She said it wasnt that tough because it was an aerobic exercise. And yes, I suppose that was what made her an Olympian. And comparing with what we age group ironman triathletes do, these swimmers really clock HUGE miles in the pool. As much as 65 km a week. That’s like 11km a day with a day’s rest. Our consolation is this: we are not elite swimmers, just mere mortal age groupers. It would be the same as the professional triathletes? They would be clocking HUGE mileage and HIGH intensity during their sessions every day. We do what we can and really no need to compare. Just thought that this was an amazing piece of information.

*Pictures by Richard Leong

***

A recovery week it had been for me this week. Monday’s morning jog was a huge difficulty. The throbbing quads made the jog really hard, face was grimacing away at every stride but I ploughed on. Tuesday got slightly better and by Wednesday morning, quads burnt but the ache was fading. Monday evening I even managed a 12 x 200m (sub 50s) striding with 200m walking recovery. Wednesday managed an easy spin at Coastal for 45km. Weather was slightly wet but it was cool. Cycling power somehow had degenerated recently, with the decrease in cycling mileage. I could only hope that it was due to my running intensity but I couldnt be too sure.

Today did my maiden ride with the JoyRiders 6am bunch. Was suppose to be an easy 100km ride but Le Giang nudged me to join Ewin’s fast pack. It was decently fast but since it was a drafting ride, I didnt think too much of it. I made sure that I kept up with the front pack all the time as I didnt want to lose too much ground and had to claw my way back. Probably hitting speeds above 40 kph for many stretches. Even if it were slow, speed never went below 35 kph. It was a long train at Coastal and the peloton leader was really very strong. I did a sling shot and overtook the leader in excess of 45kph but I couldnt sustain it. And worse, lost the pack at the east coast park because I had chosen to stay at the back of the pack. By the time I got onto the road, they were already 150m ahead because I was trailing some of the straddlers. I didnt give chase as my legs were not firing any more. Spun the way home with a total distance of 75km. Like I said, the distance I had been riding is on the decline. I sure hope I can get back my mileage soon. After all, I do plan to do an ironman next year.

Tomorrow will be a 15km run in preparation for next week’s Newton 30. Hopefully I will get a timing this time round. Last year I didnt get an official time because the mat didnt detect my chip. Andrew will be running with me. The plan is a 5min pace. Legs, do not fail me!

NorthFace 100 Duo Results

For almost 2 months, I had a stiff neck and spinal pain near the shoulder blades. Quality of life was affected but I lived with it because I was hoping it would go away on its own. But it never did. In fact it got worse. On my cycling trips, I could hardly look over my shoulder to check on the traffic behind me. And when I got off the bike, the shoulder blades would hurt. During the last Desaru ride, it was so bad that my finger tips went numbed after riding. I thought it was the road riding problem.

Finally decided on a visit to the chiropractor. It was magical, with some twists of the spine and the neck, the pain went off! To think that I actually lived with this for almost 2 months and left it to chance. Sometimes we just have to trust the experts, although I do know that chiropractors are looked upon quite skeptically. Well, this time round, it did work for me.

***

The Nortface 100 duo was filled with controversies and as usual, loads of complaints from the locals. Regardless, I was pleasantly surprised that I was ranked third among all the individual timings, at 6:14:10. But notice the times below, that between 2nd and 3rd. was more than 1:15! And the resason was, 28 other blokes who were faster than me but missed the 1st timing mat. However, even with the inclusion of these guys, that will put me at 31st position and still top 10% for the grueling race.

1 108 MARK WILLIAMS F1 RUNENRS MEN TEAM 1   GBR 01:10:19 01:10:07 02:06:06 04:26:32
2 107 TAN SWEE TIONG F1 RUNENRS MEN TEAM 1  SIN 01:10:07 01:10:17 02:37:43 04:58:07
3 127 TEO HUI KOON                          SIN 01:44:32 01:37:46 02:51:52 06:14:10

A lesson learnt for those podium wannabes, what my running mentor, Andrew, said: even if you are not as fast as the elite runners, in a race JUST RUN! Because you wouldnt know what would happen in the race. As for this instance, runners can miss the mat and miss out of the top position and a newbie runner like me came in 3rd. And a win is a win, regardless what had happened to the elites. The results will stand. So yes, for this round, I was 3rd with a no-where-near-elite time! This “podium” finish was hilarious I must agree.

Taper Before TNF 100 Duo

A beautiful hue just before day break. Not very often do I catch a glimpse of day break and still have the phone with me. It was one of those rare mornings. The amber didnt last very long. Couple of minutes later, it was all gone.

I hardly did anything last week besides my Tuesday track session which comprised of 6×1.6km run at 1:48 per 400m. Thats a 4:30 pace 6 times over with about 2:45 recovery in between. Track sessions had gone up with distance and yet remained the same pace. The idea was to get the body used to running at the pace for a longer duration. Cool! I would never have thought I would be able to do this.

Wedneday was a wash out and bike was no go. Planned to spin on trainer but by the time I got back, I was just too lazy. Thursday onwards was no run because of The NorthFace 100. So wanted to swim for both days. In the end, I only did 400m warm up, 500m pull buoy drills and 100m warm down. This aint good. Laziness in swimming will bite me in the butt in future. I will have to kick start my training schedule again.

AFTER I recover from the 50km jog.

I still have Newton 30 to do. It will be a time trial for December’s marathon. I suspect I wont recover in time to have a good go at the 30km. Downtime this week. Next week will be reduced mileage from nothing done this week? Oh well, lets see how my legs will hold up then.

The NorthFace 100 Duo

Last year I did my 1st ever trail run race with a lady colleague of mine over over 25km, in the 50km duo. With some waiting and managed a 3:19. And I told myself that I will try the 100km duo this year to test my physical limits and my grit.

And so I did. Partner was Enrico this time.

Race started at 8 am. Strategy was simple:

1) to go easy for the 1st 30km and pick up pace after that;

2) walk up all steep slopes that would be too difficult to even walk or slow jog up.

Took me a long time to clear the 1st 7km even but I stuck to my guns because I didnt want to blow everything up. I was feeling comfortable and passing runners still. By then, the fast blokes were all ahead already. Temperature was still bearable in the forested area though humid still.

The run, or should I call it a jog, brought me to places I had never been to in my life, though I lived in Singapore all my life. Zheng Hua Park for one. I never expected Singapore to have a park that is so overun by trails and forest! It was a part of wild Singapore I never expected us to have – excluding the army training ground that I had been before, and Bt Timah reserve, of course. And there were civilians walking through the area in the late morning heat, as part of their exploratory regime I suppose?

Signage could have been better at Zheng Hua I must say. Couple of times I had to stop to guess the direction when it forked, together with some other runners. I even saw some runners emerged from the forest out of another beaten track because they took a wrong turn somewhere. Otherwise, I thought the aid stations were sufficient and run was well organised. After all, do we expect anything lesser from The North Face?

After Zheng Hua Park, was an incline outside Mandai Zoo, into Sembawang Park Connector and into the notorious army training area, Lorong Asrama. By this time, it was already about 3 hours into the run. That means about 11am and the sun was shining mercilessly. The whole route was unsheltered and more than two thirds gravel path. Not quite rolling and yet not flat. Yes, Lorong Asrama indeed lived up to its name. Hill 265 was a hill I climbed when I was a recruit in the army. There I was a the base, all cooked up and waiting to walk up. At the base was also an aid station that provided us with towels soaked with ice cold water, as if telling us to be prepared for the journey ahead. Readied myself after the cold water I gave up the towel – yeah, didnt even want the extra load with me – and continued on my journey again.

That was about 30km mark already? And you guessed it, I was in no shape to pick up speed, if anything, I slowed down. The strategy failed. In any case, I would have crashed and burned even earlier if I had gone in harder at the start. Leaving some energy behind was good to bring me home. And bring me home my legs did. They complained and they whined but they went on nonetheless. For a few times, I had momentary signs of incoming headache but I quickly hydrated and gelled up and they went off. Nailed nutrition pretty well too and kept to the amount for the whole race.

At the end of the whole race, I was still walking, albeit with a slight limp. I even managed to do a recovery walk from Macritchie back home in the heat. Took me a whole 45min to walk a short just under 3km distance.

When I was resting at home, many things crossed my mind. My legs felt as if I had gone through an ironman, except that the run was a shorter race. I dont even hurt after a 70.3 nor the megatri I did recently! In an ironman, I suppose it plays more mind games because it is a longer race. I have gotten the temptation to call it quits before. But throughout this run, quitting never crossed my mind. All I did was to keep moving at every opportunity I could, flats, slight inclines. I only stopped to fuel up and douse myself with water, while keeping my shoes dry. Yes, also, alternate the feet and keep moving forward was the mindset. And magically the distance markers got more encouraging.  I knew I was making good progress when I exited Lorong Asrama. After all, I sensibly expected myself to complete it in 6.5-7hrs, though I wanted to do fairy tale end of 6hr flat. I also concluded that the ironman experiences had given me a stronger mindset for the run and also helped me in planning my nutrition. And without a doubt, Andrew had helped me become a better runner now even with 3 main runs a week, signifying that the FIRST principles do work as well.

6:14 was how long I took to get back. Surprised? Yes. Satisfied? Definitely! I was hoping for an early 6hr finish and I did just that. Enrico did a 6:51 after running an extra 2km because of poor direction signage and helping some guys at aid station. But more importantly, both of us FINISHED the race!

Now that I qualify for TNF 100 Solo in 2012 or 2013 (qualification is a sub 7 hour for TNF 100 Duo that preceeded at most 2 years), my mind is toying with the idea already. The only way I will do it is to push my endurance level to the next level, but IF I ever do it, I will definitely want to prepare for it.

Will I or will I not? That remains to be seen.

*Photo credits: Joe Cheung and David Ong

Kona 2011

I was hoping for Craig Alexander aka Crowie to win his 3rd world championships and he did! Not only did he win it, he broke the race record with a time of 8:03:56. Last year he came in a disappointing fourth, with the best run then.

For the ladies race, I was expecting Chrissie Wellington to blow it away although I read in her tweet that she suffered a crash while training a week back. There were no elaborations about the severity of her injuries through her subsequent tweets but there were some pictures in her blog. And as it turned out, she had to run her way to the crowning of her 4th world championship with a time of 8:55:08 since 2007, with a no show in 2010 due to bad illness. I saw the live video between her run and Mirinda Carfrae’s aka Rinny blistering pace and was worried that the latter would overtake at the last minute, despite the commentator saying it wouldn’t happen as long as the world champion continue at her pace. I must say that I totally enjoyed the footage! The grit and determination in both athlete’s faces and body language, especially from Rinny, was such an inspiration!

***

Before I went for the Charity Swim in the afternoon today, I did a 20 km run with my mentor. Was meant to be a reduction mileage in preparation for The North Face 100 km duo but he said it had to be a faster paced one. He decided to run with me for this round as my pacer. Frankly, 5:30 is too easy a pace for him. I ran the 1st half in 53:45 and negative split the return in 51:06. 1:44:59 in total. A PB again! A tougher terrain than running track because of the rolling slopes in the middle of the run.

Encouraging words from Andrew: training was still ongoing over the past week and an almost 100 km bike on Saturday, a 1:45 for 20 km showed that I was in good form for a good marathon at the end of the year. By good, it is meant to be a 4 hr run by December.

SAFRA organised a charity swim meant to raise funds for disabled athletes from Singapore Disability Sports Council (SDSC). The target was 5000 laps. Our Trifam Monday Night Swim pledged a total of 2200 but some went beyond and clocked over 2700 laps. I pledged 100 laps (5km) and that will be the longest I have even done in my life. Even at training sessions for ironman, the furthest I had gone was just over 4.7km. Swim lanes were crowded with all types of swimmers and was congested at many times. After lunch, we filled a lane and had a good time taking loads of pictures with Dennis’ waterproof camera. When I left in the afternoon, I heard number of laps swam in total was over 7000! Great stuff!

*Photo credits: Dennis Quek

A Good Week’s Worth of Training

Tuesday speed work. 8 x 1.2km with average 2:40 recovery in between. Completed the 1.2km laps in 5:15, 5:13, 5:14, 5:18, 5:18, 5:21, 5:18, 5:17. Worked out to be sub 4:25 pace. Not too bad a run.

Wednesday bike. Did a spin on my roadie at Coastal. Again it was a headwind day throughout the loop. I was riding nice and easy, cruising along but the headwind slowed me down a lot. Andrew warned me not to go out with a hard session. Dehydrated as well, decided to end it at 45km. Not quite what I would have wanted to do on a bike session but it will have to do.

Thursday was totally washed out and I took the risk to still set out in the wet evening for a 10km + 5km tempo run, with a 3min recovery. It was lightning streaked during the entire 10km run and frankly was quite worried. A very silly risk I had taken but I did want to spend some time home with my kids at night. Not wise definitely and will not encourage anybody doing this. And hopefully I wont do it again. Suppose to run a 5:20 pace for the 1st 10km followed by a 5min pace for the next 5km. In the end, due to the extremely cool weather, I ran a 50:52 and 25:11 respectively, not done on the track but out and back Thomson Road. Just couldnt get my legs to fire during the last 3km after having spent all the energy doing the faster than expected 1st 10km.

What I did notice was that with Craig’s sessions, I was able to do all 3 disciplines with not too much problems in a week. And I think the reason was simple: I had to complete all 3 disciplines in the ironman. But with Andrew, slightly different expectations because he is after all building me up for a faster run at just the marathon. In fact, the 3 run sessions are killing me on the swim and bike recently. Am riding with the ironman blokes this Saturday and I am not expecting myself to go on a hard session, ability wise or desire to do so, because I have to conserve to run a good 20km on Sunday morning. Andrew is planning to run with me and I kind of think he is going to push up the pace…

Friday was washed out but a good thing as I had planned not to swim already. I knew my work was going to get me back late. In any case, I have Charity Swim coming up on Sunday. Pledged a total of 100laps and will be joined by 29 others from the Monday Swim group. That will be my swim for the week then.

Spent the good part of the morning riding with some of the blokes. All 6 of us from all walks of life and from all age groups. 2 preparing for Ironman Western Australia and 3 veterans. And 1 with no triathlon to take part in for the rest of the year – yours truly. Purely aerobic ride with some heart jerking bursts throughout the 100km that I did. For the past 3 years, I have been riding mostly on my own but recently have been trying to ride with more friends and play catch up. Today was an easy spin through with some attempts to chase down the true roadies. And true enough, met with a ego too big for his bike who refused to let me overtake. Oh well, still ate my dirt in the end. What a bloke!