2015 APBIM HM Training Journal (17 wk to go)

After getting the habit to write this journal weekly, I just realized that the year end APBIM is around the corner, mere 17 weeks to go.  When I started my training plan, I was thinking to myself that I had prepared a few weeks ahead of time, ie. 20 weeks instead of typically 16 weeks.  However, after next week, it would be just 16 weeks to go.

For this week, I again stressed myself to run 3 days continuously.  But the pace is slower and slower.  I don't really worry about this because my main point is to be able run.  The reason for running slower and slower is because I experienced acute pain on my tight muscle after 2 days of easy run on Tuesday and Wednesday.  However, since I felt that it was not that serious, I continued to run on Thursday and rest for Friday and Saturday before the 5.5km fun run on Sunday.

The pain became more serious, I even felt pain while sitting on a chair in Saturday morning.  Anyway, I took multi-vitamin in the morning to see if it helped.  Luckily, in the afternoon of Saturday, the pain disappeared.  I was just hoping that I could join the run the next day.  With this minor incident, I was just targeting to finish the 5.5km with 6 mins pace.  I told myself that I need to be able to control myself because I recently will stress myself too much during the race.

Since this is just a 5.5km fun run with no prize, I didn't notice any serious runners around.  So, I was in quite in front before the run started.  Unfortunately, my GPS watch wasn't able to detect a strong GPS signal and thus I have to run by feel.

I was running slow (I guess), paying attention on my leg to see if I felt any sign of muscle pain.
Luckily, after around 1~2km of slow run, it turned out to be OK and thus I just increased my pace.  It was the uphill stretch when I increased the pace and managed to overtook a few runners.  When I was running back after the U-turn, at the downhill stretch, I just increased my speed, while paying attention on my leg.  It turned out that I didn't feel any discomfort downhill with that speed.  However, after a few minutes, I experienced pain at side of my abdomen, like previous race.  So, I decided to slow down a bit until the pain went away.

Around 1km to go, as I didn't feel the pain anymore, I slowly increased my pace.  Lastly, I finished the run with 28m42s.  This translates to 5:14"/km of pace, which is one of the fastest for around 5km route.  I am very happy with this results even with an uphill stretch.

Fuel: To try out different method of fueling before the race, I decided to try taking Yogurt before the fun run.  So, 1 hour before the run, while driving to the destination, I took ~100gm of Yogurt (127kcal according to the label).  At the same time, I drank 500ml of water mixed with isotonic drink.  Luckily, my stomach was taking this OK.  I just lined up to pass urine around 15 mins before the run started.

Overall for the week, I logged slightly more than 20km, which is what I targeted in my plan.  Furthermore, I managed to stress myself with 3 days run continuously.  I will do that again the following week to get myself comfortable with 3 days run with total mileage of around 15km.

2015 APBIM HM Training Journal (18 wk to go)

This is not a smooth week to meet the target mileage.  Eventually, I only able to log 18km instead of 21.5km in my plan.  Anyway, I will take this as a pull in of recovery week from next week.

I just read an article that suggested to group the training for every 3 weeks, ie. train hard for first two weeks and schedule the third week as recovery.  For some reasons, this seems to fit into my idea more.  Thus, I will revise my training plan to group into every 3 weeks, instead of every 4 weeks now.

Streak:  However, the main reason for me not able to meet this week's target mileage is because of this Streak!  I use a logging website which has "streak" in the overall training summary page.  The number in the column shows the longest accumulative mileage for 4 conservative days.  From the analysis, the last number shown was achieved in year 2013.  So, I just felt that the same number has been there for to long that I have to somehow break it!

So, after the Chung Ling Run on Saturday, which is not common for race day to fall on Saturday, I was in the mood to run again on Sunday morning.  Since Monday was holidays I ran again trying to break the "streak" record!  I felt a bit of pain at my lower leg after Monday run.  But because of the wish to break the record, I ran again on Tuesday.  At the end, I managed to have a new Streak record!  But my lower leg hurt a bit even when I walk.  In order to avoid me having the same crazy idea again in future, I decided to remove this number from the training summary page!

With the minor leg discomfort, I decided to delay my Thursday scheduled running day to Friday follow by another easy run on Saturday.  I just reduced the training mileage for both runs, monitoring the condition of my leg, and run slowly.  All my trainings this week were slower than 7"/km.  My training pace for the whole week is 7:14"/km while my normal weekly training pace was around 1 minute faster.  Anyway, I know now that if I slow down a lot, I can still log some mileage without stressing my leg too much.  I will try to increase my pace next week to be around 6"/km.

Fuel: From this week training, I know that 250ml of water before 5km run is not enough.  I increase the water intake to 500ml before the 5km run and it seems better, still not good enough.  I will increase the intake to 750ml before the run next week.


Conclusion: 

1. Run real slow if needed.
2. Need more than 500ml for early morning 5km run.
3. Group training into 3 weeks per group.

2015 APBIM HM Training Journal (19 wk to go)

less than 20 weeks to go for the year end HM again...

I joined the 10km Penang Chinese cross Country Run 2015 (Chung Ling Cross Country Run 2015) on Saturday.  As like before, this was not a very well organized run but with tons of lucky draw.  My finishing time was 5 mins longer than last year and I taught I was slow.  When I checked back my last year record, the distant was 1 km shorter last year.  So, I should be happy with this finishing time.  In fact, this is the 2nd fastest ~10km run that I had, not to mention the small uphill that the route has.

As I was inspired by my running sifu who won a medal (17th placing) in the run with 8mins faster than my finishing time, I dragged myself for a recovery run on Sunday morning.

The recovery run is really a recovery run with my average heart rate of only 138 bpm with average pace of 7:05 min/km.  I remember the last round I was running at this pace was either after injury or easy run at my high mileage week.  Anyway, I really felt very tired (not able to walk fast at all) the whole day.

With the additional recovery run, I was logging 22.7km for the whole week.  Hopefully, my body can still handle this with no injury moving forward.

2015 APBIM HM Training Journal (20 wk to go)

This is the second week of my structure training which I plan to log 20km this week with 4 day run.  However, I ended up just running 3 days due to my forgetfulness of bringing running shoes.

I made up the mileage on the next day with higher mileage.

Again, the whole week was run with my zero drop shoes.  So far so good!

My initial long run target was 8km but I ended up running up to 10km, which is good.  I just had on cup of water before the run.  However, at the end of run, I felt like I had a bit of de-hydration symptom due to my urine colour.  So, I will also monitor my intake of water so that I will not need to stop by toilet during the year end HM race, like I always been doing.

I will be joining another 10 km race next week.  Also due to my potential heavy work schedule, I might log lower mileage as I intended.  We'll see...