The race is getting closer and closer. Unfortunately, more and more surprises arose when the time is closer.
Haze situation was terrible the week before. I just had to cut down my running during that week. I was just logging 10km instead of 20km as what I initially planned. Luckily, the situation was getting better the past few days and I managed to stick to my plan. However, next week could be another tough week to keep to my training plan due to work related commitment. I'll see.
Although I managed to log 30km this week as planned, but I felt very tired for my long run of 15km.
At the beginning of the long run, I was just running at the pace of 7+mins/km. I was thinking that I was running at the pace of 6:30 mins/km but my watch showed me that I was close to 1 min/km slower than I thought. I didn't put in effort to increase the pace and just let it be.
As usual, my pace slowly increased after 2km. However, it was just 6:30mins/km and I felt that I was running at 6 mins/km! Also, my heart rate was not as high as what I felt too. So, I guess, it is the tiredness that causing this. Only at around 12km that the running feeling was back. And, the pace was just 6 mins/km instead of 5:30 mins/km that I'd like it to be.
I wasn't sure what caused me to feel that way and I just blamed it to tiredness. As I only logged 10km the week before and it is hard to explain the reason of tiredness also. If it wasn't the mileage, these are a few more reasons that might cause the tiredness for the weekend long run:-
(1) 1 hour of exercise through stationary bike on Monday. Due to haze on Monday, I used stationary bicycle for exercise instead of running.
(2) I had a 10km run on Tuesday. As I didn't had any run on Monday and wasn't sure if haze would come back the next day, I ran for 10 km after work instead of typical 5 km (or occasionally 7.5 km) on Tuesday.
(3) I had "tempo run" of 5 km on Thursday including warm up and cool down. In fact, the actual run at "tempo" speed was just 2.5~3 km. Normally, I will not have "tempo" or "interval" training 2 days after a 10 km run followed by another more than 10 km or long run.
(4) I started the long run at around 5 am (due to other commitment) instead of typically close to 7 am. I slept earlier thou!
Would it be those reasons causing my tiredness of long run on Saturday morning? I am not sure. Fortunately, I didn't feel any pain or discomfort after the long run. That is good!
Fuel:-
1. 2 glasses of water before the 15 km long run.
2. 1 cup of Yogult (153 kcal) before the run.
3. Drink around 1 glass of water mixed with 100+ at 10 km.
I think this fueling strategy is good for me for 10+ km run.
As the race is just 6 weeks away, I just have to carefully increases my mileage to avoid injury. In terms of total mileage, I think I would logged more than last year. However, in terms of speed during training, I still not able to match last year's training speed. Also, I reached 15 km long run last year 1 month earlier than this year! We'll see how it goes during the race this year!
