Hitting 20km per week

Coming to the end of the 1st month in 2014, I am following well with my training plan.  By this time, I should be logging 20km per week and I did.  20km/week is a special number to me.  I guess it was the target that I had since I started running seriously.

Since I started to run ~2+ years ago, out of 80 weeks that I recorded my mileage, only 16 weeks were with weekly mileage of more than 20km excluding the weeks with race.  Nothing magic, but this is a good start for the year.

As I read somewhere that optimum running mileage per week is between 10miles to 20 miles, my long term target is to run 30km/week while keeping 20km/week as minimum.  While achieving 30km/week, I am targeting to run 17km in the long run.  The 17km is chosen because I think it takes me 2 hours to run 17km.  Again, I read somewhere that running more than 2 hours continuously has no significant benefits in improving endurance.  Thus, 17km is my target now.

From my planning of 3 runs a week, achieving 17km will also bring me to 30km per week and then 80km per month.  Thus, all the goals aligned!  Amazing.

As I can achieve those target (probably end of June this year), I will consider myself to have the base of running and will work on improving my speed.  Once I can improve my speed, I will slowly increase my mileage to keep to 30mins run during weekday and 2 hours of long run during weekend.

Concluding 2013

2013 was not a smooth year for me in running.  At the beginning of the year, I was forced to slow down and stop running for 1 or 2 weeks due to "injury".  Then, in April, I was again not able to run for 1 week+ due to surgery.  However, I managed to join more races (short races thou) in 2013 than 2012 and able to improve my half marathon time very slightly in APBIM at the end of the year.

The "injury" that I experienced could be due to the fact that I keep pushing myself for speed on every run after I had the Garmin watch.  I kept on looking at my pace during the run and forcing myself to run faster.  Moreover, when I first felt pain, I continued to run in believing that running will make the pain go away!  After forcing myself to run even with pain, I was eventually not able to walk!  Because of that, I put focus on injury prevention instead of running with faster pace.

Changes that I have made throughout the year:-

1.  Keep to the 10% rule (almost).
2.  Focus on running form.  Instead of heavy heel stride, I am now practicing forefoot stride and doing running drill.
3.  Taking core exercise more seriously.  Focusing on back muscle and glute muscle.
4.  Warm up and cool down properly.  By doing cool down properly after every run, I can really see the impact.
5.  Listen to my body.  I stop listening to music during the run and pay attention to my running form and my breathing.  I don't push myself on every run but want to run very comfortable and feel great after the run.

My target for 2014:-

1.  Slowly increase my mileage to 80km per month for 5~6 months.  In 2012, I managed to have 5 months logging more than 60km/month and out of that the 4 months actually logging more than 80km/month; in 2013, I managed to have 5 months logging more than 60km/month but with only 2 months for more than 80km/month.  So, my running mileage is more inconsistent in 2012 than 2013.  So, I plan myself to be more consistent in 2014 with more months above 80km/month.
2.  Be able to have long run of at least 17km every week (almost) starting 2nd half of 2014.
3.  Increase 5% of speed.  After achieving the above 2 goals, I will target to increase 5% of my speed by end of the year, which should be around 6:30/km averagely in last few weeks of the year.
My long term goal is to be able to run at very old age and thus I will have to keep it slow and safe throughout the years.

 I will still participate in local races whenever possible and might be joining 2 HM if possible.