Concluding 2014 (4th year of running)

Looking back the whole 2014, it seems to be a very fulfilling year!  For one, I wasn't being forced to stop running for weeks due to injury.  I experienced some pain at the bottom of my foot, which I just rest for a few days to maybe a week and I was back in running again.  This is a good sign.
With this, I managed to log more than 80km per month for 9 months consecutively until the APBIM.  Although I didn't train for speed this year, with the increase of mileage, I was able to improve my race time to be less than 6min/km for all the races (shorter than HM) that I joined through the year.  Even with HM in APBIM, I was running at the pace of 5:51min/km and "officially" enter the sub-2 category for HM (although I still think that the race course is 1km shorter)!

Achievement for 2014:-

1. Joined 9 races throughout the year.  Too many, I think.  I will have to cut it down.
2. Completed all the races with less than 6 min/km pace with best pace for 10km at 5:18min/km.
3. Started to join out of town race: the NTCRC Run and Taiping Run.
4. Surprisingly achieving sub-2 in my APBIM HM race.
5. Managed to log more than 80km per month for 9 months throughout the year.
6. Achieving more than 17km for long run starting July.  One in July, One in August and 3 in Sep before going back to One in Oct due to races.  I think at this point, I can only handle more than 17km long run every 2 weeks (instead of every week).
7. Managed to find my "max" heart rate due to the fact that I started to wear heart beat monitoring during race.  My max heart rate recorded was 196 bpm (instead of 188 bpm that I tested it out myself).  The new max heart rate was recorded during the Taiping Run almost at the top of uphill run.  So, I have to re-define my heart rate training zone again!
8. Bought myself a footpod and be able to monitor my recent running cadence of 174 to 180 per min.

Overall, the high mileage training was accomplished with well-plan training plan "almost" throughout a the whole year.  Thus, I will continue to work on the training plan in the coming year.


My plan for 2015:-

1. Work on the speed.  Focus on quality of training without increasing my time spend on running.
2. Targeting to have 2 hour long run every other week (and hopefully make it to every week).
3. Increase my weekday mileage to at least 5km per run or at least 30 mins.
4. Join less races.  Only focus on HM locally, or charity race, or out-of-town good race.  Something like 5~6 races should be good enough.

However, for some reasons, the motivation of running is lower recently.  I do not know the reason, which might be due to stress at work!  I hope I can overcome this in a few months time once I come out with training plan again!