PBIM HM with Garmin Training Plan

 This is the running post agan after 4 years.  Mainly due to lack of event that I joined in 2019 and no event organized during the year of 2020 and 2021 due to COVID.  Starting 2022, running event started again.

However, in 2021, only virtual running events were being organized.  For the last 2~3 Virtual HM, I find it harder and hard to complete it.  Thus, I decided to follow a free trainng plan.  Garmin Training plan was chosen since I am using Garmin watch.

Throughout the whole training plan, I did follow more than 90% of the training, except for cross training.  The training that I skipped was due to either raining or personal engagement.  Out of 80 trainings, only 2 activities that I skipped due to personal reason.

By following Garmin Training plan, I managed to increase my weekly mileage to more than 30km without serious pain.  Previously, when I run on myself, whenever I reached weekly mileage of 20km, I started to feel pain at my leg.

There are 2 main differences between the training plan and I run by myseft.  Firstly, the training plan ask for cool down (walk) of 5~10 mins after each training session that I didn't do that when I run myself.  Secondly, there are variety of running style, Interval, Easy, etc in Garmin Training Plan while I always run at almost the same pace when I run myself.  These are the 2 main different that I am able to log more than 30km per week, I think.

Although I am not able to improve my time after joining the Garmin Training Plan, but I didn't feel out of breath by running with this pace, not like a few HMs before.  I guess this is the improvement from the plan.

Following is the HR vs Pace for HM from my available data, ie. 10.6sec/km improvement for 5s increase in HR.

As for this particular run, the pace vs HR is as follow.

2015 APBIM HM Training Journal (2 wk to go)

Finally, this training session has come to final 2 weeks.

Because of this journal, I am able to keep to my training schedule most of the time, except some unavoidable situation.

After completing the last 30km per week the past week, the coming week is taper week.

I just plan to run 20km easy run this week before my HM in the coming week.

The most important gain from this session of training is my fueling strategy.  I should be able to move from here.

Right after this HM, I will have to increase my weekly mileage to 30km per week.

2015 APBIM HM Training Journal (3 wk to go)

Again, due to haze situation, I just logged 10km instead of 20km the week before as I planned earlier.  My favoutie Tanjung 10km Run was canceled due to haze condition and only left with Rock to Rock Run on Sunday.  That was my 10km mileage last week.  Although I ran 2 minutes faster, but I pushed myself too hard that I had to slow down the last 3km.  At the end of the run, I met a 67 year old runner who ran a very impressive 61 mins.

Luckily, I can still log 30km the week before last and make the 30km weekly mileage consecutively.

As haze condition improved, I managed to log 30km this week as plan.

However, as 3 weeks ago, the long run this week was not as fast as I'd like to be.  I guess I have to train my body to adopt to this stress for a long time before I can continue to increase the mileage.

As before, I had Yogult before the run and stop to walk after 10km for drink.  I didn't feel hungry throughout the whole long run.

I will try 20km next week as plan and that would be the last training before the taper week after that.

Until now, I still feel that I had a better preparation for HM last year!  

2015 APBIM HM Training Journal (6 wk to go)

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!

2015 APBIM HM Training Journal (8 wk to go)

This weekly (sort of) update can really make me feel the time pressure.  At least, it makes me alert that the race is approaching and I'd better try hard to stick to my training plan.

There are 3 new records for the week that just past.

Firstly, this is the 1st time I tried off road running.  Joining the group training and I jogged on trail road (mostly sand) for around 10km.  I ended the training with around 2km of normal road.  This marks as my slowest run for the last 3 years, ie. with the pace of 7:40 mins/km.  Could it be the slow jog or the trail road, I experienced muscle soreness after the run.  Luckily, the soreness just lasted for  a day for me to be able to run with targeted HM pace 2 days after that.

Secondly, I followed (and modified) Jeff's training plan found in RunKeeper to run 5km at HM pace after the 5km easy run and ended with 2.5km of easy run again.

Thirdly, this is the first week I logged a weekly mileage of 30km (29.9km to be exact) during this 20wk of training plan.

Fuel:-
1.  2 glasses of water before the 12.5km run.
2.  1 cup of Yogult (75 kcal) before the run.
3.  1 cup of Yogult (153kcal) after the run.
Overall, I felt satisfactory with the above fueling strategy.