My Worst HM

I knew I wouldn't be running a good HM this time due to lack of training but I still hope that I could be in par with my 1st HM that I ran a few years back.  Unfortunately, this NTCTC 3-state HM turned out to be my worst HM since I first running.

Not only I clocked the slowest pace, but I felt terrible for the last 6 km.  I only managed to drag myself at close to 7 min/km pace after 16km.  After showing my results to a friend of mine, he mentioned that I ran too fast in the middle of the run, which could be true.  I was running at less than 6 min/km pace after 6km for 7km.  During that period of time my fastest lap was 5:38min/km.  Since I could run with around 5:40 min/km for my previous HM in Nov last year, I thought I could hold on to 5:40min/km pace until end of the race.

It turned out that I couldn't!  And it is due to lack of training.  Due to my busy work schedule and injury, my March training mileage was only 13km for the whole month.  Yes, 13km for the whole month!  Then, I put in some effort to look my training mileage prior to all the HM that I ran before.

Following is the summary:-

	Avg training mileage (km)
HM Pace	16W	8W	4W
1) 6:13/km	18.0	17.7	17.3
2) 6:06/km	17.5	17.5	13.2
3) 5:51/km	25.2	24.5	22.3
4) 5:58/km	16.2	17.6	17.1
5) 5:41/km	24.1	24.2	23.0
6) 6:16/km	14.8	11.8	10.6

Note: 16W, 8W, 4W are the number of weeks before the actual HM race.

From the summary, it shows that I need to train with average weekly mileage of 25 km for around 16 weeks prior to the HM to be able to achieve less than 6 min/km pace during the race.  As for the 6th HM that I ran for 6:16min/km, my average training mileage was only half (or less than half as approaching the race) comparing to my 5th (best so far) HM.  So, there's no short cut in training to get good results.

Looking forward, I can only run back my best HM results if I start with more than 25 km / week training now for 16 weeks.  So, the timing would be after Oct!

I hope I can keep to the training volume that I'd like to be.

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.

2015 APBIM HM Training Journal (9 wk to go)

The week before was one of the highest mileage so far, 28.7 km to be exact.  I didn't push myself further as I wanted to maintain around 30 km to let me body adopt to this mileage.

This week (the week that just passed) was supposed to be recovery week, sort of, with lower mileage.  However, I joined a training group which organized a group training at hilly route of Lintang Bukit Jambul.  I wanted to just run 5~6 km initially.  But due to training group and most of the people still running, I ended up running close to 10 km.  Since my pace was slow, I didn't feel that tired even after hiking up the Bukit Jambul Hill after the 10 km run.

I concluded the week with another 10 km race.  As expected, the race was not well organized and very crowded after the merging of 5 km runners together with 10 km running at the final 2+ km.  Anyway, I logged another good 10 km timing of 49:26" (5:14"/km pace) due to flat route!

I kind of able to know how to fuel myself this time as I had ~500ml of water before the run and 1 cup of Yogult.  I was OK throughout the race.

I think I am in a very good condition now, ie. feel no pain even running at this pace.  If I can keep to this performance and with my training plan until the APBIM, I think I can run my best HM this year.

Fuel:
1.  1 cup of Yogult with 75 kcal each 2 hours before the race.
2.  2 glasses of water 2 hours before the race with 500 ml of water mixed with 100+ carried with me until the race started.

2015 APBIM HM Training Journal (11 wk to go)

The HM race is getting closer with just 11 weeks to go.

I was taking this recovering week pretty OK by just sticking to my plan.  However, I went up to Air Itam Dam for my weekend long run, which is tougher than normal long run that I did recently.

I did a 4 loop run at the Dam with the pace of 6:12 mins/km.  When I checked back my record, this is actually my fastest pace at this distance.  And, the last time I ran at this distance was close to 3 years back in Dec 2012!  This results give me confidence that my training plan is on the right track!

All I need to do now is to stick to my training plan and avoid any injury.  However, due to my last week's decision to run 10km in the morning and still joined 8km race, which I was not able to run at slower pace, I kind of develop a muscular type of shin splint.  I felt the pain when I run fast (not in easy run pace).  So, for the next few weeks, I will have to keep an eye on this by keeping my pace slow to avoid worsening of the issue.

Keeping my fingers cross, hopefully I can stick to my training plan and run my best HM at the end of the year.

2015 APBIM HM Training Journal (12 wk to go)

Looking back into last week training, my running mileage is higher than what I planned.  I hope things will turn out to be good.

Due to serious haze during my training day, I had to skip one day of training.  In order to make up the mileage, I miscalculated and ended up logging a higher mileage, ie. 29.5km instead of 25km.

In order to challenge myself, I purposely did a so-called "back-to-back" run in the morning and then participated in the 8km race at night.  As I heard that army training will be to run 10km in the morning and than 10km in the afternoon.  So, I just wanted to try it out!

As I was planning to run at slow pace during the night race, I just couldn't held myself but to push little by little to finish the race with the pace of 5:42"/km despite the little hilly route.  During the race I had to remind myself to slow down a few times as I felt that I was running too fast and I didn't want to hurt myself.  I did walk up the toughest hill thou.

I was doing OK at the race and finished with a strong kick.

The consequences... I wasn't really able to run the next morning!  Other than that, everything seems to be normal.

As plan, next week will be a recovery week which I plan to just log some 20~22km.

2015 APBIM HM Training Journal (13 wk to go)

It is getting close to APBIM 2015.  Just 90 days to go.

After taking last week as recovery week, which I logged only 16km, I managed to log 25km this week.  This meets my original goal of 24km.  This weekly mileage also is a 10% increased from my previous training week, the week before last week.  I will pay attention to see if my leg can handle this increase or not.

My long run for this week was 12km.  This is also my 1st run more than 10km after the mid Jun HM.  As I didn't run at a fast pace, I can still handle this quite well except that I felt hungry after 10km.

Before the weekend long run, I just had around 500ml of plain water and nothing else.

Since I will take on 8km race end of the week, in order not to put myself into injury, I will not have long run but to have 5km the day before the 8km race.

2015 APBIM HM Training Journal (15 wk to go)

Since I participated in the race on Sunday, I had a bit of reserved in my weekday training, not doing as high mileage as I could.  This is because I was hoping that the Sunday 10km race could make up the mileage.  As most of the races that I joined before, the actual race distance for this one is slightly shorter than the intended.

Hence, my total mileage this week was around 1 km shorter than what I put in the training plan.  But with the faster speed during the race, ie. higher intensity, the actual training effort is higher than last week.

As for the 10 km race, BM Run, this is the fastest 10 km time that I had.  I completed the 10 km run (9.9 km recorded by my Garmin) in 51:33 mins, which is 5:14 min/km.  Before this, the fastest 10 km run was with pace of 5:18 mins/km, which I recorded in Nov 2014 during the Tanjung 10 km Run.  With this results, I turned out to be in 20th placing in my category, Veteran!  This is possible due to no cash prize given to the top winners and thus not able to attract a lot of fast runners to join this race!  Good for me but unfortunately, the prizes are only given from 1st to 15th placing!

Fuel:
1.  2 bottles of Yogurt that has 105kcal each.
2.  1 little of water but feel like need to go to toilet after around 6km!  So, need to reduce.

2015 APBIM HM Training Journal (16 wk to go)

Counting down to APBIM and it is only 16 weeks to go.  I still do not have very high confidence that I can follow the training plan that I put up with.  However, I will definitely try to follow as much as I can without causing any injury.

Having a training plan is definitely good.  It is because of the training plan, with my target mileage of 22km last week that I will adjust my training time to ensure that I can meet it.

I even ran 2 nights after work back to back in order to make up for my busy schedule on Saturday.

Nothing extra-ordinary last week but to be still able to stick to my training plan so far after 5 weeks.

Way to go!

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...

2015 APBIM HM Training Journal (21 wk to go)

After having my worst HM 2 weeks ago, I just happened to have a chance to have a quick look at a fellow runner's racing report.  In the report, he summarized the 10 weeks training that he had before each race and conclude the effectiveness of the training.  As he put in his words, if you keep on doing the same thing, your performance will actually degrade over time due to age!

So, I decided to so something similar, by recording my training before the HM race and make conclusion to see what to improve next!

The next HM that I will joining is APBIM in Nov.  So, I have drafted out the training plan, which I still put priority in increasing mileage slowly.  With my plan now, I am not able to run as much mileage as last year.  So, my target for this year is to match last year targeted finishing time, ie. 2:03!

After starting up again last week, I just plan to have 15km this week.  In terms of mileage, I am logging 17km.  However, I felt a bit of pain at the ball of my right foot after the 1st run of the week.  I sometimes had this problem on and off after I tried to change to forefoot landing.  I always felt that this is due to the normal running shoes that I have because I don't have this problem with zero drop running shoes.  I remember I had the same problem while I was doing the high mileage training and I had to cut down my training for a bit to prevent the situation got worse.  So, this time, I will try to use zero drop shoes for all my run!

Overall for this week, although I just had 5km run during weekend, but I was very tired after the run.  Anyway, no issue at all to beat my target for this week and without injury.

A good start to me.