Revisit To Mount Faber & MR Trails This Week

Had the first evening of training with the SAFRA MF folks this week. A lot more runners are still not back to training yet, probably still resting, and getting busy with clearing their workload that had been put aside during the marathon season. This evening's run took us up to Mt. Faber by the reversed way, the Telok Blangah way, and requiring us to run approximately 3 loops round the Telok Blangah-HarbourFront roads. That will be about 15km, with at least a 1km upslope.

We chatted as we ran around Telok Blangah Way, mainly about the recent SCSM. Most agreed that marathon day was hot & humid, and that we could have prepared better with more conditioning as well as bringing along salt tablets....good lessons learnt. As I ran up the slopes of Mt. Faber, my breathing got heavier and it felt good to reach the top, seeing the brightly lit Christmas Tree (the largest in Singapore). We gathered for a while on top of the mountain, before dashing downslope all the way, and running 2 more loops around Telok Blangah. My body and legs felt good, and I felt fully recovered from the Marathon 2 Sundays ago. I am now ready to go for intervals training which starts on Thursday at Queenstown Stadium.

Distance Ran:15km ___Time:1hr23min____Pace:5:32min/km
Average HR:N/A___Max HR:N/A____KCal: 1,000 est.

Did very good tempo intervals at Queenstown Stadium on Thursday evening. Quite a good turnout. We rar 4km from Clubhouse at 7pm to Queenstown Stadium as a warmup. Once there, after a quick brief by trainer Ong (he was not running because of gout, but was there to overlook the training and shout out lap timings...very dedicated trainer at SAFRA MF). We did a total of 4 sets, 2km for 1st set, then 1.6km, then 800m and then 400m. Very interesting interval training, to be run at tempo race. I liked the variance. I did the following timings with 3min rest in between sets:
1st set, 2km @ 9min05sec
2nd set, 1.6km @ 6min51sec
3rd set, 800m @ 3min20sec
4th set, 400m @ 1min26sec
After that, did a 4km slow run back to ClubHouse. Did a good cooling down, followed by delicious laksa for dinner.

Distance Ran:12.8km ___Time:1hr est____KCal: 900 est.

SgRunners @ MacRitchie for the Ultra-Marathon Recce

Ended the week with a nice, cool 15km run on Sunday at the MacRitchie (MR) trails with SgRunners...DO, Tiwazz, TLR, leh-lio girl, Yulan, Cheow12, Violet, Sotong, Leica, cosmic_wind, superboy, balasing, 136, alvo and meteor.

It was 3 months since I ran these trails, and really appreciated the cool weather and damp, but not wet/soggy trails. Great company, who ran at a good reasonable pace together as a group. Ran an extra 5km to UPR revisiting the 2 steep slopes both ways, and enjoyed the nice scenery by the reservoir. We also covered the 10.5km lap recce for the MR25 Ultra-Marathon on Dec25. I am looking forward to complete 5 laps of that 10.5km route next week, and getting the nice finisher's T-Shirt.

Had good carbo-loading of prata n teh-tarik/milo dino at SMU Prata Place afterwards. Will be great to have leh-lio,Yulan, Leica & Sotong join us next time for makan. Hope to do an extension of this run sometime early 2006.

Distance Ran:15km ___Time:1hr40min est____KCal: 1,100 est