Mt Kinabalu Training Run

Revisited the Mt. Kinabalu Climbathon training this evening. Met up with Carmen, Lingam and Xavier at the SMU track and got the application form from Carmen. She mentioned that we will start a series of time trials from next monday to guage our current fitness levels, and also progress from then on.


A short sypnosis below:


20th Mt. Kinabalu International Climbathon 2006

Date : 30 September - 01 October 2006
Organiser : Sri Pelancongan Sabah Sdn Bhd
Venue : Kinabalu National Park, Sabah

Website : http://www.sabahtourism.com

The world’s toughest mountain race is in its 20th year running. Normally it takes two days to reach South East Asia’s highest peak (4,095.2m), but the runners take less than three hours. For the fifth year, Climbathon is the deciding race to determine the ultimate Champion of the 7-series Federation for Sport at Altitude’s (FSA) Skyrunning World Championship (racing on high altitude altitude).

The team is now about 15 members, and there is more room for fit and able runners/climbers, especially gals to join the program. A number of SgRunners were present at the training this evening...Kops. DO, Yulan, Spyfish and myself. Weishan will be joining us for the next training. We hope that Divey can join in too if she recovers from her injury soon, as well as possibly having Brokie, run3, astrogal, taz and other SgRunners join in this Climbathon training when their schedule allow them. I hear that training will move to Bishan Stadium from April.

The run started at 7.30pm, and because I was in a rush to get back, we ran a quicker pace as we entered 6th avenue, reaching up to 5min/km as we hit the upslopes. As we turned down to Holland Road, we continued the fast pace with Sim, Xavier, Mel, DO and myself in front. Yulan was not too far behind as well. The team then turned towards Farrer Road for their stairs-climbing training, whilst I, DO and mel ran towards Botanic Gardens and all the way back to SMU. We ran at a fast pace of about 4:45min/km estimated based on the effort and breathing I felt for that stretch. It was a good workout despite the not too long distance we ran. Based on my pedometer, we covered 10.4km in about 50min. hmm.. maybe I should set this time as a base for the 10km time trial next week, along the same route (still hoping to get them to do it at ECP, a safer route without traffic junctions and traffic...keeping fingers crossed).

Including the recovery run I have with Beverly on Monday, I have ran on consecutive days since Sunday....definitely not good, albeit all were short distances. I hope to get a rest after tomorrow's 15km recce run at SAFRA MF. I will try to run at a sight-seeing pace then, and enjoy some good conversations with my SAFRA running mates.