Road To Phuket Marathon: 8 weeks to go

Tuesday 18/4: It rained heavy inthe afternoon, just prior to my fortnightly intervals training with the MF team. Another good turnout for the evening's workout as we have the fast gals Eileen, Claire, Lai Chee coming back from their respective ninja training and overseas races. Alvin, Dennis and some new friends joined in too, including Sagolene's hubby. Ricci and Adam too came back from overseas biz trips.

We did a 4km jog as warm-up to Queenstown Stadium. I took the opportunity to chat a bit with Alan Chao, Claire, Lai Chee, Eileen, Foo as we ran a slightly faster pace. I planned to run at a comfortable pace, not wanting to overstrain myself ahead of my Climabathon stair-climb time trial on Wed. I did 4sets as follows:
1.6km - 6:52min
1.6km - 6:44min
800m - 3:07min
800m - 3:17min
400m - Skipped
400m - Skipped

I enjoyed the hard workout. I skipped the last 2 sets of 400m to play safe. I had a good 4km run back to ClubHouse with wee san, Jaime, Adam and yean. ws did a nice paced run back, and it seems that she is recovering from her injury very well. I was feeling good since I did not leave everything at the tracks, so the usually tiring first km back was ok. Heh, another great workout in nice cool weather.....I still think I should have longer interval sets instead of the 400m sets.... Heard from Sim (Climbathon team) that he does 4 sets of 4km intervals at 4min/km pace with a 1km recovery jog.... interesting..I think I should do a 3 sets of 3km intervals at 4:30min/km pace? Well...


Wednesday 18/4: It was fine weather as I went for the MK Climabathon stair-climb time trial at Toa Payoh 40-storey HDB Block. Most of us arrived before 7pm, along with Hamidah, Carmen and Lingam, the NTUC organizers. Without much ado, we started the 3 sets of 40 storey climb up and down. I started off slowly behind most of the team, with Xavier with me mostly. I climbed taking double-steps, and did that for the 40-floor first set in 6:40min. Took the adjoining flight of stairs down. I climbed down a lot slower as I was wary of my knees, and did about 5min. The second set up got tougher, and I went up with Xavier in about 6min, somewhat faster than the first set. Xavier commented the pace wast fast for training, as other training teams normally do that in about 7min. On the stairs down, my legs felt wobbly, and I asked Xavier to push ahead. The third and final set was tough, but I still managed to push on using double steps. Overtook Rolanad at about the 10th floor, and never quite looked back. Met Lingam at the top, after interspersing with single steps from 20-30floors. I went down a lot faster for the final set and finished the whole time trial in 35min50sec. Not fast, but I was glad I managed to maintain pace. There's another training session this Friday, and we will be trying out our sizes for the Climbathon gear...interesting to see how it looks like.


Thursday 19/4: Went down for the Nike Shoe Trialing at Running Lab. Tried on the new Nike Air Pegasus for good measure. There was a record turnout of runners, about 40 of us. Divey, Bee Leng, IMD, Dasher, Hedgehog, SV, VRP gals were amongst those that I am familiar with. We took off along the usual 10km Esplanade, Kallang River route. It was a nice night for running. My quads and calves were aching from the previous night's stairs climb. I was running slower, taking time to feel the new Nike Air Pegasus, and also catching up with my running friends. Finished the run in about an hour, and had a good cool-down stretching session led by Eddie. The Pegasus was the best Nike runners I have tried thus far, still it doesn't feel as snug as cushiony as my Cumulus and Adizero. Bought a pair of Ultimax Ironman socks as recommended by Divey...looking forward to try it for this Saturday's run. Had a nice dinner of sliced-fish hor fun with a group of 13, quite a number took the yummy sting-ray rice topped with an egg....wow, I must try that the next time.