Hills & Stairs

It was a nice but rather humid evening, made more so by the afternoon rains that went away by 5pm. A large group of us had gathered, joined by a few more new members, all ready to tackle the weekly hill intervals + staircase training at SAFRA MF.

I always take these hill repeats as a 'fat-burning' exercise, rather than as part of training for a specific run.....inadvertently my endurance and conditioning have improved because of the hard workouts. We did a warm up run along Henderson Road and then went up Morse Road. Chatted with lcpsimon about the upcoming MF Challenge, the recent adiRUNs... good to have more running kakis join the MF family.

As usual, I started up the MF loop cautiously, not wanting to expend myself too early. Did the first loop in about 8:30min. Did the next 3 loops at around 8:15min, and took a quick drink on top of the 4th loop. The night was warm, and I perspired profusely. After the 5th loop, we exited to the staircase by the side of the hill, and proceeded to do 3 sets of stairs climb. The faster ones were jogging up the stairs...but me, I was just taking 'baby' steps, walking up and down, with pauses in between sets to take a breather. Such stairs exercises are good for building up cardiac strength, in addition to strengthening the quads and calves. By the third set, I could feel my calves trembling...not with excitement of course...haha.

Did a slow job back to the ClubHouse, and my claves almost got cramped up....showed that it was a hard workout for me....I was satisfied. Handed in my MF Challenge (May 27) forms to Peter, and passed Hoho his Mizuno T-Shirt. Received my 'chio' SAFRA Running Club singlet...courtesy of Saucony...nice. Went to ABC for makan, and was disappointed that the famous fried hokkien mee was closed....had $4 'boat' porridge which came with very little ingredients....not good value at all...should have gone for 'Hong Zhao Chi' mee sua instead....haha