Received my training plan for the next two weeks and happy to note that there'll be more focus on swimming and cycling. The next targets to take part in the Bangkok marathon on Nov 23 and SCSM on Dec 7 are still in place, so LSD runs will continue. For this week, the key objective is to improve swim technique and get used to longer distances on the bike.
Had to move my schedule around a little, so went for a swim today. Here're the drills:
• Visualization: “I am a sheet of paper…floating in the water”. Get to feel as relaxed as possible.
• First drill: Butt up with only leg but no arm motion. Key: press down the chest to get the legs to come out behind! Breathe by looking up to the front. Do this at least 6 lengths of the pool, taking as much break as you need between consecutive sets.
• Second drill: Swim on side: Start off kicking as per above; then pull back your right arm and keep it to your side. Rotate to your left side of the body and kick along. When breathing, minimize lifting of the head by turning to the side for air.
• Aim to do 4 lengths for each side.
I managed to complete 6 lengths for each side, plus another two lengths for good measure.
This time around, the drills went much much better than the first on Monday. Perhaps I was more relaxed in a more secluded private pool, and took my time. One key I found useful in the first drill is to feel my butt in the air, and think "glide" rather than swim.
In the second drill, I concentrated on two keys: (1) to keep my eyes just beneath the surface and not too far down. That helps me to be in a good position to rotate my head to breathe (rather than bob up and down). When rotating, I concentrated on my chin touching the shoulder that is above water. Slow and easy, smooth and relaxed. (2) For my hand that is on my side to feel air. That would mean that my body is horizontal.
I also found that it helps initially to use the out-stretched arm to pull under me when I am rotating up to breathe. But with more practice, that became unnecessary.
It took an hour to complete the 20 laps, with lots of rest in between. HR stabilized after I got the hang of it. Rest periods became progressively shorter as well. Looking forward to the next swim practice!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
Swim lesson
First swim lesson with coach. Learnt how to balance in water and keep my butt up. Sounds easy but far from easy. :)
Drank lots of water, but at the end of the hour, I understood how it should be like. But not there yet.
Realized how difficult efficient swimming is. so got to work really hard at this!
Drank lots of water, but at the end of the hour, I understood how it should be like. But not there yet.
Realized how difficult efficient swimming is. so got to work really hard at this!
Friday, September 5, 2008
LSD run and anaerobic threshold
The idea is to run below the anaerobic (lactate) threshold level. VO2max test indicates 137 bpm. But that appears a little low. So today's run is a little experiment to test the 137 LT.
For first 12 k, I maintained steady pace (7:30 min per km) with walk breaks of 100m every km. HR hovered about 140. The bridge over PIE after Siglap and after the "rolling hills" brought HR up to 155 and it averaged about 150 thereafter. Pace still at 7:30 average.
I didn't have any problem whatsoever. Perhaps the great cool weather - overcast, no sun, occasional light showers - helped. The stretch along east coast park was really enjoyable with the sea breeze.
I felt surprisingly good at the end of the run. Usually I would feel tired or heavy footed around the Pasir Ris fish pond stretch, but no such problem today. In fact, I felt good even after taking on the 700m slope leading to Loyang Avenue. Reward was 100 plus at the petrol kiosk. The last km I pushed a little before warm down.
View Larger Map
A 29k LSD after a 55k bike and a 12k interval training the two day before is not too shabby even though I say so myself.
Coach thinks that my LT should be higher as well. For now, I am guessing 150. We'll see.
For first 12 k, I maintained steady pace (7:30 min per km) with walk breaks of 100m every km. HR hovered about 140. The bridge over PIE after Siglap and after the "rolling hills" brought HR up to 155 and it averaged about 150 thereafter. Pace still at 7:30 average.
I didn't have any problem whatsoever. Perhaps the great cool weather - overcast, no sun, occasional light showers - helped. The stretch along east coast park was really enjoyable with the sea breeze.
I felt surprisingly good at the end of the run. Usually I would feel tired or heavy footed around the Pasir Ris fish pond stretch, but no such problem today. In fact, I felt good even after taking on the 700m slope leading to Loyang Avenue. Reward was 100 plus at the petrol kiosk. The last km I pushed a little before warm down.
View Larger Map
A 29k LSD after a 55k bike and a 12k interval training the two day before is not too shabby even though I say so myself.
Coach thinks that my LT should be higher as well. For now, I am guessing 150. We'll see.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Race Bandits
There was an article in the newspaper today about how one runner was stopped from participating in the Nike Human Race last Sunday. This person did not register (registration was full when he tried) and did not intend to make use of the water points. She was considerate enough to queue behind the second wave so as not to impede the registered racers. So she was upset when she and her friends were pulled out by "bouncers" in black.
What's so wrong about participating just to enjoy the atmosphere?
A race bandit in is any person that runs the course and makes use of the race support but has not paid for the right to be there.
To put it in perspective, there is the absolute zero tolerance camp that compares bandits to cheaters -- thieves -- immoral scums. This is why race bandits are frowned upon:
Clearly safety and liability concerns are important.
But what if the runner brings along his own water, gels, and support. Push it further a little, say he starts 10 minutes after all the registered runners have left the starting line. He is just an ordinary guy who runs along a route that happens to coincide with the race route. He is what is termed a low or zero impact bandit.
Suppose also that the bandit is simply there to run a few miles with a buddy for moral support. Pacers are officially allowed for ultra-marathons, but what if we apply it to pacing with a friend for a marathon? (then again, why not register if you are really a good friend?)
Perhaps it is not so black and white. The middle ground possesses a little forgiveness for the low-impact bandit.
What is your view?
What's so wrong about participating just to enjoy the atmosphere?
A race bandit in is any person that runs the course and makes use of the race support but has not paid for the right to be there.
To put it in perspective, there is the absolute zero tolerance camp that compares bandits to cheaters -- thieves -- immoral scums. This is why race bandits are frowned upon:
Not only is it theft, but it is not safe, either. Races have entrance caps because that is the most number of people that a race can support. Volunteers and race directors only scrape together enough supplies for the number of people that they expect to have to support. Non-profits often sponsor races in an effort to raise capital for their charitable work, which is not helped by people who skip paying the fee. Bandits have not signed any sort of liability waiver, and as ridiculous as it sounds the race directors would probably be found liable if the bandit did something stupid like run into a car or trip over a curb.
Clearly safety and liability concerns are important.
But what if the runner brings along his own water, gels, and support. Push it further a little, say he starts 10 minutes after all the registered runners have left the starting line. He is just an ordinary guy who runs along a route that happens to coincide with the race route. He is what is termed a low or zero impact bandit.
Suppose also that the bandit is simply there to run a few miles with a buddy for moral support. Pacers are officially allowed for ultra-marathons, but what if we apply it to pacing with a friend for a marathon? (then again, why not register if you are really a good friend?)
Perhaps it is not so black and white. The middle ground possesses a little forgiveness for the low-impact bandit.
What is your view?
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
imaRunner: FunkeeMonk
FunkeeMonk posted this in the SGRunners Forum on Sept 1:
Hi everyone!
I'm not exactly too new to this forum, just been procrastinating with writing this for months. :-)
I'm one of those people that just HATED running with a passion. Never managed to pass 2.4 during my secondary/high school days, and the annual cross country runs were absolute torture for me. So it came to no surprise that my first 2.4km categorisation test during my enlistment into the Army for National Service came in at a stunning 16 minutes. I can never understand why people would actually want to run for fun ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBmhDfWIE30 ) -- what kind of fun is that? :-)
So as a conscript in the Army, I never managed to get IPPT (the .sg military standard fitness test) Gold, although I did manage to get Silver. The fastest i've ever done in the Army (during SISPEC, an infantry leadership training course, at the peak of my running fitness) was around 10:15 I think. I just wasn't motivated enough to run any quicker. BTW, if you think that this is fast, you must realise that training in SISPEC (at least in the company I was in) is an intense intense endeavour (relatively speaking, excluding the elite units like CDO/NDU/Guards), and half of my company achieved IPPT Gold just 2 months into training. Running is just something that I do just to make sure I can book out for the weekend and not stay back. :-)
So fast forward many years to 2008. I didn't run during those many intervening years, unless i'm training up for IPPT, and even managed to fail 2.4 once and had to attend RT.
I realised I was turning 28 this year, and it suddenly dawned on me that i'll soon be hitting the big three-O. Like many, I came up with a list of new year's resolutions. I started thinking of things that I want to do while my body is still relatively young. I've come across books and articles before saying how one can finish a marathon by just training for a year, so I know that this is a surmountable challenge. I had this mental image that i'll be lying on my death bed one day, thinking of all the things i've done and not done in my life, and regretting that i've not finished a marathon when I had the chance.
So I shocked myself when I decided to finish a marathon before the end of 2008. What the hell am I doing??
I headed to the library to borrow this book: Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer and spent a few painstaking hours devising a training program for myself based on the author's original plan. Its basically what is documented in that book, but streeeeeeeeeetched out to fill an entire year instead of the original shorter schedule.
So 3 weeks later, I laced up my running shoes for the first time in a looooong while, and headed out to Pasir Ris Park to put my plan into action.
My god.
I felt pain and aches in muscles I didn't even realise I still had, and when I returned from that first 3km run (more like an attempt to run), I was TOTALLY exhausted. But I kept thinking positive and convinced myself that as long as I keep to my schedule, I will make it. Somehow.
Of course, it didn't help that I carry previous injuries in both my ankles and my left knee from my time in the Army that I need to keep a lookout for too.
Honestly, I hated running during the first 2 months into this schedule. I didn't really know what I was doing and it was just horribly tiring. I hated the act of running, but coming home after a run, plugging in the iPod to upload the run stats to the Nike+ website became a habit that became my source of motivation and inspiration. Without the little games that I came up with on the Nike+ site, and the encouragement of others leaving notes for me on the Nike+ site, I would not have made it past those first few months. Or it'll be very very difficult at least.
Upbeat music, podcasts and listening to US Army cadence songs (I know, INSANE!) helped a great deal with keeping myself slightly more interested in running during those early months. And I kept to my schedule religiously.
Then something changed. I started to find my runs feeling a little easier, and I really started to enjoy my runs now. I look forward to it as a way to destress after work and a way to get some fresh air and enjoy a bit of greenery and nature. I feel happy after my runs and the sense of accomplishment after breaking a previous unconquered distance made me feel a joy that i've not felt in ages.
I signed up for my first race, the 15km Passion Run (to coincide with a scheduled long weekend run) and looked forward to the Army Half Marathon I had put into my schedule too.
I tried to make running a little more fun by roping in a good friend of mine to run with me, and after nagging at him for a while, he finally joined in and I tried to spread my new found love of running to him.
Then disaster struck.
While out in Pasir Ris Park during a warmup jog with my friend, I stepped on a dried fruit in the park in the evening darkness and sprained my ankle. So that's it. My old Army injury's back, and I was forced to stop. From my past experiences, I knew it would take 2-3 months to be even able to walk properly again and I was dismayed. I went home, soaked my ankle in an ice bucket (GAH, it hurts!) and hoped for the best.
Amazingly, maybe because of the ice soak quickly after the run, I managed to recover in record time, and I was able to run again in just one month! Trying to get back the momentum after stopping for a whole month was tough, but like finding an old friend, before long, its as if i've never stopped before.
There were a few times when my old injury in my left knee threatened to make things difficult, but rest and an increase in green vegetable intake made all the pain go away. Especially the latter, as now I have no pain in the left knee anymore after I did that, when it hurt consistently during my days in the military.
I trained hard for my first race at the Passion Run and I find myself strangely excited about racing. I had an amazing time at the very well organised race, and managed to come in at 1:23:58! I strove to come in at 1:20 (because its a nice round number, hehe), but I was very happy that I managed to complete the race. I found myself addicted to races and kept an eye out for more races to join.
On a totally crazy whim, I decided one weekend to run from Orchard Road back home to Pasir Ris just for fun. I bought a map from Borders, and off I went! It was AMAZING. It was such incredible fun, and although I took a loooong while to get back because I deliberately ran very slowly (its my first time doing anything like this and I knew it was going to be quite long), it was interesting the entire way.
I ran past thousands of migrant workers along the entire stretch of Serangoon Road (on a Sunday! You can imagine the crowds), past backalleys in industrial areas and when I saw familiar Tampines again, it dawned on me how small Singapore now seems. I knew Singapore is small before, but when I reached my lift lobby and realised that I actually started off at Orchard Road, "small" took on a whole new meaning. I looked at my Nike+ kit, and there it said - 25km.
I've just completed the longest run in my life.
2 days later though, I caught a cough and flu combo meal and I couldn't run for the entire week. I was devastated. The Army Half Marathon is just a week later and if I don't recover in time, I would miss out on a race I was looking forward to for 8 months.
Thankfully, lots of sleep and fluids made my body shake off the bugs, and I managed to recover 5 days before the race. I did one last training run on Tuesday and did abit of carbo loading to prepare for the AHM on Sunday. Its totally surreal. I'm entering my first ever half marathon race when just 8 months ago, I couldn't even manage 3km without wanting to just lie down and melting into the earth. Never in my life would I imagine myself volunteering to join the AHM. If you told me that i'll one day do this while I was serving NS, I would have asked for what you were smoking (and whether I could have some).
The route in the AHM was so-so, but the organisation was world-class (big thanks to all the NSFs and regulars who sacrificed their weekends for this!). I strove to make it in under 2 hours (again, nice number), but my Nike+ kit stopped working midway through the race and I couldn't keep track of my timing. I was really miffed at first when I realised I came in at 2:04:14 because I knew that I would have managed to keep it under 2 hours if I knew it was going to be this close (spent way too much time stopping at the water stations and looking at the few pretty girls around :-)), but I was still really satisfied with the race.
I just finished the Nike Human Walkajog (hehe, can't really call it a race when more than half of the people I had around me in the 2nd wave were walkers) and i'm really looking forward to more races in the future.
I've turned from a a kid who never passed 2.4 in high school, to a reluctant slow-ish runner in the Army, to someone who will now run for fun and kicks. I don't even need music to accompany me on runs anymore. :-)
Running has now become a part of my life. I'm still going to train hard for my first ever marathon (well, I guess for me, almost everything's a first-ever in the world of running) but even if I somehow don't make it, I don't think i'll feel too bad about it. I've picked up something that I think would stay with me for years to come, and this is all just the beginning.
Read more from FunkeeMonk
Hi everyone!
I'm not exactly too new to this forum, just been procrastinating with writing this for months. :-)
I'm one of those people that just HATED running with a passion. Never managed to pass 2.4 during my secondary/high school days, and the annual cross country runs were absolute torture for me. So it came to no surprise that my first 2.4km categorisation test during my enlistment into the Army for National Service came in at a stunning 16 minutes. I can never understand why people would actually want to run for fun ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBmhDfWIE30 ) -- what kind of fun is that? :-)
So as a conscript in the Army, I never managed to get IPPT (the .sg military standard fitness test) Gold, although I did manage to get Silver. The fastest i've ever done in the Army (during SISPEC, an infantry leadership training course, at the peak of my running fitness) was around 10:15 I think. I just wasn't motivated enough to run any quicker. BTW, if you think that this is fast, you must realise that training in SISPEC (at least in the company I was in) is an intense intense endeavour (relatively speaking, excluding the elite units like CDO/NDU/Guards), and half of my company achieved IPPT Gold just 2 months into training. Running is just something that I do just to make sure I can book out for the weekend and not stay back. :-)
So fast forward many years to 2008. I didn't run during those many intervening years, unless i'm training up for IPPT, and even managed to fail 2.4 once and had to attend RT.
I realised I was turning 28 this year, and it suddenly dawned on me that i'll soon be hitting the big three-O. Like many, I came up with a list of new year's resolutions. I started thinking of things that I want to do while my body is still relatively young. I've come across books and articles before saying how one can finish a marathon by just training for a year, so I know that this is a surmountable challenge. I had this mental image that i'll be lying on my death bed one day, thinking of all the things i've done and not done in my life, and regretting that i've not finished a marathon when I had the chance.
So I shocked myself when I decided to finish a marathon before the end of 2008. What the hell am I doing??
I headed to the library to borrow this book: Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer and spent a few painstaking hours devising a training program for myself based on the author's original plan. Its basically what is documented in that book, but streeeeeeeeeetched out to fill an entire year instead of the original shorter schedule.
So 3 weeks later, I laced up my running shoes for the first time in a looooong while, and headed out to Pasir Ris Park to put my plan into action.
My god.
I felt pain and aches in muscles I didn't even realise I still had, and when I returned from that first 3km run (more like an attempt to run), I was TOTALLY exhausted. But I kept thinking positive and convinced myself that as long as I keep to my schedule, I will make it. Somehow.
Of course, it didn't help that I carry previous injuries in both my ankles and my left knee from my time in the Army that I need to keep a lookout for too.
Honestly, I hated running during the first 2 months into this schedule. I didn't really know what I was doing and it was just horribly tiring. I hated the act of running, but coming home after a run, plugging in the iPod to upload the run stats to the Nike+ website became a habit that became my source of motivation and inspiration. Without the little games that I came up with on the Nike+ site, and the encouragement of others leaving notes for me on the Nike+ site, I would not have made it past those first few months. Or it'll be very very difficult at least.
Upbeat music, podcasts and listening to US Army cadence songs (I know, INSANE!) helped a great deal with keeping myself slightly more interested in running during those early months. And I kept to my schedule religiously.
Then something changed. I started to find my runs feeling a little easier, and I really started to enjoy my runs now. I look forward to it as a way to destress after work and a way to get some fresh air and enjoy a bit of greenery and nature. I feel happy after my runs and the sense of accomplishment after breaking a previous unconquered distance made me feel a joy that i've not felt in ages.
I signed up for my first race, the 15km Passion Run (to coincide with a scheduled long weekend run) and looked forward to the Army Half Marathon I had put into my schedule too.
I tried to make running a little more fun by roping in a good friend of mine to run with me, and after nagging at him for a while, he finally joined in and I tried to spread my new found love of running to him.
Then disaster struck.
While out in Pasir Ris Park during a warmup jog with my friend, I stepped on a dried fruit in the park in the evening darkness and sprained my ankle. So that's it. My old Army injury's back, and I was forced to stop. From my past experiences, I knew it would take 2-3 months to be even able to walk properly again and I was dismayed. I went home, soaked my ankle in an ice bucket (GAH, it hurts!) and hoped for the best.
Amazingly, maybe because of the ice soak quickly after the run, I managed to recover in record time, and I was able to run again in just one month! Trying to get back the momentum after stopping for a whole month was tough, but like finding an old friend, before long, its as if i've never stopped before.
There were a few times when my old injury in my left knee threatened to make things difficult, but rest and an increase in green vegetable intake made all the pain go away. Especially the latter, as now I have no pain in the left knee anymore after I did that, when it hurt consistently during my days in the military.
I trained hard for my first race at the Passion Run and I find myself strangely excited about racing. I had an amazing time at the very well organised race, and managed to come in at 1:23:58! I strove to come in at 1:20 (because its a nice round number, hehe), but I was very happy that I managed to complete the race. I found myself addicted to races and kept an eye out for more races to join.
On a totally crazy whim, I decided one weekend to run from Orchard Road back home to Pasir Ris just for fun. I bought a map from Borders, and off I went! It was AMAZING. It was such incredible fun, and although I took a loooong while to get back because I deliberately ran very slowly (its my first time doing anything like this and I knew it was going to be quite long), it was interesting the entire way.
I ran past thousands of migrant workers along the entire stretch of Serangoon Road (on a Sunday! You can imagine the crowds), past backalleys in industrial areas and when I saw familiar Tampines again, it dawned on me how small Singapore now seems. I knew Singapore is small before, but when I reached my lift lobby and realised that I actually started off at Orchard Road, "small" took on a whole new meaning. I looked at my Nike+ kit, and there it said - 25km.
I've just completed the longest run in my life.
2 days later though, I caught a cough and flu combo meal and I couldn't run for the entire week. I was devastated. The Army Half Marathon is just a week later and if I don't recover in time, I would miss out on a race I was looking forward to for 8 months.
Thankfully, lots of sleep and fluids made my body shake off the bugs, and I managed to recover 5 days before the race. I did one last training run on Tuesday and did abit of carbo loading to prepare for the AHM on Sunday. Its totally surreal. I'm entering my first ever half marathon race when just 8 months ago, I couldn't even manage 3km without wanting to just lie down and melting into the earth. Never in my life would I imagine myself volunteering to join the AHM. If you told me that i'll one day do this while I was serving NS, I would have asked for what you were smoking (and whether I could have some).
The route in the AHM was so-so, but the organisation was world-class (big thanks to all the NSFs and regulars who sacrificed their weekends for this!). I strove to make it in under 2 hours (again, nice number), but my Nike+ kit stopped working midway through the race and I couldn't keep track of my timing. I was really miffed at first when I realised I came in at 2:04:14 because I knew that I would have managed to keep it under 2 hours if I knew it was going to be this close (spent way too much time stopping at the water stations and looking at the few pretty girls around :-)), but I was still really satisfied with the race.
I just finished the Nike Human Walkajog (hehe, can't really call it a race when more than half of the people I had around me in the 2nd wave were walkers) and i'm really looking forward to more races in the future.
I've turned from a a kid who never passed 2.4 in high school, to a reluctant slow-ish runner in the Army, to someone who will now run for fun and kicks. I don't even need music to accompany me on runs anymore. :-)
Running has now become a part of my life. I'm still going to train hard for my first ever marathon (well, I guess for me, almost everything's a first-ever in the world of running) but even if I somehow don't make it, I don't think i'll feel too bad about it. I've picked up something that I think would stay with me for years to come, and this is all just the beginning.
Read more from FunkeeMonk
imaRunner is a series about ordinary people and their not-so-ordinary running achievements.
Monday, September 1, 2008
What drives these guys and gals?
Completed "30 years of the Ironman Triathlon World Championship" by Bob Babbitt.
A few observations that stood out:
This book celebrates the tenacity of the human spirit amidst adversity. Inspiring, daunting and uplifting!
A few observations that stood out:
- The intense rivalry, notably between Dave Scott and Mark Allen (both 6-times winners) in the early 80s, that between Paula Newby-Fraser (8 times winner) and Erin Baker, and more recently Peter Reid and Timothy De Broom, and Chris McCormack and Norman Stadler.
- The multiple winners are truly amazing. Their focus, intensity and drive are stuff of legends.
- The could-have-beens who eventually triumphed to win: Scott Tinsley (runner up in 1982, 1983, 1984 and winning in 1985), Thomas Hellriegel (runner up in 1995 and 1996, and 1997 champion), the list goes on... Testimony to the value of perserverence.
- Handicapped ironmen: Dick and Rick Hoyt, John MacLean, Randy Cadell, Sarah Reinersten, Scott Rigsby, etc.
- Ironman Hall of Fame: Bob Babbitt is one of the inductees
- Record holders: Lynn Brooks - first person to complete 20 consecutive races; Bill Bell - one of the oldest Ironmen... first when he was 59 and 78 when he completed his 18th.
This book celebrates the tenacity of the human spirit amidst adversity. Inspiring, daunting and uplifting!
VO2 max
Went for the VO2 max test at Changi General Hospital this morning. It was a pleasant experience - the staff were friendly and professional and the consultation informative. The only tough part was breathing through the apparatus, especially as the speed and incline increased.
So here's the verdict: 44.3 ml/kg/min
This reading is in the well conditioned range (40 to 60). Elite athletes are above 60. According to Dr Kevin Chew, this is normal for endurance runners and pretty good for my age.
The other useful result was that the test estimated my anaerobic threshold at 137 bpm. As long as I keep below the AT, I would be like the energizer rabbit ... go on and on and on. :)
With the max heart rate and AT, the recommended ranges for different intensity endurance exercises are also provided. These ranges will be useful for future training and more "scientific" than the broad ranges prescribed by various books/magazines.
So here's the verdict: 44.3 ml/kg/min
This reading is in the well conditioned range (40 to 60). Elite athletes are above 60. According to Dr Kevin Chew, this is normal for endurance runners and pretty good for my age.
The other useful result was that the test estimated my anaerobic threshold at 137 bpm. As long as I keep below the AT, I would be like the energizer rabbit ... go on and on and on. :)
With the max heart rate and AT, the recommended ranges for different intensity endurance exercises are also provided. These ranges will be useful for future training and more "scientific" than the broad ranges prescribed by various books/magazines.
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