Putrajaya Night Marathon Race Report

Finally, the big event came and gone. I completed my 2nd marathon in 6:18 hours, outside of the targeted 6 hours cut-off time. It was a very well organized event and I guessed lots of runners enjoyed the run as much as I do.

Yes, I put in many thought to plan my game, but none of the plans was followed on the game day. I pushed too hard at the first 16km, the HRM shown about 150~160BPM although I am not going really fast (pace at about 7.5min/km). The body didn’t used to the night race and took more energy to ramp up. I should stay within or even at the lower bottom of my aerobic zone, 130~140BPM will be a very good start. After 16km, I start to felt I am struggling to keep running. I took the first energy gel at 18km and continue to push on.

Basically, after 22km, I started to walk a bit. I used the counting cons/lamp poles technique to keep myself within the control limit of walking. But the walking getting more frequent until the water station at 26km. Lots of runners passed me from this stretch. I know that I will not able to make it back to finish line if I kept walking that much. So, I popped in the 2nd energy gel at the water station, drove the walking option out of my mind, and ran to the next water station at a steady slow pace. On the balance of the distances, I am running from water station to water station and tried my very best to keep walking at minimum. Mid night passed and I only reached 28km mark. I knew I need to keep going to made it to the cut off time.

At the 32km, my left calf started to tense up and I knew it’s about to cramp up. So, I had no choice but to walk more from here. Got the PowerBar gel from the sponsor but I had to keep it for later. No point to push unless the tense eased up. Btw, I walked some the tense never eased up; really no choice and I popped in the 3rd serving of energy gel at 35km and pushed on. This time, I told myself I can’t stop or slow down if I really wanted to finish by 6 hours. I started to push harder and my hearth rate moving up to 165BPM range. There are 7 more kilometers to go, and I had 50 minutes left before 2am. Too bad, these final stretches are just as tough as the other part of the course. I can only pushed my pace to 7~8 min/km. At 1:50am, I still had 2km. From that point, I gave out running and only walking. I think I can still pushed on, and finished the race at about 6:10, but the driving force just drained out of me once I noticed I can’t made it in the cut off time.

With Tan at the starting line.

Through out the race, I am like duet with Tan from the start. We first met at the RJM on the dreaded 3km climb. He is very friendly and gave me lots of encouragement during that climb. This round in PNM, we met at the starting pan, wished each other good luck and took some photos. From there, we met in varies spots on the route. He is tough and going with very consistence pace. When I am walking at the final km, Tan again caught up with me. With his encouragement, I restart my engine and heading back to the finish line in running. He is really amazing and still able to surge to high speed at the last 200m, hence Tey (who finished his 5:27 FM, and start snapping photos, thanks for the nice photo) can took a nice single shoot for both us respectively. Thank you Tan for your company and encouragement over the 42km.

2:18am in the Morning, at PNM Finish Line. Photo by Tey.

Catch up with Chan too at the Starting Line, he is doing HM.

Learning for this FM,

1. Start slow at FM, stay at the bottom of the aerobic zone until you feel comfortable for the first 2 hours, then you can push harder. Btw, I do observe that my aerobic zone is matched with a slower pace through out the race. May be it’s a night running which the body is not familiar with. So, put some training that mimic to your racing condition is important.

2. If you cleared your mind and don’t keep think of walking, you can run very far and still keep going. In other words, FOCUS.

3. Planning is important. What more important is “Follow the PLAN”!

On the other preparation (apart from training mileage), I am surprised that the Nokia Phone with SportsTracker can stay up for 7.5 hours. I forgot to turn off the SportsTracker so its kept my driving speed too :P

My next race will be the PJ Half Marathon, follow by the PBIM (I took HM only), Nike 10k, then my 3rd Marathon at SC Marathon Singapore. Hope to put up a training plan and game plan to sub-6 hours in SCMS.

Have fun!

Preparation for Putrajaya Night Marathon

This will be my 2nd marathon and the 1st one happened only 3 weeks ago. This is an official race hence my pre-race excitement also partly built with nervous. I had thought over, planned, reworked many time on my race day’s game plan.

The cut off time is 6 hours. From my experiences, I should have no problem to run all the way to 25km in less than 3.5 hours. The challenge will be on how to handle the balanced 17.2km, in 2.5 hours. I belief that I can still stretch a bit to 30km, but after that it will be more like a run-walking game. The pace at this zone will be very difficult to predict, but as long as I complete the 30km in 4 hours (before mid night), I will have no issue to meet the cut off time.

The current dominance game plan will be pushes all the way towards the whole 42.195km – RUN! I wish to do this and it will be a major achievement to me, if I really break through all boundaries and run the whole 42.195km (sure we stop for water stations, toilets & stretching when necessary). In this plan, I only need to go at 8.5min/km pace, and I will finish right on the dot of 6 hours. This speed fit well in my aerobic zone of 6.5~8.5min/km pace, and it is very doable. On the other hand, with the raising of adrenaline, I am secretly hoping that I can even going with 7min/km. But I am not too sure if I should start with this pace and keep it up for the entire ran, or start with a more conservative 8min/km pace and slowly pick up if I am still manageable down the road.

Anyway, as I will only using the Polar FT4, I will not have instant feedback on my pace. I can only depend on the distance markers on each KM, and the good thing is that I will have some calculation to keep my mind busy. In this case, I may just run to my comfort speed (whatever it would be). So, plan B will be based on HRM and run within the aerobic zone of 130~148BPM.

Plan C? No, there is not plan C. I need plan C if only I am getting to sick on reworking plan A & B. Then plan C will be “Just Do It!”, return to the core of running – pleasure! Run fast if I feel like to, and slow down if I feel like to. Don’t border the pace, the time and the rest.

Other tools for this race,

1. Nokia Phone

I will use the SportsTracker in my Nokia to track this race and it pace. So, next round I can have more data to predict the pace during my run-walking zone. Btw, I am not sure if the phone can last for 6 hours running on GPS.

2. Bigger Pouch

This is for extra fuel (energy bars & gels) supply during the race. From the RJM experience, I will get very hungry after 35km and the energy gel alone is not sufficient to cure this so I saving the PowerBar from the race kit for this.

3. Headlamp

As this is a night race, I will bring along the headlamp (from previous Energizer race), tired it to the pouch with some Velcro straps and it’s much comfortable compare to using it on your arm or head.

Am I ready for this race? I am not too sure, but I am prepared to my best (except putting more mileages under my belt before the race). Now, is the time to enjoy it!

Further Thought about Running & Marathon

It has been an eventful year which filled with joy, excitement, and lots of sweats. I am into running for more than a year now! This year I had ran 1300km and expecting more until end of the year. I tried varies distances races with 7k, 10k, 14k, 15k, 21k and 42k, which I will not be able to imagine myself doing just few years ago.

Running is a great tool for meditation; all you faced is you alone, through out the runs. In that nature, lots of important lessons can be learned via running, one of them is Focus. With Focus, your limitation will be reset to a level that beyond your imagination. All you need to do is focus to get yourself to find the door and you will be accessible to this hidden treasure of yours. Focus to your next step, and soon you will reach your destination. Beside this, I am enjoying the common improvement (better endurance, health, weight loss, emotional control, happier & etc.) and suffering some pains (arching calves, knees pain, tiredness after long runs, energized only during running, & etc.), that almost all runners entitled.

I confirmed that naive belief of mine: if you can break down the distances and completed them in a week, you will have no problem to handle the distances in the race day. But I am too weary in RJM to confirm the opinion about the half marathon. Further more, I didn’t push that hard in the RJM. Think I will need more exposure to marathon distances before I can conclude that.

Next week will be my second marathon, Putrajaya Night Marathon. I didn’t do any extra prepare for this marathon but only carry out the routine as planned. Hope to put in one last 30~35km long run on this Sunday before I tune down the training for some rest. Target completion time will be below 6 hours & 8.5 min/km pace. Btw, I may have some problem to maintain my pace without the GF405CX. I will use the HRM as the main reference with the timer to calculate my pace from the distance markers. My running will be within my aerobic zone (130~148 BPM).

See you next Saturday night in Putrajaya.

Garmin Forerunner 405CX (Part II)

The GF405CX is now on its way to Taiwan for a warranty claim trip. It only in service for 5 months (brought in March, but only got it in May), but failed since the River Jungle Marathon. It’s only 6.5 hours run and partially (last 1.5 hours) done in the rain, I would expect this unit to perform better than this.

GF405CX is really a great help on my routine trainings to keep me paced. I had minimum complaint about it performance (satellite signal receiving, response, recording, ease of use, etc.), the only complaint I would able to think of is it battery life. Very obviously it’s not able to last to the 8 hours as per factory setting in running with GPS. The most I got so far is the 6.5 hours during River Jungle Marathon before it screen frozen at 41km. On the bright side, its encourage me to complete my marathon within 6 hours :)

During the RJM, the unit frozen at 41km and I only realized that after I want to stop the timer at the finish line. The first battery low alert started at around 30km, along the way it shown some more alert on and off, but some how it doesn’t run flat on the balanced 12km. At the finish line, after I filled up my tummy with bananas and bread, then I tried the soft reset to unfreeze the screen. As the battery may not sufficient to restart the unit, it ended up in the restart-off-restart mode. This mode is very annoying and there is no way to turn it off, it will continue until the battery is totally flattened.

From the previous battery out experience, once it back to the charger, the unit will be live again. However, it doesn’t turn on this round. Did some research over the internet and surprisingly saw this is a common issue amount GF405 & 405CX. Some unit will just die off like that and users suspected the moisture ingression caused the problem on the battery contact point. Some users waited for few days until the moisture inside clear off, plug in the charger then the unit will back into life. I am confused! Aren’t the unit designed for running, should taken the drizzling, sweating conditions into account? How come so many users still suffered from the moisture issue?

Finally, last Friday I visited Garmin authorized distributor (AECO) outlet at SS14 Digital Mall. They took the unit and sent to their office for further checking. They contacted me yesterday and said the unit will be send to Taiwan factory to recondition and the repair should be under warranty. As my unit came from Singapore, I will need to pay the shipping cost of RM180. Hope it will return before PJ Half or PBIM. Guess that is the price we need to pay for not buying from the local distributor (anyway, even with this RM180, my unit from Singapore is still cheaper compare to the RRP quoted in Malaysia).

Btw, during my research, I also noticed that the all the Garmin Forerunner’s battery will need to change back in the factory, users can’t really DIY when the battery no longer functions. Anyway, Garmin offered an option to send back to factory for recondition with USD110 (based on your model, check out here for detail). You will need to pay the postage cost if the warranty expired. So, if you are consider to get a Garmin, please take note on this extra cost which may occur in 1~2 years time (btw, some users responded with no issue with the battery even for 3~4 years).

For me, I am still thinking the GF405CX is a good tool that I had for my running. You should consider one HRM with GPS unit. With training plan in place, it will help to improve your running.

Another 10 days to my 2nd Marathon in Putrajaya Night Marathon. For now, I will stick with the Polar FT4. 

Link to Part I / Part III on this Device.

River Jungle Marathon Race Report

THE DAY is finally arrived. I woke up around 3am, done the usual chores and left for the starting point at 3:45am. Told myself that I had done all the preparation, now is the time to enjoy it. Reached the starting point around 4:30am and the briefing started when I was still in the car park opposite the school. So I rushed a bit on putting on the shoes and some sun block.

I missed the notes that Organizer put on the Distance Marker.
This is a good one at 20KM. By Tey.

Met Chan at the starting point, but I was too occupied and we didn’t chat much. Then the race flagged off on 5am. I set my GF405CX to 9min/km pace with some hope that I will do better then 7 hours. Anyway, I stayed on the 7 min/km pace until I reached the 17km waterstation right before the climb. I only managed to run on the climb for about 1+km at snail pace then I walked the rest of the climb plus the down hill until it is rather flat at around 23km. The knees are not really in good shape to take the down hill. Lots of runners passed me on this stretch. Then it was the Semenyih reservoir at 23km, which is a 1.5km stretch to heading to Semenyih then u-turn. The scene is magnificent, and some one flying parachute fan in the sky. The sun are now on and off came out from the cloud and temperature starting to rise.

Towards the peak @ 20km, still fresh look.

After the u-turn and the 25km marker, I really had nothing much left in the tank to push. The balanced 17km are purely stretched me to my limit. I am on my foot for 4hours now and the every single step is an extra effort from my limited endurance. The ITB is almost numbed and toes in the shoes are hurting like hell. I started to run 1km, then walked few hundred meters. The cloud was finally thickening enough, and turns into a rain when I reached 32km. More walking now. The demon of DNF & drop out started to appear on and off. But there were not many runners in front and behind me, I felt a bit less stress and managed to keep the demon and mindset at ease. The walk-run-walk-run strategy kept me going.

At the last KM with Khoo
Courtesy of CP Tan

Then, I ran into Khoo. He is friendly and kind enough to offer me some pacing and encouragement. His 3 minutes run, 1 minute walk strategy drilled me into the reserved tank that hidden in my inner soul, some place that I didn’t aware of. With his company, I completed the balance 7km, and ran the whole last km (or may be 2km) to the finish line in 6hours 31minutes.

Overall, this is definitely a very good running event. I don’t felt the stress in term of competitiveness, finishing timing or pace. Anyway, I guess I should keep this ease mode for all other marathons that I registered for this year. I am obviously not very well prepared for marathon distance. The ease mode will definitely helped in the way to prepare myself to be a better runner for future races.

Side track, my Garmin Forerunner 405CX decided to give out earlier than me. It’s idle at 41.01km and now, the screen is blank and not able to charge (I guess). May be some rain water get into the unit or it’s just the battery issue. Will wait for another few days to see if it really needs to be send in for repair. On battery wise, it’s last all there way to about 6hours 15minutes. So if you plan to finish your marathon longer than 6 hours, you may want to consider use a normal stopwatch or in my case Polar FT4. If you experienced the out of battery state for GF405CX (it will just continuously restart-off-restart-off until the battery is totally flatten), you don’t want to have that during your race.

Preparation for my first Marathon

Finally, I got my bib number from River Jungle Marathon last weekend from Running Lab @ Tropicana CityMall. And its time to finalize my thoughts and trainings about this coming marathon.

In my own believing (or you can call it naive-thought), as long as I can finish the race distance in a week’s training, it should have no problem to complete the race on the race day (key emphasize: to complete! Good completion timing not included). I am now ready to prove it myself. So far, my maximum trained distance in a single ran is only 25km on last Saturday. But I had keep my passed 10 weekly mileages averaged about 39km, with 5 weeks had more than 42km, and 3 weeks down mainly due to ITBFS and flu.

One of my colleague (whom a season runner too) said the Half Marathon distance should be set to 30km. 21km is only half of the distance, and not even close to 1/3 in term of effort compared to a full marathon. I will be exam this quote myself too this Sunday.

I had really enjoy the excitement come with the 42km race and the process to get myself ready (or not) to handle it. I experienced lots of self-doubts, withdrawal, injury, and other challenges especially to talk myself out from these negative conditions. Not forget the work loads in my 8 to 5 are picking up too with my new boss on boarded. On the good side, I PB at the previous race before the Fasting month’s break (Men’s Health Night Run 12.3km with a pace of 5:39/km), did some enjoyable speed works, back to back LSD and meet some new friends. Those are priceless experiences and it’s hard to tell the payoff is worth for the efforts. Anyway, happiness is a way of travel, not a destination!

I will fill in the final piece of this RJM preparation on Sunday. I can’t promise a good timing or even an enjoyable race (this will be based on my feeling of cause, please don’t expect me to say this is an enjoyable race if I reduced to crawling back to finishing line after beaten by the 42km). But I can assure you that this is just the very beginning part of my running journey. More marathons will be schedule in future; in fact Putrajaya Night Marathon is just right around the corner and Singapore Marathon in early of December.

Some day, I will definitely able claim that 42km is an enjoyable running distance. Now, let see what I will bring back from my very first attempt to the 42km.

Enjoy Running!

ITBFS fixing in progress

I have to admit that I pushed too hard and too soon to minimalist. Shoes definitely play an important role on the running. The US size 9 NB905 definitely not a good fit to me, and I ran too much too soon in VFF before even build up my leg/feet strength. All these actual reduce the enjoyment of running, as the pain left from each run is greater than the fun. I guess I am still consider lucky to realized this only after 110km inside the VFF, before more damages done. So far, the worst injury is a tight left ITB. But actually I am not able to pin-point whether the shoes (VFF or NB905), or just simply over-trained had provoked the problem. The joyfulness running in VFF is still tempting and I will definitely working towards minimalist (will retire NB905 now), but I had a big challenge to handle right around the corner, my first marathon, River Jungle Marathon by end of the month. I need some solution to at least treat the ITBF syndrome to allow me to maintain the minimum training amount and complete the marathon later.

First, I took some time off from running. I rested from running for 4 days, with occasionally icing the ITB area. When I resume on the 5th day for a short run, the syndrome looks ease a bit but still persisted. Used the KT Tape, but may be due to my technique, the effect is limited. So I took the opportunity on Hari Raya for another straight 5 days off from running.

Second, I reverse back to running in supporting shoes. Got a Brooks Adrenaline GTS10 with RM215 (50% discount) but its support felt like the old NB1226. Will post the review on the shoes later. So far already made 4 runs (27km) in this shoe, and I felt great as it seem to not worsen the ITBFS.

Third, I apply ice to the ITB area right after each run. I also ice the ITB area at least one more time on daily basis. I also included some stretching on the ITB before and after each run. These actions had post a good result on the ITBFS.

Forth, I do some ITB stretching and strengthening exercise everyday. 2 methods suggested by runnersworld. Click the pictures for full articles link to runnersworld.

Like the title of this post, the fixing is still in progress. I am yet back to my full training plan, those workouts so far are reduced amount so that my body can slowly rebuild from the ITBFS. I am now fingers crossed and hope for the best.

It is stretching time now :)