Race Report: Kuching Marathon 2015

This will be my 2nd full marathon in 2015 and the starting of the 4 marathons in 3 months kind of crazy ride. I have been barking too long for my sub4 and I won’t need to plan too much this round. I am going to set up my GF910XT visual partner to 5:36min/km pace. With the recent half marathon result, I am kind of confident that I am going to sub4 this time. Then the story turned sour.

I did 300km in July with the 3 to 4 times a week work commuting as part of the routine. Then early August I started some weight lifting training too. The body seem to have some trouble to fully recover from the double workouts a day, and the body muscles soreness from the weight lifting lasted longer than expected. I was obviously over trained. The body and mind struggled to keep up with the demand especially from the few double workouts routine. Even though I was looking forward to run in Kuching, but I was not ready to get the sub 4.

From my experience in Seoul, travelling to just run a marathon doesn’t work for me. This trip was booked before the Seoul marathon hence I just need to bear with it. I booked a guest house which is only 200m away from the starting line. Great guest house but poor marathoners stayed in the guest house. I don’t understand how people can stay up late (at least 11pm) on the Saturday night when they had a marathon to run 3am in Sunday morning. I hit the bed around 9pm, but waken by these noisy neighbour few times. Only got like 3 hours of broken sleeps before my alarm finally rang at 1:30am.

I walked to the starting line around 2:30am, met some running friends and joking a bit trying to ease my stress from the poor sleep. The event flagged off on time. I started off from the mid of the pack, then slowly picked up my pace to the target 5:36min/km. I was on the dot for this pace until 21km. Then I lost my push to maintain this pace. May be the long lonely stretch of road, may be the tiredness finally caught me, or may be…… finally, completed the race in 4:34’42”.

Overall the race is very well organized with sufficient water stations and manned with supporting volunteers. The route is flat and straight, it can be quite boring if you need external stimulus or attraction to assist in your race. The last 5km full marathon will join with half marathon, but no issue here because there are not many runners in both categories. Anyway, traffic control can be improved especially in the final stretch when we back in the town. The medal is really nice and the extra "top 200" finisher t-shirt is great too (just I didn't managed to get one).

On my end, I will need to rest until I am fully recovered from the exhaustion, then rework on my training plan if I seriously wanted to run to office few times a week. I will also adding in some weight lifting to build my core for next stage. I noticed that my mind doesn’t work very well to stay focused if I ran with my sun glasses. I think I gave up too early for all 3 races I ran with it. And I did well in Seremban half marathon where I actually forgot to bring the sun glasses. The sample size is too small to make any conclusion but maybe I need to give it up in RJM, run with normal glasses only.

Looking at current condition and the route, I will be very happy if I can sub 5 in RJM. 3 more weeks to go.

Training report: Training week 12 & 13, Heat & Hills Training

With the ambitious to add in the evening run, I started week 12. But lately the evening rain ruined the plan. Also I made effort to spend time with the kids for them to pick up bicycle. So the evening run session now backed to the shelf. May be one day I will need it. The high light for the week was the first heat training. The Saturday long run completed between 8-11am. Been quite a while I didn’t run around under the 10am sun in Malaysia. Most of the races will finish by 8 to 9am. The body responded to the heat and I had to slow down to keep the core temperature low. I ran with the Nike 2011 Run t-shirt, compress short, cap and the sunglasses. Totally burned down by the heat and all I can do on Sunday was an easy 15km run.

Week 12	Program	Done	Remark
Mon	Easy 9.7km	Easy 9.5km	2 sessions
Tue	Strength 4x 2.5km	Strength 2x 2.5km	Not enough time for 3rd repeat
Wed	Rest	Rest
Thu	Tempo 14.5km	12.5km	11km in tempo pace
Fri	Easy 9.7km	6.4km
Sat	Easy 16.1km	23km	Started 8:15am
Sun	Easy 16.1km	15km
Total Done		75km

Training week 13 started with a day off to give extra time for body to recover from Saturday’s heat training. Did the Strength repeats and tempo run without any issue (except for not enough time to complete the planned distances as usual). Come weekend, I forgot how badly the heat training can be, and started another session on Saturday. This time, I started after sending the kids to their art class, 9:40am. The run continued to 12:30pm. I was going with long run pace for the first half. After 10k I had to drop to 6.5min pace, subsequently walking after 18k. I wanted to give up, but managed to convince myself to stay under the hot sun, checked 19k, 20k, 21k then 22k. I walked most of these last sections. Very slow, but the training objective achieved. I used the blue long sleeve t shirt from Seoul Marathon. Felt too hot under the sun and too heavy when soaked with sweat. I preferred to run lighter.  

Week 13	Program	Done	Remark
Mon	Easy12. 9km	Rest
Tue	Strength 3x 3.3km	Strength 3x 3.3km	Recovery cut short to 400m
Wed	Rest	Rest
Thu	Tempo 14.5km	11.8km	10km in tempo pace
Fri	Easy 11.3km	4.3km
Sat	Easy 12.9km	22.7km	Started 9:40am
Sun	Long 25.8km	22.2km	Triple Hills route
Total Done		73km

The body responded better to the heat this time. I still felt the heating impact on Sunday when I wanted to start the long run in triple hills route. I decided not to push, just took easy pace around 6.5min, and focus to concur the hills. The Petronas station at the Hartamas end reopened, but I didn’t plan for any replenishment. I ran with my 2x 500ml Gatorade bottles, one with water and the other 100Plus with chia seed. Had a great run and practiced some descending skill.

After this hills training, I think the Plan B for R68 is more realistic. I will find out myself on the MURA R68 route racee on 19 April (2nd part from Genting Sempah to Bentong hot spring). I was also doing few running sessions with the Bare Access to condition the legs to getting use to go with some shoes. I should be surviving with VFF, but after 20km they will be soaking with the sweat and very wet, causing potential blister issue. Bare Access on the other hand, very well ventilated, hopefully with the DryMax socks it will keep the feet dry.

Today the Osaka Marathon 2015 (25 Oct 2015, 3 weeks after SCKLM) opened for registration. I registered the marathon, but still not sure if I will actually joining. The entry will be selected with ballot system and announcement will be made on June. This is the 2nd largest marathon event in Japan (after Tokyo). With the Japanese currency weaken recently, running in Japan seem to be more affordable. May be this will be my first marathon in Japan if I was selected.

Meanwhile, 5 more weeks until the R68 challenge. There will be another set of back to back heat training plus hill training this weekend. Have fun!

Race Report: Seoul International Marathon 2015

I was highly anticipated this marathon as my first sub4 marathon, but it’s turned out to be another failure. I was so determined to run this race and got my flight booked July last year. The race date only confirmed towards end October, and registration only open on 8 December. The key lesson learned in this race, I ran a better race back in home ground and I don’t need to purposely travel for a cold climate marathon for a PB. The body is a complex organism and it won’t always work the way you think it should.

I travelled to Seoul on an early morning flight on Thursday. This is my second trip to Seoul, and I had no issue to travel to the guesthouse from Incheon Airport to Dongdaemun around 6pm. Despite most of the Korean don’t speak English, Seoul City is a tourism friendly city. You can move around without any problem via Subway and trains. These transports will display/announce in 4 languages (Korean / English / Mandarin / Japanese). On other hand, the quality for the guesthouse is ok. I got a single room with bath room attached. The room will be great if I came few years earlier, but now I think I was spoiled by all my business travels in the past few years. I couldn’t sleep and rest well in the room, the bathroom was too cold and the room was cold too at night time. I was too conservative in choices prior to the race, most of the meals were familiar name like McD (plus LotteRia, the Korean version of McD), Subway & BurgerKing. Some sightseeing planned ahead of the marathon. Dongdaemun, Insandong, Jamsil Stadium (finishing area), Gwanghwamun (starting line), Namsan Tower, Myeongdong. Lots of walking and these tourism activities continued until Saturday evening until I felt I walked too much.

Saturday night I was not able to sleep well, may be too cold, too tired or just plain excited for race. I woke up 4am, but the race only start at 8am. I slowly prepared myself and left the guesthouse for breakfast around 6am. The morning plan role out nicely, morning breakfast at McD after a 30 minutes’ walk from the guesthouse, used the toilet and slow jog to the starting line (about 2.5km from the guesthouse). Reached the starting line around 7am and it was filled with runners. I took out all warming cloth and packed them into the baggage to be transfer to the finish line. Walked around in the freezing 1degC weather, I found many runners stayed inside the lobby of the Sejong Performance Art center, it’s located just next to the my assigned starting pen C. The starting pen setup was so simple and it’s depend on your own judgement if you wanted to stay in the assigned starting pen. There are not check point, not barriers, just few ladies holding up a banner with a big A/B/C/D/E on it to indicate which zone is this.

8am, the elites were off. After some speech and the national song (my guess), zone A and B were let off too. When I finally past the starting line at 8:18am, spent more than 30 minutes in the cold with only my running attire plus the poncho, but the cold is much bearable may be due to adrenaline building up. Running with the poncho for the first 3km, I took it off but still kept it on my hand. Only confirmed that I won’t need it any more then I disposed it in the 5km water station. The route bring us from Gwanghwamun to the Dongdaemun twice, 1st time via the famous Cheonggyecheon stream, 2nd time via the main Jungro road. I managed my pace around 5.5min/km, when we reached Dongdaemun area for the second time, it was about 20km done. The pace was right on the dot for the first 20km. Then I struggled from there onward. The average pace getting slower by every km.

A blind runner with a pacer overtook me. The pacer doing a great pacing job with the blind runner and pace command was loud and clear. This is the first time I saw this live, and it spike up my spirit to run with them. Hence I was still managed to keep the pace around 5:45min/km. But they are strong, I finally lost them, and after crossed the Hangang River at 36km, I felt I lost the determination to continue. My soles were still great, no blister (dry weather with minimum sweat). The right ankle seems to be alright, and the tights & calves were tight but still manageable. But, I just lost the determination to continue. I started to walk. One by one, the 4:00 hours’ pacers overtook me. I knew I failed.

I didn’t run much, I felt really cold on the route. Until 41km, where I certainly felt that maybe I should at least aim for sub 415. Then the fire started to heat up again. I started the run walk routine and finally arrived at the stadium. I enjoyed the entrance to the stadium and sprint to the finish line. And I remembered the last time I finished my marathon in an Olympic Stadium, I was still doing a 5 hours marathon. I felt great! I crossed the line at 4:12’22”.

Seoul International Marathon 2015 Finisher Medal

Official Split Time 

Overall Finisher Statistic, FM average @ 4:6'16"

At the finishers’ area, I had plenty of Pocari Sweat. Actually this was the first time I had it. It tasted way better then 100Plus we used to have back home. I drank too much until I felt really cold and my tight and calf muscle almost cramp up. I shivering and walked to the warm changing area but can’t walked fast with the tight muscles. What an experiences.

After reflection, this failure was mostly caused by under trained. The down time from the injury and the work commitment caused few delay in the plan. I only done 6 weeks of serious training prior to this marathon, the endurance was not fully built. Also, all the tourism activities and the few nights that not slept very well contributed too. So, the key to complete a marathon with great timing is simple, training. With great training, I can run faster even back home (408 in SCKLM). I don’t need to travel all the way for a cold climate marathon for PB. Without sufficient training, that’s day dreaming.

So, will I return to Seoul for revenge? Probably not in the near future. I need to correct my mind-set, travel to run a marathon is not for a PB, you travelled, and the marathon supposed to be the highlight of the trip, but not the only reason for the trip. Of course if you PB too, that will be a great bonus for the trip. I suffered in this trip. I travelled with my mind all into the race. Walked around the famous tourist spot like a zombie, ate only familiar food before the race (worried that the kimchi and spicy food will upset my stomach), and no photos taken! I had 2 plates of toppoki after the race for dinner. For next oversea race, I will register for 2016 Tokyo Marathon. If I got thru the ballot selection, I will bring my wife for 2nd honeymoon.

Keep Running!

Training report: Training week 8 & 9, Final Preparation and Game Plan

Training week 8 involved the long missed 1.6km speed intervals. The mile repeats is the hardest amongst all speed work cause the length and pace. The last time I did this was more than 7 months ago. Now from the past few speed works, I realized that the training is about the speed during the interval, not the average pace. Hence I started to slow down lots more during the 400m recovery between repeats, from the usual 5:50-6min/km, to 6:15-6:30min/km. It’s helped to maintain the quality of the speed works. And I able to kept the pace I wanted for all 3 repeats. Still the problem of woke up early but started late, most of the workouts are short in distance compared to what planned. Also I started to reduce the load partly due to workload, and it’s getting close to the race. Monday and Friday were off. Sunday was revisiting the Padang Merbuk – Hartamas route at long run pace, and found out that the Sri Hartamas Petronas was closed again for renovation.

Week 8	Program	Done	Remark
Mon	Easy 9.7km	Rest
Tue	Speed 3x 1600m	Speed 3x 1600m	All repeats paced at 4:50min/km
Wed	Rest	5km
Thu	Tempo 11.3km	9km	8km in tempo pace
Fri	Easy 9.7km	Rest
Sat	Easy 16.1km	18km
Sun	Easy 16.1km	20km	Padang Merbuk – Hartamas
Total Done		62km

Training week 9 started with a day off. The back to back 18/20km over the weekend was unintended, but necessary preparation for the Challenge68. Been a while I didn’t do back to back long run, figured that some extra off time will ensure that I don’t inviting any injury. The body started to response to the amount of training, the speed work and tempo run completed rather easy, and another round of back to back 18/18km was done too. Heart rate and effort were moderate during these 18/18km workouts, with around 6min/km pace. This increased my confident to sub-4 in the coming marathon.

Week 9	Program	Done	Remark
Mon	Easy12. 9km	Rest
Tue	Speed 6x 800m	Speed 6x 800m	All repeats paced at 5min/km
Wed	Rest	Rest
Thu	Tempo 12.9km	12.6km	11km in tempo pace
Fri	Easy 11.3km	5km
Sat	Easy 12.9km	18km
Sun	Long 24.2km	18km	Long run pace @ 6min/km
Total Done		64km

I can’t help but kept revise the game plan during the past 2 day’s long run sessions. I read thru some great story about PB in Seoul International Marathon, the key factors the weather adaption and the flat course. The flat course is a fix fact, but the weather is a variable. That’s means I will need to force myself out for a morning run this Friday and Saturday in Seoul, to let myself adjust to the temperature and clothing requirement. I belief the challenge will be the waiting of flag off until 5km in the race. After that, the engine will be warmed enough to keep going. Forecast for 15 March now is cloudy with some shower @ 10degC. Only minimum faith in these weather forecast, I will need the 2 trail runs to fine tune the attire.

The planned attire,

Running attire, running vest plus running t-shirt, arm sleeves, glove, compress short, cap, running buff and VFF Komodo Sport. Running jacket will be on if light shower.

Waiting for flag off, my running attire, plus a cotton t-shirt, running jacket, poncho and some hand warmer.

Transport from hostel to starting point, all above with additional long pants and light winter jacket.

The long pants and winter jacket (tentatively the running jacket too) will be packed into baggage for after race collection. The cotton t-shirt and the poncho will be disposed after the flag off.

On the other side, the game plan for the marathon is rather simple. Just keep going with faster than 5:40min/km pace, I will be fine. That’s plan A (359 finishing time), plan B will be kick in if I felt great after the first 10km, will push harder gradually and aim for a 350 finish time.

6 more days until the marathon.

Training report: BWM Anniversary, CNY Celebration and Training week 6 & 7

Training week 6 went well except the FB group BWM anniversary celebration on the 15 Feb. The long run was reduced into a 3km short run, with some catching up with fellow barefoot runners and sharing of experiences from the barefoot guru. Some training schedule in week 7 changed too to suit the travel plan and other family chore before and during the CNY. But nonetheless, I recorded some decent mileages for both training weeks, without further stress on my injury.

Week 6	Program	Done	Remark
Mon	Easy 9.7km	4km
Tue	Speed 4x 1200m	Speed 4x 1200m	All repeats paced around 5min/km
Wed	Rest	Rest
Thu	Tempo 11.3km	11.3km	10km in tempo pace
Fri	Easy 9.7km	7km
Sat	Easy 16.1km	10km
Sun	Easy 12.9km	3km	BWM Anniversary
Total Done		45km

Overall week 6 was the low mileage period after the long run in week 5. I seem to have some problem to stick with the planned mileage especially during weekdays. I woke up 4am but usually dragged until 5am only out the gate, and need to return home to prepare the children for school by 6am. The one hour will only enough for 10km and below. I think some improvement needed here to reduce the waiting time from 4-5am  :P

Week 7	Program	Done	Remark
Mon	Easy 9.7km	None
Tue	Speed Progressive	Speed Progressive	All repeats paced around 5min/km
Wed	Rest	10.5km
Thu	Tempo 11.3km	14km	12km in tempo pace
Fri	Easy 11.3km	8.6km
Sat	Easy 12.9km	None
Sun	Long 22.6km	25km	23km in 6min/km
Total Done		73km

The highlight of week 7 was the progressive speed work. You will redo all the distances you concurred in previous speed work at once, plus the longest speed work of 1600m. My CNY holiday started so I can add in extra warm up and cool down. Total mileage for the week was 73km, doing it in the CNY holiday increased the feel good factor. I ran in Polo Ground during the CNY break. This is a great running venue but you will not want to start too early (before 6am, or the first Morning Prayer) cause it will be occupied by Mak Rempit. Also it will be too busy after 7am with lots of people doing their morning walk. So most of the workouts started with few loops in Polo Ground, and then I will venture into the surrounding area.

I put on 3kg extra weight during the injury and the CNY break wasn’t help at all to bring it down. It will run with me during the Seoul International Marathon. But after I checked the weather forecast, I think these extra fats come in handy. The 15 March forecast stated a 5degC high and -2degC low. If this is accurate, it will be way cooler than what I experienced in Munich (10degC). I don’t have any suitable running attire for this temperature. I planned to use the similar approach in Munich Marathon (double top, compress short, cap, arm warmer sleeves & gloves). The challenge will be on the waiting for flag off; like normal I will try to lookout for a disposable poncho and I am thinking to standby my running jacket underneath the poncho. Anyway, I think I will be ok after the engine warmed up. If the body responded well with the cool temperature, I will probably score a PB in this race. For now, I can only hope for the best and continue to fine tune my running pace to the target racing pace.

14 days until my departure to Seoul.