Friday, October 31, 2008

Longer Run

Lately I have skipped a few runs. Given that I am already at a minimum number of runs per week, skipping one or two of my essential runs will likely hurt my marathon time. I did a my longer run - 29km - with some friends and my legs were very tired after 25km. In fact, I had to walk for quite a while. This is a sign that I might not be training enough to last the distance.
I'll try another 32km two weeks down and that would be the furthest that I will go for this round of training. Given my current condition, my timing will likely be above four hours. Hopefully, the last month of training might make some difference.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Quadthlon - Swim, skate, part one

I am glad the Quadthlon is finished. It felt like a distraction for me. The main fitness goal now was to train for the marathon coming end of the year but with the Quadthlon I had to dabble in a few things that I was not confident at.

For your information, I did finish the race which was the goal and I did it with only minor injuries. A few scrapes on the knee as I tripped on the swimming carpet. Luckily it was soft so I just picked myself up and continued running to the transition area.

The four disciplines - swimming, skating, biking and running - none of which I am particularly good at but I was at least confident of the run because I had been running quite a bit this year. At least, I figured I should not have much problem finishing the 6km run.

Swimming was very difficult for me. First, I suck at the front crawl. I tried swimming 2 laps in the swimming pool 3 weeks before the event and concluded that there was no way I could have finished the 500 meters with my current front crawl. Therefore, I decided to use breaststroke. I started out at the back of the pack because I didn't want to kick anyone in the face. However, I got the direction of the swim wrong and ended up being in the middle of the pack. Also, I realised that there are many whose front crawl is just slow. In fact, I had to tread water for a while because I was caught in the middle of the swimming pack and could not overtake the few 'front crawlers' in front of me. Well technically I could overtake and kick them but that would not be a nice thing to do. Breaststroke is not a good stroke for these type of mass swimming event because it is slow and requires such a big gap to avoid kicking the other competitors. Unfortunately, it is the only stroke I am competent in. Needless to say I was ultra tired after the short swim and that contributed to me tripping on the carpet.

Skating was much better. I did wear my speed skates even though I did not think I would have save much time given that I still have not gotten used to them and I take forever to put them on. I think a pair of high end recreational skates with 90mm wheels would have been the fastest setup for me at my current skill level. I used the speed skates because it was a better learning experience than skating with recreational skates. As my skill increases, the speed skates will definitely be faster than the recreational skates. My skating instructor said that I will need one year to get used to speed skates but given my frequency of using them quite likely longer. I go for classes around once a month. I did have a small fall because one skater fell right in front of me. I avoided him but still had a controlled fall. Fortunately, I wore gym gloves so my hands did not get any abrasions. I talked to one of the spectators and it seemed like there were a lot of skaters who fell. I think there were only 3 main areas that was a little more challenging - a small step around 3 cm at the beginning, some bumps to slow down bikes and the u-turn. I was going rather slow at these areas to avoid falling but still fell because of the skater who fell.

If you are still interested, check up later on this site and I will write about the cycling and the running part.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Bitter sweet - London

I got rejected for the Flora London Marathon. It is a bittersweet feeling because I thought it would be a wonderful way to see London and was in a way hoping to qualify for the ballot. However on another note, it would be a rather expensive marathon as I have to travel all the way to London. Now that I have been rejected, I can come up with different plans for the beginning part of next year. Moreover, up till now, I only think that I can finish a marathon but have never ran above 30k before. In a way, the rejection might have save me some pain. Below is the rejection letter...

Dear Runner,

We regret that we have to advise you that your application to run in the 2009 Flora London Marathon has not been successful due to massive over-subscription.

However, if you still wish to run, please see below for a list of tour operators who may be able to help you enter the 2009 FLora London Marathon.


Yours sincerely,
Dave Bedford
Dave Bedford, Race Director

Monday, October 6, 2008

First Marathon - my training

December 7, given that I am healthy...I will run my first marathon. It has been 5 weeks since I started the training. Initially I wanted to download some plans off the internet as there should be quite a few. However, it seems that many of them requires you to train more often than I would like to spend on running. Also, I feel that running 3 times should be right for me both for time required and to prevent overusing my legs. As I had trouble finding a plan, I just modified one from an internet plan I found earlier in www.runnersworld.ltd.uk. My plan is to keep the plan's long run goal every week and modify its mid week training program so that it is only twice. One long run and two training runs. I found some article in the web that said it was enough but I cannot remember where the link was. I am a bit unsure whether 3 times is enough as most of the other plans I have seen so far would advise up to 6 times of running per week. I am sticking to my 3 if all goes well. One speed, one hill and a long run at the weekend. The speed and the hill all requires around 30 minutes of running only. I'll let you know if it is enough on December 8. Anyway, I am not planning to win any prizes just plan to challenge myself at something difficult and fun of course.