Thursday, September 4, 2008

30-Rounds! Round and Round

Did not wake up early enough to clock a morning makeup training. Prayed very hard for good weather in the evening. These days, I wished we had the equivalent of USA's dedicated weather channels that kept repeating weather reports ad nauseum. It drizzled a little in the mid-morning, but cleared up nicely in the afternoon. Weather looked promising.

In a desperate attempt to dry all my gear after the downpour last night, I had to stuff my shoes with newspapers, fan-blow them throughout the night, and sun them outside in my office's rooftop garden. With so many things lying all around, the clumsy me would obviously forget something. Indeed - my footpod! Darn, it meant I could only do my training at routes with clearly marked distances if I wanted to record the timings. 3 sets of 4km, R3, 5:30min pace. Which meant - Pandan Reservoir, or tracks. The worst wet weather backup would be the dreadmill. All venues listed in increasing order of evilness.

Pandan Reservoir = 2km to-and-fro 3 times
Track = 10 rounds x 3 times (= 30 rounds! Gasp!)
Dreadmill = ...... unbearable

In the end, I picked the track option and headed for NUS. KM was training there with his coach recording his timings, while I was there running, with KM encouraging along the way. It was funny, like a family generational tree of who's watching over who.

1st set: 21:45min (oops a tad too fast); 2nd set: 22:01min; 3rd set: 22:01min. There, nicely done. I unbelievably ran 30 (freaking 30!) rounds on the track. The last set was especially tough, I think I totally maxed out by then. KM ran alongside as part of his cool down jog. Luckily or I might have slowed down. In the past 2 weeks, I had more track contact than I ever had for an entire year! However, I think we would need to find alternative venues for long intervals. The circular runs were torturous to my left knee, due to the prolonged body slant.

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