Sundown Ultra Pacing

My long Vesak Day weekend was spent feverish, fluish and sniffing away. Friday was a goner. Saturday morning was a sizzling hot yet shivering and sneezing affair. Good golly, how to run 42km with Alber like that? I popped a few panadols and hoped for a miracle.

Four panadols later, I was at the race site with the guys. ZL and I joined them about 1km from the start line. Alber was doing a 30min-run-3min-walk strategy for the 1st loop. Initially we were going strong and the stop felt unnecessary. But after a while, we looked forward to the breaks. Me with a flu-y nose and unaccustomed legs. The first 20-odd km went well. But after hitting the 30km mark, my stop strategy went awry. Alber went ahead and dropped me along NSRCC/ Coastal Road. I struggled the last 5-7km back to the car park. 5h for 40km.

The plan was to get on my bike and provide mobile support. I wanted to get out of the race venue before the marathoners were flagged off at midnight. I spotted Alber on my way out and cycled alongside until ECP, where I took a quick shower. Then I went up to our Safra support booth and hung around for a while. By then the marathoners had caught up with the ultra runners.

I spotted KM & SL near the u-turn point, but lost Alber after that. So I spent a long time waiting and trying to find him, cycling up and down, and finally locating him walking with Jimmy. Both of them probably walked the last 10km, albeit at a very fast pace. I managed to ride with them and snap some pictures at the finishing line.

What a day... and now my feverish head has turned into a leaky runny nose. Argh....

Back to Track

Easy track night! Because of the upcoming Sundown marathon this weekend. Whew.

Back to track for me tonight, thank goodness for the easy routines. Static drills were relatively shorter, and then we moved to the track.

10x 800m @ moderate consistent pace. I managed to keep to about a 4min/ set timing.

Yeah!

Fat Fat Fat

Was away for almost a month, training halted and fitness plummeted. Sigh.... How easy it was to lose all that strength and fitness. So I finally returned home after a long break and trying to get back into my routine. Plus lose 3kg. Tough job.

Last Friday I went for swim class. It was only a Friday class but was tiring towards the end. Luckily the pace was ok. We did about 1.5km worth of swim.

Sunday morning we joined Fatbird for their last training run at ECP. I managed about 20-21km, but walked a fair bit. 2:20h. Good to sweat it out.

Monday was swim class again. 5x 200m, x 2 sets. Then a couple of 100m and some drills. Ok, survived.

Tonight was Safra run. I was late, and was not interested in two loops of Morse road. So we did the Canterbury - Henderson instead. 59min.

Ok, 3kg,... getting there. Must!

That Painful Ride

I managed to persuade, cajole, nag Alber to join me in this morning's ride with WY and group. We conned Eddie along as well. Haha. Two weeks off my bike and trainings, one could feel the effect. The added kilos did not seem to translate into added power. Fabulous.

It was tough keeping up. Well, it was already tough in the first place, let alone this current state of fitness. I had to pedal really really hard, and still got dropped throughout. Bummer. We went up Mt Faber, and I was the last one down. Then I could not draft them along the Tuas. I tried, but could not keep up. Then we went to NTU, with some divine interventions from the traffic lights, and I was again the last one out of the slopes. Ok, I could see where this was heading. But to be fair, I did not feel demoralised, just tired because all that chasing took tremendous effort.

And I got dropped spectacularly along Lim Chu Kang. They rode in a pack and I could not catch up. All of them. :( I later heard that they went at 40-50kmh. Of course me alone battling the winds was going at 30-31kmh and wondering why the pack looked smaller and smaller into the distance. Bummer, again. In that tired state of affairs, I missed the turn towards Kranji, and headed straight down the Police Coast Guard Jetty, over more rolling slopes. Great, now I would have to retrace my way over those rolls and find the group. Alber found me along the way and showed me the turning point. Almost flat already, full of lactic and going nowhere.

We made it to the Kranji coffeeshop just as the rest were about to set off. We decided to split and make our own way back. There was no way I could follow them on the return anyway. But even with Eddie pulling me and Alber pushing me (I was riding in between them), I just could not pick up speed. All that pedalling seemed to be going nowhere. Darn.

It was a good hard ride for me. And even though I was so dropped so dramatically, out of sight, it was still a good ride.

Spectacular, not, @ MR

It was good to be home and back to my training routine. Except for my unfit body, with added kilos, and the impossibly humid and hot weather. My morning run at MR was not turning out well despite the 2-week break. I was combatting the heat and could feel my pores opening and drenching me in sweat.

Alber and I ran towards Zhenghua park, almost, and turned back. It was hopeless, we stopped to walk a couple of times. Badly. :(

But even that almost 3h run did not seem to burn any of that excess off me. Crumbs.... it was going to be a tough war this time. Sigh.