Army Half Marathon 2012: Race Review

I ran the AHM in 1:57:12. Its definitely not the time i was shooting for (which was 1:50-1:52) and i am actually ruing the lost opportunity because the weather was really outstanding. Yet, i dont feel too bad about the outcome for a few reasons and am motivated to improve upon this significantly in the days to come.

After 3 months of aboslute slacking, August was a good month in overall mileage terms as i hit 230+kms. It was a sudden pick up in running volume (as shown in the graph below, courtesy of runningahead.com where i log my runs) but i managed to navigate this without any injury and hoping that my body would remember how it used to run back when i was training for the Tokyo Marathon.

I was quite eager to actually "race" this and managed to even keep my running ongoing while i was traveling on work. Piled on a whole lot of random carbs on Saturday and then it was race day before i knew it. I woke up at 3.30am, finished with the morning ablutions, made myself a small cup of coffee and got donned in my pre-race wear. I am obsessive enough to lay out everything i need for a race the previous night and this time was no different either. Got out of the house at 4am and parked at Raffles city by 4:20am and then made my way to the baggage area and did my pretense of a warm-up. 25mins before the race was to start, i downed a gel and that was to be my only pre-race nutrition, not counting a small handful of nuts i had gobbled before i left my house in the morning.

The race got underway and i was quite keen on clearing the initial few kms quickly to beat the crowd and in trying to do this, i had to weave in and out a fair bit leading to a more than desirable variation in pace. For instance, the 1st km was covered in 5:11 but the next took 5:41 .. this dance on the road continued for the first 5 kms after which the need to brake decreased rapidly. It was still quite dark and there were parts of the route where people fell down, sprained their ankles and what not but i successfully managed to navigate those parts unscathed. I kept focusing on the distance ahead and as has become my habit now, didnt look at the watch at all but ran by feel. Managed to grab a few sips of water at each water point and kept going without stopping at any of them. At around 12kms, a moderate stitch came on which caused me to slow down; by cutting my pace, i managed to chase it away. In the 13th km, as per my plan i took my gel and continued to keep going eager to finish the reminder of the race on target. I cleared the 15th km in 1:20 which put me exactly on pace for a 1:52 finish. At around 15.6km into the race, there was a small incline which had people breaking into a walk and i charged on, buoyed by my now-unfounded ability to run slopes so i picked up the pace going uphill and overtaking quite a few people. A few seconds later, i paid heavily for my folly when i was hit by the mother of all stitches that had taken lodging beneath my right ribs and had a relentless vice like grip on my breathing and overall muscle movement. I tried slowing down my pace and prayed for it to go away like it had in the 12th km but this time i was dealing with a well-matched foe. Not wanting to risk a total system shutdown, i just swallowed my pride or whatever little there was left of it and started to walk. I nervously kept checking my watch to see how badly this was going to hit me and wondered what i should now be aiming at, given that 1:52 had flown out of the window. I walked for a couple of minutes and then tried to gently jog to see if the stitch would go away - it seemed to just lurk in the background waiting to greet me once more should i speed up. (It was much like the inverse relationship between Dennis Quaid and Sandra Bullock in the movie Speed, except that here it was that i shouldnt exceed a specific target). I tried my luck and felt ok for a few hundred metres before getting a really big urge to just stop. It took a lot of effort to banish that thought from my mind and i slowly kept the feet moving, trying to look every which way and find sources of inspiration to help continue the race. At no point in time was i ever in doubt about finishing the race, it was just a question of what time i would do it in. With 1km to go, i decided to step up the pace and risk the stitch coming on and while it looked like it just might, i ran out of real estate and across the finishing line. Collected my medal, had a 100+, caught up with some of my friends, had a nice decent breakfast and headed home.

The one thing that i didnt want to write at the very beginning is about my travel prior to the race. I was in Vienna and Zurich on work, in the week prior to the race and as per my original travel plan was supposed to come back on Sunday morning. However, i had to run this race and i scheduled my flights so that i reached home on Saturday evening at 5pm. Went to sleep at 11pm and got up at 3.30am and was out of the house by 4am. So within 12 hours of landing in Singapore, i had lined up for an half marathon. I cant say i felt any Jet lag, the flight to Singapore (via Frankfurt) while long at 12 hours, was still comfortable and even the less than 5 hours of sleep the night before didnt have me drowsy in the morning after waking up. Therefore i believe the race performance was a very direct indicator of current state of fitness than of mitigating factors such as the long distance travel so close to the race.

Next up is the Changi Prison Run 10km race next Sunday. Last year was a disaster where i blew up after running sub-5 pace for the first 6kms and ended up finishing in 1:04. This year i will try to be a little wiser ......

Home slopes ... and misc

Ran a hard 12km this evening (without water) on the slopes near my home - was a very good run for different reasons least of which was the fact that i was able to maintain my stride in the second half of the run without killing myself. Also i think the slopes became "easier" (actually it wouldnt have) the 3rd time around or i had become numb to the pain; either ways, managed to get through the workout without too much trouble. Original plan was to run 17-18kms at M&Ms but that got canned due to a combination of reasons (couldnt wake up on time in the morning as i didnt sleep too well the night before etc).

Weighed in after the run at 70.5 which is good and bad and not surprising. Definitely beats being 74.5 from just a few weeks back. I think weight is stabilizing around 72kgs or thereabouts - its from here that the weight loss is going to be an uphill battle. Will i ever see 68 kgs again? :)

Also got my supplies of whey protein and BCAA today so unlike last time where i had to throw 60% of the contents due to expiry, i hope to fully utilize all that i have bought thus far. Also got Endurox R4 yesterday only to come home and see that i already had it from sometime before and had just forgotten about it. Picked up Glutamine as well to experiment with some supplements.

My training plan to Osaka is just a melting pot of whatever i want to throw into it. The only thing i want to do is to keep the broad structure in place and then play around whatever is inside .. maintain good aerobic volume (easy runs, high volume); do a weekend long run, atleast 1 speed workout (usually tempo) during the week and run as many recovery runs as i want to. Hoping to run atleast 25kms every weekend in October but thats a pipe dream at the moment (need to build towards that in September). 

Also, god willing, "Up" should happen next year.

And the road goes on and on ...

I find myself in a familiar place in my running life as i write this piece .. Not knowing what to focus on after prematurely achieving the Sub-4 target for this year resulted in an absolute degradation of running discipline and lacklustre outings on the road the past few months with total mileage across May-July being less than 140kms. Given that Osaka is only a few months away and given the pathetic shape i am in now, i decided to take things up seriously starting August and just start running consistently.

I wanted to do things right from Aug 1st but didnt manage to run the first few days and that wasnt very motivating. The one thing that i started doing after that was to get out of the door everyday .. run slow but run nevertheless. So, having done that consistently for the last 20 days or so, is bringing back the psyche i maintained when i was training similarly in the run up to the Tokyo Marathon.

Still its a long way to go and this is only a small step.

Whats happening with the anachronistic posts ...

I was going through my blog's settings and saw that i had some very outdated drafts that were meant to be posted after some refinements but i see no point in doing that now so i just posted them anyway just so that the effort of having typed them doesnt get wasted. :)

Thats all ..

In anticipation ....

I was wondering where have i got with my running since i started a year back (regularly, that is). Aug 2009 can count as the starting line for me and it wasn't much, given the fact that i only ran 300kms until Dec 31st 2009. Still it was a beginning, humble as it may have been .. and was but a small step, literally, in the right direction of falling in love with the sport of running.

1030 kms later, 8 months past, i find that long distance running is more than just an experience. Its an education. Its a very delicate tug-of-war between mind and body, sometimes forcing decisions, and at other times pulling in the same direction.

Singapore AHM 2010 race review

The day was finally upon me. 1 week after a great 10km race at the YRPR, I was going to test my ability at more than twice that distance. The AHM in 2009 was my first timed run on my Garmin 305 – and I fared miserably under the circumstances back then, fading to a 2:51 finish caused by several reasons, not all of which were related to running! So I was quite eager to set the record straight this time around. Once again, for the impatient, I timed 2:06:16 per my Garmin 305 which is a PB improvement of about 6.5 minutes. For those with time to kill, thanks for stopping by and do read on.

Buoyed by a 49min 10km race at YRPR, and the encouragement of several of my good running buddies, I set a target for 2hrs for myself for the 21.1km. As usual, I could barely sleep the night before and managed I think, just about 3-4 hours of sleep before waking up at 3.15am to get ready and drive over to the venue by around 4am as any later would mean that I would get no parking space whatsoever close to the venue. I downed a banana at home, and then a PowerGel at the carpark at the venue as pre-race nutrition. The pasta I had the day before for some reason was not agreeing with me much and I was hoping that it wouldn’t cause any serious problems during the race.
After wishing Sumedha a good run on her part, at around 5.08am or so I started making my way towards the start line when much to my consternation, the race was counted down and flagged off, well before the scheduled 5.15am start. I knew that if I didn’t take the first couple of kms down quickly, I would be sandwiched amongst runners who would be ambling and thus eat seriously into my time. So the first few kms was spent rapidly weaving in and out trying to find the fastest route out (not necessarily the shortest), and in retrospect, might have cost me in the later stages of the race. My race plan was to hit 10km at 55min, 15km at around 1:22-1:24 and then take it from thereon. For some reason, I just couldn’t shake off the feeling of lethargy I felt in the early kms. It wasn’t encouraging at all running with heavy legs and having to make extra effort in getting a move on. Imagine my plight when at around 4kms, I see a horde of runners casually running in the opposite direction, and I was thinking “I must be really slow, for these guys have already U-turned and going back”!! Then I realized that, actually this (i.e. the opposite side) was the start line and these guys were 15-20 minutes behind me and just started the race!  To make a point here, I did my first km in 6:24 which was ok, but the next km in 4:50 which was quite stupid.

The first 10kms also had 2 long slopes at the MBS Bridge as well as the Sheares bridge, and I used both as a phase to gain some time on the slower runners on the upslopes and make up for the time I lost due to the early dodging. Until then I had not stopped at any aid station as I was running with my 4 bottle fuel belt and I hadn’t drunk any of my own supplies too, so I think the combination of lethargy, tiredness and lack of hydration brought me to a standstill just before the 10km mark at ECP. That was a big blow to my confidence that I would finish sub-2 hrs, even though I did manage to cross 10km in 56 minutes. I walked a bit, stopped to stretch myself and mentally kept a dialogue going on how I would do the remaining distance and still come in under 2 hours. Wisely, I re-hydrated on the walk and began running again, only to come to a stop a km later. I just couldn’t figure out why this was happening and while I debated about it, I chose to not have an energy gel until much later. I would go on to not have any gel at all during the entire race, and that sure is an area of improvement. I started feeling a little bit feverish at this point but just blocked the negative thought out of mind, and sure enough it did go away and I caught my second wind, going through 15kms in 1:27. And sure enough, just when I thought I could hold on a push for my target, I bonked again. And again. And again. All through this, why I didn’t have my energy gels (I was carrying two of them) completely escapes me. My 20th km took me more than 7 minutes to finish!! By the 18th km, I had given up hope of beating 2 hrs and just wanted to make the overrun as low as possible. I can’t believe now that I even walked in the last km of the race, which can only mean I didn’t pace myself properly. In the end, while it was a minor consolation that I have a new PB, it’s a disappointment because 2hrs was eminently possible. I can only make amends by running my next half marathon 1:54 or below (to go below 2hrs by as much as I went over it this time).

Areas of improvement:-
1. Get to the start line earlier (aim for start delay of less than 20 seconds)
2. Hydrate earlier in the race
3. Use the energy gel when I have to
4. Lose the belt, carrying an extra 1kg for the first 10kms isn’t off much help at all
5. Maintain a steadier pace in the 2nd half of the race.
6. Go hell for leather in the last 3kms (this one is easier said than done!).

Have to now shut this out of mind and look towards the 100km duo at the North Face challenge in 4 weeks time.

Milestone week !!

3 keys things happened this week ..

The missus celebrated her birthday on Monday of this week .. and it was a surprise well orchestrated.

On the same day, I hit the 4000km mark in my cumulative running total.

Two days later, we celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary !! Time does fly !!

Running is getting slowly back on track ...

Tokyo Marathon 2012: Race report (Part 1)

When i took that last step across the finish line, i had stopped the clock at 3:56:50. A PB by 30 minutes. I had never imagined in my wildest dreams that, that would happen. While still in a state of shock, i found myself at around 1:07pm Japan time on Sunday having inadvertently joined the swelling group of marathoners who have broken 4 hours for the distance. What i felt that day, and even what i am feeling now ... is something i can only best describe as falling between euphoric and mild disbelief. :)

The urge to analyze the results is intense .. to know how i got there. Primarily its for 2 reasons - 1) If i could explain how i got there, i feel in control .. that somehow things went exactly the way i planned for them to. And (2) If i could explain how i got there, i could repeat the result in the future by doing exactly the same or try going even one better. Without taking away much of the magical feeling i have right now, and neither wanting to appear too much like a kid with his first icecream, i want to capture how i felt going into the race, and the race itself.

Pre-race:
The run-up to Tokyo 2012 was very similar to Tokyo 2011, as i had observed in an earlier post. Coming out of a lackadaisical few months, trying to salvage what best i could in the few weeks that i had before the marathon (12-13) - i found myself at the end of Dec 2011, having built mileage upto an average of 40kms a week and looking down at 2012 with a completely open mind on how to train for the first couple of months. Given the fact that just 2 months of some consistent training in 2011, had got me to a 4:26 finish at TM 2011, i figured that if i were to apply the same approach, i should be able to atleast match that result if not go better. At no point in time was i thinking i should have a training plan for 4hr in place - and that was because i had already predetermined that my goal race would be the Gold Coast Marathon in July, and that Tokyo would just serve as a benchmark to base my GCM training plan on.

Tokyo 2011 build up:


Tokyo 2012 build up





January was fantastic - 248kms, my highest ever mileage for a month. February started off promising and then 2 things happened that kinda made me feel a bit diffident. One, my long run was not too great and i couldnt keep the pace up through the run. And two, my taper was kinda walking off a cliff. There was no gradual cut back, just a big drop from 60km a week to 25km. In hindsight, that might have been a good thing but definitely it was not doing much to help my mental state of affairs. :)

Tokyo Times

On 25th Feb, the day before the marathon, i ran the 2km friendship run. To cut a long story short, it was a brutal run - the temps was in the low singles and there was heavy rain to boot. I ran with a poncho, frozen hands and a slightly defunct brain which couldn't quite rationalize what the hell i was doing. In fact, a couple of my friends who had come to run the IFR turned back even before it started, not wanting to risk getting sick before the marathon the next day.

Food .. i had been to an Italian place the previous night for dinner and liked it enough to go back and do my carbo loading. Lunch and Dinner were both big plates of spaghetti with mozzarella cheese and for a change my stomach was doing fine with no signs of causing any anxiety for the race. I knew from experience and reading that staying hydrated in a cold climate is very important as the usual indicator of sweating is absent and so i was drinking water frequently in large quantities to make sure that this part of the prep was right on track as well.

Homestretch to the Tokyo Marathon 2012

In exactly 8 days after today, i will be toeing the line at the Tokyo Marathon for the second time in as many years. Its a race in which only half the race experience is through your feet, the other half is through your eyes ...what with such fantastic crowd support, runners of all ages, a general feeling of bonhomie in the air, freshly made piping hot food from complete strangers ... its difficult to ignore all this and stay completely focused on just how you are running.

My training has been kinda here and there and everywhere. I decided that i would try and mimic last year's training block and see where it would get me this year (last year, i had a non-existent Nov-Dec 2010, started training in Jan 2011 and got in about 7 weeks of training before running the race, to a 4:26:57 finish). I found myself in a similar situation at the start of December (with an abysmal three month hiatus just before and having put on 4kgs in the three weeks of leave i had taken to visit India for Diwali). I came back to run my 7km bit at the Ekiden and was hoping to run atleast at a 6 min pace but somehow managed to run 5:04 pace. That kinda ignited the fire and i started training in December to just shed the 4 kgs i put on and then think about giving Tokyo a decent short.

165kms in Dec, 245kms in Jan and possibly 150kms in Feb (before the race) should make this on paper, a better trained race relative to last year's prep but i somehow still dont feel too confident about matching last year. I hope to run this race as strongly as i can to get a good idea of my current fitness level so that i can make an appropriate training plan for a marathon in July/Aug.

Let the cards fall as they may ..

A new beginning ...

2012 should hopefully be radically different from 2011 as far as my running is concerned. Sep-Nov 2011 was a complete disaster with combined mileage for the 3 months at 160kms. Thankfully, i have got out of the doldrums, with a 160km+ month in Dec'11.

Tokyo is looming less than 60 days away and i need to make the most of 2 months in order to have a half-decent shot at running the marathon in respectable time. Dejavu! Last year was very similar except that December'2010 was an even bigger washout with only 1 run and then none for 3-4 weeks following that. So as on date, i am in a better position this year, than i was at the same time last year.

Goal race is still likely to be Gold Coast and i will plan my training and goal pace around how i do in Tokyo. Have already signed up for the Sundown Half Marathon so that should be sweet timing as part of the training towards GC.

I think i should have a mileage target for 2012 .. and i think 2500kms sounds like a good round number to aim for.