Background
Penang Bridge International Marathon 2013 has got to be the worst race I ever endured. It was my third full marathon, whereby 4 weeks prior it was the BSN Night Marathon 2013 and three weeks prior to that was my maiden marathon, the KL Marathon 2013.
If I wanted to blame it on fatigue, I cannot. It was not fatigue, it was going out too fast int he first half of the marathon. You see, the first two marathons, I had a running buddy till 24km and a running buddy till the end of the race respectively. It kept me good during the first half for "conversational pace". I had thought that going on a 3-mins run and 1-min walk would simulate a "conversation pace" but as I reached 21km within 2h:45m, I was certain I will get in trouble. My last two marathon, I reached half-way point at about 3h:10m and 3h:08m respectively. By 23rd km, I was reduced to walking from muscle fatigue and dehydration from salty air.
So, I had a full 19km of walking to re-evaluate my run for 2013. I started running my first non-stop 1min in April 2012, entered my first 10km race end Oct 2012 finishing at 1h:13m and have achieved a Personal Best in 10km just a week after the KL Marathon. I managed that because I put on 3kg for KL Marathon in full preparation for it, both in nutrition and mileage and finished rather strongly, having the muscle sore kept to a minimum. The next day, I woke up with sores similar to running a 10km race. I wasn't fatigue entering the 10km IJM Run to make my PB.
I am also a follower of several amateur blogs, and one of it is a Malaysian Blogger who started out like me one year before me. And his progress is tremendous. Of course, he has a running club he joins that pushes him a lot, but, to see him moving from a 1h:16m to a 54min runner in less than a year motivates me.
The Plan
So there I was, contemplating my run. I'm not yet a two-years runner, so my running base is not established. Research shows that a runner needs two years of constant running to build a strong base. Heck, even now I'm still 3 months short of my running base target.
What I discovered and accepted was that, in my rush to run a Full Marathon, I concentrated on endurance and totally neglected improving my speed. My speed improved on its own due to muscle building from hill repeats on treadmill, and enduring tempo run within races. But it wasn't enough.
So I made a plan to myself. I want to concentrate on speed building for 10km and achieve a sub-60mins by 30 April. Following that, I will go back to endurance training to complete my BSN Marathon within 6 hours, hopefully sub 5h:45m.
I scoured the Internet for teaining schedules, and actually settled for Endomondo's training program.
The Schedule (Started 29th November)
The training schedule, to put it simply, is a speedwork on Tuesdays, tempo on Saturdays and LSD on Sundays. My usual 10km speed is 6:50mins/km. In short it looked like this: -
Monday - Rest
Tuesday - 8 sets 400m repeats at 5:05min/km (400m recover at 6:55min/km)
Wednesday - Easy Run 5km
Thursday - Easy Run 6km
Friday - Rest
Saturday - 2-3 sets 1.2km repeats at 5:20min/km and after a few weeks,....
10mins at 6:55min/km, 40mins at 6:05min/km and 10mins at 6:55min/km
Sunday - 13km at 6:55min/km
Now, I am not a super training man. I have my laziness issues as well, but I always try my best to meet the 3 main runs per week, and so I did. I did my speedwork and tempo on treadmill where I can easily monitor my speed and distance on the machine. However, I'm always a set short, or a 10mins tempo short due to tiredness. But then, I'm happy to note that I am being trained to run at a speed that is not too crazy but will eventually make my legs, muscles, lungs and heart adapt.
Reaching the Target
I wanted to test my 10km during the KL Road Race 2014, but it doesn't seem that it will be on this year. Seeing Larian Gegar UM 10km early May, I signed up for that instead as my 10km trial.
On 18th January, which is exactly 50 days after I started speed improvement training, I was pleasantly surprised during my Sunday LSD at the park, when my first km was below 6:20/km and the following km was the same. The effort I placed when running was similar to an effort of an easy run. So I thought to myself, let's push it.
At his time, I have also bought myself a Garmin Watch that has many alerts, so I placed an alert to tell me if my pace is faster than 5:50min/km so that I don't go too fast.
To put it simply, I stopped for water at 3km and 6km and finished a 9.97km (yes, 30 meters short) at 1h:01m:52s, beating my previous PB by nearly two minutes. I shared my glee with Doc Jef, a running friend. He said that I could easily break my sub-60 as long as I pushed myself harder.
On 30th January, I was at MMU Track and Field alone, without any of my colleague runners, so I gunned it. I maintained as much as possible to keep a 6-minuter, and by the last two km, I pushed harder to end my first sub-60 at 59m:13s.
As this is a flat course, I won't consider it official. It will remain a personal PB, but we will see the real test in May. By then I hope it will be a sub-58.
