Shoes Shoes Shoes

How many pairs of running shoes do you have? Well.. I have 3!!! In all honesty, I think serious runners should have two pairs. I have three!!! What does that say about me??? :P

No in all honesty, I believe people who are not runners will say I am a crazy runner. People who are really serious about running would call me a half-f***ed runner. Haha. I guess I am in between the two.

So why do I say two pairs of shoes. If you are serious, you will run pretty often. Perhaps like three times or more a week. And if you do run that often, it would be really good if you can give your shoes a break. I believe by rotating your shoes, you can make your shoes last longer. Well anyway I read somewhere just today that each pair of shoes should last between 350 miles to 500 miles. That's about 500km to 800km. How much is that in terms of weeks? If you run like 6km three times a week, your shoe will last about 28 to 45 weeks. That's like 6 months to 10 months. So if you have two pairs of shoes, it may last you up to one and a half years instead. :P Not only that, by practising rotating shoes, you allow your shoes to breathe. In other words, your shoes wouldn't stink that much now that you can allow them to air longer.

So anyway, now you know I advocate two pairs of shoes. Get it if you feel comfortable or are convinced by my not-so-convincing argument. Now why do I have three pairs? Well my third pair is my quick pair. It's a racing shoe. As I have always aspired, ever since my National Service Days, to achieve that elusive 9.14min, I keep that shoes for that special 2.4km. So now you know. Haha.. :P

Work Work

I just graduated about a month or so. And since then, I have begun working in the ever-busy Shenton Way. My day begins at 8.30am to 5.30pm. By right, that is, I should end by 5.30pm. Well, that has not happened yet. And I do doubt if I would ever end my day at 5.30pm. So how how how. How do I run? Well one has to come up with some means to do that..

My first week of work was, very fortunately, overseas. My lovely company sent me and my fellow newbies to the shores of Penang. I wanted to say lovely shores but the haze has really cast a shadow, literally, on the beaches of Gurney. Well, I am proud to report that I manage to get my big ass out of bed on 2 days at 6am to exercise. I am so proud of myself. Tuesday morning I woke up early for a gym workout. Wednesday morning I woke up for a run along Gurney drive. Not very far though. About 20 minutes. That's like 4 to 4.5km. I was wearing my quick shoes. :) I'll tell you about my running shoes another time.

Well for my second week of work, I was already back in Singapore. I manage to drag my fat ass once more to run. I woke up at 6am on Tuesday morning for a short run. Really short. My guess is about 3.5km. Really short. But given my start time of 8.30am, and my need to catch the 7.30am bus, I am limited either by the distance I run or the time I wake up. Quite sucky. On Friday, I arranged to meet Friend A, and a couple of others for a run around school. Very nice. It's really nice to run with friends and after not meeting them for a few weeks, it really is nice. Oh anyway, it was about 6.5km to 7.5km. However, the thing is the pace was quick. But luckily, I was able to keep up with the quick ones. :)

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. How to work out given now that I have started work. Well. My two options now are waking up early and the other option is to go run after work. Well Well.. Will let you know what works for me in a couple of weeks when my work life stabilizes. Ciao

To Stanchart or Not to Stanchart

The Singapore Standard Chartered Marathon 2008 is open for registration once more. Friend A has been bugging me to enter with him. Apparently his kaki for last year decided the marathon was too short a distance for him. Thus he decided to go two further by adding two events on top of the gruelling 42.195km. He's taking part in an Ironman, which unfortunately for Friend A, happens to be on the same day as Standard Chartered Marathon (SCM) 2008. As of this moment, I believe I am the one of the few friends who is capable of keeping up with Friend A for a portion of the distance. Therefore he has approached me to participate once more in the event.

But to Stanchart or not to Stanchart? That is the question. It would be nice to try and complete one more marathon, and hopefully with a better timing. The temptation is there. Furthermore, for my last marathon at Gold Coast, the perennial question of "Why am I doing this again?" did not once pop into my head during that 4 hours 43 minutes. Perhaps it is the appeal of being in a foreign place running a marathon. Or perhaps I am simply looking forward to the fun things I would be doing after the suffering. I'm not sure. But that question did not pop up. So I ask myself, do I really want to continue to run marathons for a lifetime? To this question, the answer for now is I don't know.

Another interesting thought just pop into my head. Why the hell did I participate in such events anyway? The first marathon I believe I took part was in SCM 2003. That marathon, I had the company of 3 friends from Army. I guess the reason I took part in that was to achieve something. I've been pretty slack in much of my life in the 6 years or so preceding my National Service. Perhaps it is a way of redeeming myself or a proof to myself that I can complete something daunting. Nowadays, I join marathons as a means to keeping fit. I believe that if you have a target, such as running that dreaded 42.195km, you will have more reason to train and you would have to find the time to train.

So whilst there seems be a lot of compelling reasons to participate once more in a marathon, the opinion of my better half still matters and I do take her opinion into serious consideration. It was due to her opinion that I should stop running marathon, at least for a year, that is why I did not run the SCM 2007. I can understand her fears and concerns. She's worried about the impact the constant pounding of my feet would have on my feet, joints and other stuff. I know where she is coming from particularly as I have had problems with my knees and ankles before my National Service. But thus far, she has been very supportive of the two marathons that I have participated this year. Will she be supportive of SCM 2008? The answer is still an unknown.

Again, to stanchart or not to stanchart? As of now, it seems more likely than not that I will join SCM 2008 with Friend A. I would say 70% likely. But it's not a confirmation yet! :P

Interval Running

Have you ever heard of the term Interval Running? Some people, like myself, call it by other terms like Power Runs. So what's this all about?

Interval Running is a type of training to improve your overall speed. I did a lot of it when I was training for my IPPT. For non Singaporeans, IPPT or Individual Physical Proficiency Test is a test of the Singapore Armed Forces as a gauge on the fitness of its servicemen. Well, IPPT requires a 2.4km run. For the crazy people from Commando and Divers, the timing required is under 9 min 15 seconds. To pass, one has to run faster than 13 minutes.

Anyway, Interval Running helps in improving your time. It involves running for a short period of time or distance, followed by a short rest or slow jog. For instance, say you run for 600 metres then you rest for 1 minute. Then you repeat the process. The thing about this exercise is that you have to run quickly. When you do so, you pant more and you take deeper and bigger breaths. I believe this will in turn improve the amount of oxygen you and your muscles can take in. Also, Interval running helps in improving your muscle endurance. The more and harder you run, the better your muscle endurance will be.

Does it work? Well in my humble opinion (IMHO), I believe it really does. Much as I really hate doing it, I believe it is one of the few ways to get that elusive Gold. Getting Gold and you get rewarded by the Singapore Government. Your prize money is $400! Well, I haven't achieved it for quite some time now. Dang. Have to keep trying.

Monday I did one on the treadmill in school. I ran a moderate pace of about 10 on the treadmill. I'm guessing it's 10km per hour. I ran at that pace for about 4 km before I started on the dreaded training. So I started running at a pace of 12.8 for 2 minutes followed by 10.6 for 2 minutes "slower" jog. Damn. It's tiring. The pace was subsequently upped till about 13.3. Man am I tired. I did a total of about 6 sets of that and I completed Monday's run of about 8.8km. Today's a Thursday and I'm still tired. Haha.. I know.. Friend A and his friends will say I'm a bum. Haha..

So anyway, now you know about Interval Running. Hate it..

The Good Stuff of GCM

Another day Another article on GCM. Well it should be apparent how much I enjoyed the trip Down Under. Did I enjoy the marathon? Come to think of it, probably one of my more enjoyable ones. I didn't mind the first half of the marathon or so. Not much pain and I was running at a pretty comfortable pace. The second half was challenging but nonetheless an experience I still enjoyed. Now I'll just have a brief write up on the good stuff of GCM and what our marathons back here can learn from.

There were a few things that appealed to me in the marathon. Firstly, we got to put our names down on our bib numbers. I thought that was an excellent idea. People who were cheering the runners could finally call out their names instead of their numbers. Ever experience running then someone shouts to you, "Comeon 2379! You can do it!" It's quite obvious he's cheering you on. He's staring at you and you have eye contact with the guy. Who else could he be cheering for? But nonetheless, How many people actually remember their numbers? I, for one, don't. I'll still have a peek at my bib and oh! That's me he's referring to. At GCM, there wasn't the issue of that. People called me by my name and it feels so much better. You can even put your nickname or something. One of my friends put his alias and it sort of humoured the cheerers who cheered him on.

Another thing I liked was the numerous timing mats. There was a timing mat for every 5km, and at the halfway point. I think it's really nice and it provides you a breakdown of your marathon. This would particularly be useful if you are a really serious runner, or if you are like me, just curious.

The isotonic drinks during the marathon is also worth mentioning. Perhaps to some it may be too diluted. It has a lot of water mixed with probably half the required syrup. But I felt this was a really good mix. Normally for isotonic drinks, it tends to be too sweet and it makes you want to drink water, at least I do. After drinking the isotonic, you need to drink a bit of water to dilute the sweetness and to wet your throat. The isotonic at GCM was diluted, as mentioned, but it was just right. I felt that I could just take a cuppa isotonic and that's it. This helped reduced the bloatedness and I felt that was really nice.

The last thing I would like to talk about would be at the finishing line. I was really really appreciative of the team of people at the finishing line whose sole task was to assist you in taking out your championchip tag. These nice folks would ask if you require assistance and they would squat, so that you needn't have to squat yourself, to take off that double knot you tied. At the end of a tiring run, that is such a god sent. Thanks nice folks who took off my championchip tag.

Well yeap. That's the main stuff I liked about the GCM apart from the wonderful scenery and amazing people. So hopefully the organizers of our marathons learn something from this. :P