.... the jackal rides and run....

Yes! Finally outdid my March 2011 PR of 33.5km/h that was done on aero wheels! 33.8km/h ....... 0.3km/h improvement on the average speed for this personal training route. Average HR shot high but I felt ok and could maintain for quite some time even at 175bpm. I had a bit of tail wind helping me towards the u-turn (33.6km/h average achieved at halfway point) but going back the same route means it would be the same find that I need to fight against. Managed to keep and improve a bit towards the end. Lost a fair bit average speed due to the u-turn and drinking my water...ave dropped to 33.3km/h. Luckily legs and cardio were good enough to gain me back some speed. All this on my conventional alloy FRZ wheelset! Passed a couple of guys at service road and they promptly chased up and passed me. I was not interested in playing with them so I just maintained at my 34km/h average at that point. Sure enough, they lost steam after about 500m and I just passed them with no resistance offered....

I reserved Saturday for my long distance run. Initially the plan was the run at night but my forays the previous night on the bike just proved to be exhausting and I needed the sleep. Fortunately, no disturbances from the kids and managed to catch 6+ hours of sleep. Started the run at about 5.50am from ECP. The route is the same as my first 30km loop...basically to run towards SAFRA, coastal straight until Changi beach park and u-turn back after refilling water. As usual, the stomach was not friendly to me...had to take a quick dump. Location confidential, had to go primal on this one. Yet again, the body goes straight into long distance mode....at about 6+min/km (did not check the speed until Coastal straight). The sky was getting brighter so Coastal was not scary at all....but its still a challenging path to take mentally as one cannot see the end of that straight road until the final 1km or so. Refilled at the u-turn point vending machine (15km)...they had no decent drinks so I we...

I just had to know. How does 42km feel like? So I set out at 5am, on my "Marathon Feeler Route" (I have 3, by the way), with the intention of finishing at 10am, with a pace of 7:00min/km. 'Modest' I thought. Oh how wrong I was! The route basically covers the Park Connectors. It was pretty interesting on paper but in reality, one can get confused, like I did as at times the PC do not really 'connect' that well. I entered the Siglap PC near my place. This brought me through Teluk Kurau, Kembangan over the PIE and into Bedok North. Made a wrong turn over here but luckily I stopped to check my GPS and u-turned back towards the correct route. At Bedok Reservoir......the usual dump-attack came....so had to stop at a coffee shop to do my business. I was running on the pathway here until Tampines ave 1 junction where I connected in the Tampines PC. This brought me towards Tampines Mall, Sun Plaza park etc and finally into Pasir Ris PC at Downtown East. At this poi...

Ryo cycled to my place and we ran at ECP doing the 10km loop. As he is definitely a much faster runner than me, I asked him to help me to try to achieve 5:15 pace (just want to get it under 53mins). He did just that at shot off at a bullet pace of 4:30.....I nearly fainted but thank goodness he noticed my state and slowed down to 5:10 pace.....by then I was dying already. Think the initial fast pace destroyed me. Upon reaching the 5km point (a PR), I could feel that I was getting tired fast so I knew at that point that it would be quite difficult to hit the under 53mins target but to achieve a PR over my best time was definitely possible. I gave it all I had for the last km or so and managed to do just that. Ryo hardly pulled a sweat! 10km in 53m 22s....improvement of 20s from previous PR achieved last week. Wow, every seconds equate to pain and suffering but I am loving every moment of it. Strange.

Monday : A rest day....was hit with sore-throat right after the trail-run beer session. I've instructed Ryo to remind me next time out. I'm such a sucker to peer pressure. Not blaming beer directly but the past few times that I got sick.....it was beer after heavy exercising, everytime!! Tuesday : Got up and ran barefoot 10km......did the first 5km alone was suprised I could hold a decent 5:50ish pace for the first 5km. Ran slightly slower with Ryo as my feet were feeling a bit raw by then but it felt great and we managed to complete the next 5km slightly under the 6:00 pace. It was nice to run an chat a bit as well just to catch up and talk about stuff. Wednesday : I owe my bike a ride so I headed out for a 'base' 30km. Basically try to keep HR at 130bpm average for the entire ride. Boring ride as usual but I did not feel the greatest either as I have a dry cough after the sore throat subsided. Thursday : Headed out for a run......I felt ok and thin...

I had Ryo to pace me for Monday's 10km run and bettered my time by 8s. Coming out from being sick last week, I think this is a pretty good achievement. I probably would not have been able to do it without Ryo's pacing, so thanks to him! Time 54:05....just a shy over 54mins. Tuesday was more like a recovery run.....did about 6+km on barefoot with Ryo as well. Amazingly, we had pace of below 5min/km for the last 1.5km or so barefoot! That was nice. Thursday was back on the saddle day for me. Feels good to push on the bike after a while. Pushed hard against headwinds on the way up and on the way back was quite spent to push further. I was determine to keep the time below 55mins for the route so the last 1-2km, I pushed harder. Managed to comply within 55mins timing, just by a shade. The bike now feels pretty good, and looks good too, with the HEDs and GLUED tubular in place. Which reminds me that I need to put more miles into the bike!

I have been planning this for the past couple of days. The early plan was to complete 34km which is a loop covering ECP - Coastal - Changi - Loyang - Bedok Reservoir and back via the park connector. The thought of going up Loyang on foot at the 24km point was pretty much unbearable since I felt that I have not fully recovered from the previous day ride yet! Even so, the show must go on; I had to feel a true long distance run. So finally on Sunday morning, I decided to go for my usual ECP - Coastal - ECP 30km bike route -- on foot. Started with a slow pace.....my initial target was to complete the 30km NOT WALKING at any point but later changed my mind and set a target pace of 7min/km (which I failed, of course). Upon reaching the East Coast Sailing club I was already doing 7+min/km pace......and my bowels were moving. There was a toilet there but I decided that I was ok to go and could control it. It was a mistake as it came in on and off for the next 8km! Fortunately for me, at the ...

Trying to put back more cycling into my exercise regime. Its tough since we have only so many days and so many hours in that day to fill. Anyway, its a good time to increase cycling for now as my legs are STILL recovering from the previous trail run. I'm experiencing the same discomfort on my right leg (knee area) that got me to stop running months back. Did a 10km run which felt ok on Wednesday but I think I should rest a bit more. The trail run probably did more 'damage' that I had hoped. Should have stuck to my old running shoes instead! Cycled with Ryo on Tuesday and Thursday, same route (ECP-Coastal-Loyang-Siglap). The first time round we did it with ave of 30km/h but we were needlessly attacking each other a bit along the way thus the not too optimal time. I remarked that we did this route much faster on Nov 2010 (32.2km/h) which prompted Ryo to raise the challenge for Thursday to ensure that we beat this time by cooperating. Well, cooperate we did. Started out at t...

Ok, this 3 day work week thing has really gotten me into exercise-crazy mode. Running and cycling, that's all I ever do these days in those non-work mornings. So pretty historic day! I completed 21km of pure ECP-ness. I've been thinking about doing this but reading that "Born To Run" book really helped me pull the trigger. The tagline that caught my attention : "You don't have to be fast. You just need to be fearless". That was it. Started out at 5.30am from my home and ran. Did not stop until 21km was reached (Siglap Kopitiam). So its confirmed that if one runs the entire ECP loop, its a half marathon, duh! Initial pace was about 7min/km. Somewhere along the line, I decided to try to get at least the average to not exceed that. A modest 6.59min/km was achieved in the end. My HR barely went over 155bpm. Cardio-wise there was plenty of room left for perhaps a 6.30min/km 21km run BUT I was worried about destroying my legs plus I have not run  on th...