Marathon

I joined the Standard Chartered Marathon this year because I thought, what the hell, I'll never be as fit as I am this year, so why not? The fact that I finished the Army Half Marathon in little less than two hours (which seems to be a feat by some) encouraged me to pay the 75 dollars late registration fee and join! The simple fact of training for the marathon helped me discover some things about me in the past two months of training.

1. I need to set a goal (e.g marathon, half) in order to run more than 5 km.


2. I love running with music.


3. I cannot follow a very hard training programme - for example, my running programme which included running 4 times a week between 6 and 22 km, besides climbing and weight-carrying-across-the-hill, was dumped after 3 weeks.


4. I would rather measure my runs in the time i've run rather than the distance. I am more comfortable with setting a goal of two hours and a half rather than a goal of 25 km. I guess it's the magnitude ...


5. Related to [4], i love my time function on my Nike + iPod, which notifies me every five minutes.


6. The first half an hour is the most horrendous time for me. It is the time I use to convince myself to go ahead. Everytime. Sometimes when I am very tired I need to stop after half an hour and decide whether to continue. Luckily, I usually find a traffic light just around that time, so there's no guilt involved.

However, I do not know whatever possessed me in joining the marathon. It is a BLOODY LONG RUN... And I do not know if I will survive it without stopping. As opposed to the half marathon, I am not going to run the full distance just to be sure that I can make it. This is because, well ... it's a bloody long run. Running 10k and then running half marathon is not the same as running half and then running the marathon. Because 42.something is a bloody long run ... The marathon is not just about will power (like the half for example). It requires real, hard core training. Especially if you are a couch potato like me.

What will matter the most for me for this marathon (apart from hydration, carb loading etc), will be joint strength (which I am working on by doing weight-carrying-across-the-hill) and the ability to play divide et impera (or divide and conquer). What I basically do is calculate after each milestone (in my case, the five minutes announced by my ipod) how much I've run and how much I still have to do. I do this until halfway point. If and when I feel like stopping after halfway point, i just ponder how much I've run and encourage myself to proceed. Simple as that. Boring, but what else to do? Speaking of boring, I absolutely hate running on the track or repeating a route more than two times per run.

To end this on a bragging note, I've run around 700 km since April, which means roughly 116 km per month (i did not run at all in july). Good, good!